Share a cuppa?

I relate to that too @mr-robot-75 on so many levels.
We're quite trapped by the delusion that emotions are easy to handle, but the fact is painful ones are actually very hard to cope with, and that's why everyone tries to avoid them, even to the point of becoming emotionally unavailable to people they may even consider loved ones, and that's how the isolation comes about, and that's often just as traumatizing. The fact is life as a human being is hard to cope with, we're afraid of emotional and psychological pain, and have never really explored their value or how to cope with them, yet they're a huge part of most people's lives. We've spent such exhaustve energy running from our monsters, never does it occur to us they're keeping up with us, and sometimes they're finding ways to get ahead of us without us even knowing.

When we lived in the animal world for most of our four million years of we were aggressive, we had to be to survive...and when we were hurt by something or someone we hit back, fur flew, someone died too, but it was a crudely simple system. In the last paltry ten or so thousand years that we've been so-called civilised, that aggression hasn't gone away, it's just the rules that have changed, so we don't know what to do with it anymore.<br><br> When my cats have a beef with each other, they'll just whack each other,. It means I have to separate and dress wounds and monitor them, but they don't end up in front of a judge defending assault charges. As I said it isn't a system that works, but it's simple. In our attempt to civilise ourselves, we've attempted to civilise aggression away, and that just doesn't happen. <br><br>Cats and small dogs are also highly anxious animals, they don't get to take antidepressants or antianxiety medications they live with it, and they continue see value in living.

I'm very happy to see on my psychology facts apps that we're now realising that there's a lot of untapped benefit to our negative emotions, we need to identify those benefits and use those emotions to benefit us, it's what they were meant to do in the first place. We can't conduct ourselves by the laws of nature anymore because we have an arbitrary legal system that will put us in jail if we do - and fair enough too! However we're left with emotions we don't know how to honour, and depression, anxiety and aggression are three of them.

Afterall it's not as if these laws protect us from being violated and abused, people do break the laws we've invented, they steal, lie, bash, and murder others...and we're still left feeling utterly violated and abused, but now we also feel utterly powerless and with no recourse, and we're even told we're not allowed to feel that way. I've learnt to say to people when they presume to tell me how to feel "I don't get my emotional rights from you!". I have learnt never to let other people get in the way of me feeling and accessing any of my emotions.

I've just read something else on my psychology facts app that's true, once you accept your flaws nobody can ever use them against you. So if someone says you're being selfish, just say "And so?..."

Thanks @Shaz51, I'm sending you all hugs too.

Hey @Shaz51 and @Abner,


I’ve been offline for a week or so while I spent time with my family, so good to switch off social media. How was everyone’s Christmas, did Santa come to those who were hoping for Santa???

I'm doing well @Shaz51, I've just finished a drawing and did some housework, I'll do some exercise on my parallel bars later - I can feel my shoulders, arms and chest getting stronger, but I still have to work on my lateral muscles. I did a drawing of my right foot this afternoon. I bought a suitcase easel with some money my parents sent me for Christmas, I have a field easel, but needed something compact so I can draw and paint even in very cramped spaces, and this suitcase easel is ideal, it holds so much equipment in its compartments; and you can even put it in a
backpack it's so compact when you close it, it's about the size of a briefcase, but with just a bit more breadth. How are you?