Contentment 101: Don’t Apologize For How You Feel

By Niema Jordan
Please don’t take the title of this post as me saying it is okay to subject the world to your emotional roller coaster. This is not a pass to spaz. Also note that just because you feel a certain way doesn’t make your perception or interpretation the next person’s reality. However, apologizing for how you feel will get you no where. You can apologize for you how you act. You can apologize for how you treat people. But your feelings are your feelings.

The no apologies thing hit me today when I was on the train. I was thinking about conversations I’d had the past days and about I gchat I received this morning. One of the homies asked about my love life and I told her all was well. Not something I utter often. Until recently that is. So I was on the train trying to figure out what was so different now than a few months back. Why did everything seem so peaceful? Where did all of the anxiety go?

I realized that the difference between now and then was that I was honest about how I felt and I made no apologies. I’ve learned to acknoweledge and accept how I feel about situations instead of fighting and hiding. The latter approach is too draining and leads to chaos.

But this acceptance piece is not only on the dating front. I’ve been feeling a little out of whack since I’ll be turning 25 in a couple of months. I’ve been a bit salty that I can happily dance around the house to Ne-Yo’s “She Got Her Own” and claim it as my theme song anymore. I’ve been feeling a bit down about my finances. I’ve been feeling a little confused about school. I’ve been feeling like a slacker because I haven’t accomplished a lot of ish on my list of things to do. The combination of all of these things would usually send me into a mild depression. Usually, I’d shut down, be anxious, spaz, or some combination of all of these things. But really, I’m good. I’ve made peace with the fact that knowing certain things (like age ain’t nothin’ but a number, plenty of people live at home, and I really do get a lot done), does not change how I feel. And being okay with the fact that my feelings aren’t always logical, don’t always line up with what I know to be “truth”, and are nothing to be ashamed of, has made a huge difference.

My feelings are not for other folks to agree with and they aren’t for me to push on other people. My job is not to feel bad for feeling or to apologize for having emotions. My job is to accept them cuz that’s the first step to feeling better.

Acceptance is critical for contentment.