Thursday, March 18, 2010

Understanding Emotions

We recently put my family dog to sleep. I knew that this was going to be a rough obstacle I was going to have to get over, but it has been much harder than anticipated. Winston was an Old English sheepdog who was 13 and he lived a really great life. I feel as though I am socially constructed to feel like I should be grateful that he lived that long and that he was an extremely happy dog. But my basic emotions just mourn him and want him to be here to live another 13 years. We moved into my house and immediately got Winston, so returning home and him not being there is like living in an empty house. I have had a hard time understanding my emotions as to what I feel versus what I am supposed to feel. I feel as though I lost a part of my family, and myself and when other read this or when I express this to them they simply do not understand. This makes me refrain from expressing the sorrows that I really have about his passing. Then in turn this makes me feel stupid for caring about how I am supposed to feel, because I know how I actually do feel. Right when I heard the news I thought about this concept and it really put things into perspective about the true difference between basic emotions and socially constructed emotions. I also now know what it means by saying that emotions are holistic. This hit me like a brick wall and I am dealing with it in the only way I know how and that is with my basic emotions.

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