All about you FRIDAY – Stretching Your Emotional Range

I was born on the sunny side of the bed. It isn’t hard for me to see the silver lining and I can make lemonade out of lemons. Like most humans, I’ve had sad and tragic things happen and I’ve been able to dust myself off, square my shoulders, put a smile on my face and keep marching. The world doesn’t need to deal with my mess, I would think.

“I purposely make myself watch a really sad movie now and again,” a patient said to me one day. The battalion chief of a local fire department, he was no stranger to the tragedies of life. He witnesses destruction, death, injury and the worst parts of being human on a weekly basis. People expect him to be brave. And he is.

“I watch these sad movies until I feel the emotions rise up,” he said, “and once I have a good cry, I know I’m good and I go back to watching my regular stuff.” He also made his teenage sons sit through the movies with him, an attempt to model healthy emotional release. “I think it’s great to stretch your emotional range.”

That was one of the best pieces of advice I’d heard in awhile. We were not designed to be one dimensional. Just like our physical bodies grow and respond best when exposed to a variety of activity, our emotional side needs to do the same.

Feel the feels. Allow yourself opportunities to experience really strong emotion on all ends of the spectrum. Anger. Joy. Sadness. Contentment. Being brave doesn’t mean not feeling. Being a realist is better than being an optimist.

Here’s a list of movies to help you do that: