Are You Medicating Your Feelings?
Identify The Feelings In Your Life
- Feelings are the body’s way of communicating to you.
- If you ignore your feelings, eventually things will get worse.
- Medication can be helpful, but don’t become dependent upon it.
If I were to ask you what computers are for, you could probably give me a long list of things computers do. However, if I were to then ask you what feelings are for, would you be able to answer this question quite so easily?
The reality is that whilst feelings are something all of us experience on a daily basis, few of us actually have any idea as to their true meaning and importance.
One of the main reasons for this lack of understanding is that most people choose to become “experts” on things such as music, films and sports rather than choosing to become experts on themselves.
As a result, the large majority of society tends only to experience and react to their feelings, without being able to control them or learn from them.
What Are Your Feelings Trying To Tell You?
If feelings had no purpose, they would have been eliminated a long time ago through evolution.
Since humans still do have feelings however, then it is logical to assume that they have an important purpose in our life, and are therefore something which we should pay attention to.
Did you know for example, that the feelings you experience are a direct reflection of your fulfilled and unfilled needs? And that these feelings are meant to motivate you to into taking action, so that you can improve your life for the better?
But if you choose to ignore these feelings, or are simply ignorant of them, your fundamental human needs for things such as security, love, respect and purpose will also be ignored.
The result of these unfulfilled needs will be a life full of frustration, stress, low self esteem and eventually depression.
This is why it is so important to identify, listen to and understand your feelings, because by doing so, you will start to fulfil the needs which are important to you and your life.
Medicating Feelings
In the past few decades the number of people experiencing depression has been rapidly increasing. For example, in 1984 11 million US citizens were diagnosed with depression.
Ten years later this number almost doubled to 20 million, with 90% of these people being prescribed some form of medication such as Prozac.
The purpose of these medications was to “numb” a person to the painful feelings they were experiencing (i.e., their depression), thereby helping them to overcome the negative effects those feelings were having on their life.
The Mask Of Medication
Whilst chemical intervention can provide some short term benefits, such as a reduction in anxiety, its failure to address the root cause of a person’s problem(s) means medication should not be considered as a permanent fix or cure.
Take headaches for example. The majority of headaches are caused by dehydration, and a quick way to relieve the discomfort a headache causes is by taking some paracetamol.
The short term “cure” paracetamol provides certainly is convenient, as it will allow you to carry on with your everyday activities without having to experience any pain.
But this convenience often comes at a price. For if a person is constantly dehydrated and uses paracetamol every time they experience a headache, they may develop chronic dehydration.
This can then lead to more serious long term consequences such as constipation, digestive disorders or joint pain.
The Consequences Of Ignoring Your Feelings
In exactly the same way, taking medication for depression or other types of “mental disorders” will provide the user with a short term fix. However, it will not solve what caused the problem in the first place.
So those who do take medication for depression may feel better when they take it, but in the long run by “numbing” their pain they also numb their ability to appropriately respond to the messages their feelings were trying to tell them.
As a result, their unsatisfied needs which originally caused their depression will remain unfulfilled.
Another possible consequence of using medication to treat “bad” feelings, is that people may begin to associate themselves with whatever label they have been diagnosed as suffering from.
This can then generate a self fulfilling prophecy, whereby the patient’s behaviour increasingly begins to resemble how they think they are supposed to behave for someone who has that disorder.
Finally, medication may lead to long term dependence, whereby the person feels unable to live their life unless they have some sort of medication to support them.
This can cause people to feel both trapped and powerless, because they are now dependant on a drug to live a “normal” life.
Should All Medication Be Completely Avoided?
I do not believe that medication should never be used to treat mental disorders, as in cases such as schizophrenia they can be of tremendous benefit in helping a person to live a more productive life.
If medication is not taken for disorders such as schizophrenia, this may ultimately prove to be dangerous for both the affected person and the public.
For example, there have been many instances where schizophrenics either committed suicide or murdered several people, because they did not receive proper medication for their condition.
So for disorders such as schizophrenia, medication may be the only available option.
However in treatable cases such as depression, I believe medication should only be considered as a temporary aid to help a person get their life back together.
It should not be used to permanently dull a person’s feelings, as this will be of little benefit to them in the long run.
Are You Unknowingly “Medicating” Your Feelings?
If you are not on medication and think that this information doesn’t apply to you, have a closer look at your life, as medication is not the only thing people use to dull their pain.
Alcohol, drugs, food, addictions, bad habits and entertainment are all alternative methods of escaping the feelings you would rather avoid.
This is a trend which is becoming increasingly more common in today’s society, where people are made to feel inadequate with who and what they are unless they look a certain way, or own a certain item.
In this article series we are going to be exploring feelings in more detail, because it is such an important subject to understand.
These articles can be found on the personal development, in the “understand your feelings section“.
Starting from the next article, we shall look at how society teaches us to suppress our feelings, and later, the consequences this has on our lives.
Afterwards we shall begin to identify the different types of feelings in your life, and then reveal the messages they are trying to tell you.
