A Teen's Guide to Complex Emotions
Oct 10, 2024
Emotions color the human experience. Let’s run with this metaphor for a second and you’ll see what I mean. When you’re a kid, the world is lit up with primary colors like “happy”, “mad”, and “sad”. They are bright, simple, and easy to identify. Then you get a bit older and secondary colors join the mix. They are still bright and easily identifiable, but there are more.
Then you hit your teen years and things change more dramatically and faster. The world isn’t colored with a handful of rainbow hues anymore. Instead, there are tertiary colors that are difficult to name like chartreuse (is it more yellow or more green?), and there is a whole new spectrum of shades.
It’s not as simple in adolescence. The emotional spectrum becomes deeper and a bit more complex. New emotions pop up like embarrassment, ambition, guilt, and acceptance. The hues and shades of these new emotions vary a lot more than the simple feelings of childhood.
The emotional growth we experience in our teenage years is hard, confusing, and has our brains going a million miles per hour. Emotions are difficult to understand and navigate, but they truly are gifts. Emotional depth allows us to put more into life and in turn, get more out of it; because emotions allow us to experience life.
Without emotion, life would be colorless, and without emotional depth, life wouldn’t be nearly as beautiful.
It can be hard to cope with the emotional turmoil that we all encounter as teens. It’s a wild rollercoaster that loop-de-loops until we reach adulthood and things stabilize. When I was a teen, all I wanted was to feel in control. It isn’t possible for anyone to control their emotions, but it is completely possible to shift our perspective to one that is healthier.
The best advice I have to give to any young person trying to make sense of this world is to shift your perspective. The world is more beautiful and more hopeful than you think it is. And you have the power to see it.
Here are 3 perspective shifts to get you started:
We can feel guilt without shame.
Guilt and shame are sometimes used as synonyms, but they are not the same. Guilt lets us know when we’ve made a mistake. Shame tries to convince us that our existence is a mistake. Guilt is an important, healthy emotion based in empathy. Shame is the lowest-frequency emotion we can feel. Shame tries to counterfeit as guilt. Don’t let it.
Guilt says, “I did something bad.”
Shame says, “I am bad.”
Guilt says, “I need to make amends. My actions need to change.”
Shame says, “I’m worthless and I will never change.”
Shame tries to tie your mistakes to your worth. The truth is, your worth is unchanging. You will make mistakes (It’s part of life), and guilt will help you fix them, but no choice you make can ever change your worth.
Your divine worth does not change. Your actions can.
Pain does not need to be miserable.
Pain is inevitable. Misery is optional. Life is painful sometimes and we can’t get around it. We are here to experience the full spectrum of mortal existence and all the emotions that come along with it. That includes pain, but it does not have to include misery.
Pain is a natural part of life that happens whether we want it to or not. Misery, on the other hand, is what we do to ourselves. Misery loves to pretend to be pain. It is nothing more than a counterfeit. We inflict it upon ourselves by blaming outside forces and other people for our pain so we don’t have to face it or feel it.
Pain is one of the only authentic emotions that is not meant to be held, it’s meant to be felt. Pain is meant to drip from our eyes. Pain is meant to hurt so we can grow. The saying, “No Pain, No Gain.” is real. Pain takes us to growth.
Misery keeps us from growth. Misery wants to trap the pain inside us and that’s not where pain was meant to exist. Pain is meant to enter our hearts, move us to action, and then pass through us. When we reclaim the power of progress that pain gives us, the world becomes wide with great possibilities.
Life is not happening to us. It is happening for us. Misery keeps us in a Victim state. Pain turns us into Victors.
Stress can be replaced with excitement.
Did you know stress can actually be a positive? The advice we usually get when feeling distressed is to “chill out” and “calm down.” This is actually the opposite of effective advice. It’s pretty difficult to calm down when feeling a lot of stress because it is an aroused emotion versus the subdued emotion of calm. The good news is you don’t have to calm down to get rid of the stress. You can just convert it to excitement (another aroused emotion).
A health psychologist by the name of Kelly McGonigal says, “When you change your mind about stress, you can change your body’s response to stress.” Another name for excitement is eustress, or positive stress. Distress (anxiety) is the counterfeit of excitement (eustress).
The way your body responds to stress is very similar to the way your body responds to excitement. As a result, it is surprisingly easy to transform one into the other. You can do it simply by telling yourself “I am excited!” Alison Wood Brooks from Harvard did a study where she used these three words, “I am excited.” to get participants to perform better, have higher confidence, adopt an opportunity mindset, and increase their self efficacy.
The next time you are stressed about an exam, a band concert, a sport you're about to play, or a presentation, tell yourself, “I’m excited!” Then sit back, and let your words work their magic.
Emotions are a wild ride sometimes. As a teen, you are just getting started on this rollercoaster. All of these colorful emotions are in the seats next to you but they don’t control you. Emotions are messengers, they are not dictators. You can make the most of them and live your most authentic and vibrant life.
To learn more about the gifts of guilt and pain and to avoid the dangers of shame and misery, check out our self-paced courses: Guilt vs. Shame, Pain vs. Misery
