My Secret to Emotional Stability.

The Day I Stopped Running from Myself

How learning to sit with my emotions changed everything I thought I knew about strength.

I used to think emotional stability meant never crying. Never breaking down. Never showing the cracks.

For years, I wore my composure like armor. When my father passed away unexpectedly, I organized the entire funeral without shedding a tear. When my engagement fell apart three months before the wedding, I calmly returned gifts and canceled vendors like I was handling a business transaction. Friends called me strong. Colleagues admired my resilience.

But inside, I was drowning.

Every suppressed emotion became a weight I carried in silence. I'd lie awake at three in the morning, chest tight, heart racing, replaying conversations and moments I'd refused to process during daylight hours. I snapped at people I loved over small things. A forgotten grocery item could ruin my entire evening. I was a pressure cooker with no release valve, and I didn't even realize it.

• The Breaking Point

The collapse came on an ordinary Tuesday morning.

I was making coffee when my hands started trembling. Not just a little shake—a violent, uncontrollable tremor that sent my mug crashing to the floor. Then came the tears. Not gentle crying, but the kind of sobbing that comes from somewhere deep and primal, years of accumulated pain finally finding its way out.

I slid down against the kitchen cabinet and cried for an hour straight.

When the storm finally passed, I felt something unexpected. Not shame or weakness, but relief. Like I'd been holding my breath underwater for years and finally broke the surface.

That's when everything changed.

• Learning to Feel Without Falling Apart

My therapist, Dr. Morgan, asked me a question during our first session that stopped me cold: "What if emotions aren't the enemy? What if they're just information?"

I'd spent my whole life treating feelings like intruders to be managed, controlled, or eliminated. The idea that they could be neutral messengers delivering important data about my inner world was revolutionary.

She taught me something I now consider my secret weapon: emotional stability isn't about avoiding feelings. It's about developing the capacity to experience them without being consumed by them.

Think of it like this. Emotions are like weather patterns. You can't stop rain from falling, but you can learn to navigate it. You can prepare, find shelter, and know that eventually, the sun will return. Fighting the rain only leaves you exhausted and soaked.

• The Practice That Changed Everything

I started with something simple. Each morning, before checking my phone or starting my day, I'd sit quietly for ten minutes and just notice what I was feeling. Not judge it, not fix it, not explain it away. Just acknowledge it.

"I feel anxious today." "There's sadness sitting in my chest." "I'm carrying anger about yesterday's conversation."

At first, it felt ridiculous. Who has time to catalog their emotions like some kind of feelings inventory? But slowly, something shifted. By naming what I felt, I created distance from it. The emotion became something I was experiencing, not something I was.

I also learned to give my emotions purpose. Sadness became a signal that something mattered to me. Anxiety showed me where I needed better boundaries or preparation. Even anger, which I'd always feared, became a compass pointing toward my violated values and unmet needs.

• The Transformation

Six months into this practice, my sister commented that I seemed different. Calmer, but also more present. More myself.

She was right. I wasn't avoiding hard conversations anymore. I could disagree with someone without my whole day unraveling. When disappointment came, I felt it fully and then moved forward without carrying it like a stone in my pocket.

The breakthrough moment came when a project I'd worked on for months fell through. Old me would have buried the disappointment and powered through with a forced smile. New me sat in my car and cried for fifteen minutes, then went home, called a friend, and actually talked about how much it hurt.

The next morning, I woke up ready to try again. The emotion had moved through me instead of getting stuck inside me.

• What I Know Now

True emotional stability isn't about becoming unshakable. It's about learning to shake and then finding your footing again.

It's trusting that you can feel something deeply without it defining you permanently. It's knowing that tears don't equal weakness, and composure doesn't equal strength.

The real secret? Emotions lose their power over you the moment you stop running from them. When you turn around and face what you feel with curiosity instead of fear, you discover something profound: you're strong enough to hold whatever comes.

That doesn't mean it's easy. Some days I still want to push everything down and pretend I'm fine. But now I know better. I know that the way through is always through—never around.

And that knowledge has given me something I never had when I was busy being "strong": peace.

---------------------------------

Thank you for reading...

Regards: Fazal Hadi