Imagine receiving a jail sentence simply because we couldn’t handle our emotions. Think of the public outcry! But conjure with the idea of ​​receiving a sentence of thirty, forty, even fifty or sixty years! The level of public outrage over our human rights would surely dwarf any riots we have seen. Add a final insult and tag us 24 hours a day to remind us of our emotional turmoil, and the fury would erupt. Yet this is exactly what many of us do to ourselves. We impose life sentences of emotional self-incarceration and label ourselves!

And the metaphor becomes even more real, and even more horrible, the more you think about it.

Due to trauma, shock, pain, or abuse, we can and do condemn ourselves even more harshly. We commit ourselves to solitary confinement, guarding our most emotional secrets with an extraordinary level of jealousy and shame. This personal imposition can also be caused by guilt, abandonment, rejection, or humiliation, intimidation or harassment.

However, in our hearts we know that if there ever were a proper system of emotional courts with judge and jury, none would condemn us as severely as we have done to ourselves. None would find our case proven to warrant such a ferocious punishment.

But focus on this metaphor once again, when we have the highest criminal prison population on record. And now reflect on the fact that vast numbers of us, walking the streets seemingly free, have nevertheless imprisoned ourselves in unresolved emotions!

And our level of commitment to the award can be staggering. It may involve a vow of silence and secrecy towards ourselves, something we determine to take with us to the grave. This we can consider preferable to the mistaken belief that if we let off steam we will be emotionally plundered to death by family and friends, and that should be avoided at all costs!

Stranger, emotionally speaking, even when the underlying cause can in no way have been our creation or our fault, we still seek to deny that to ourselves and then compound the denial by buying more deeply into the shame, humiliation, and rejection as if from somehow we deserved it!

That can set off even more convoluted and restrictive behavioral thinking. We can use this wrong acceptance as a stick to beat ourselves up stronger than anyone else with the same knowledge would or should. And why do we do this? Because we have allowed ourselves to think that it is our just dessert! The ‘labeling’ is provided by our internal dialogue that we subconsciously encourage to reinforce our worst thoughts about ourselves.

And, paradoxically, we may find that we draw strength from our apparent courage and strength to take it on our own, when few around us would see any sense or justification in it.

I think it’s fair to say that there was a time when maybe this emotional flogging was considered part of being human and living a human life. Not enough was known then about psychology and the impact of our behavioral thinking.

But no more! That is no longer true. Irrefutable psychological and behavioral truths pile on top of each other, from one research project after another, each revealing more and more about our human nature. Even more welcome, they reveal to us how we can neutralize and reframe our reactions to the horrible indignities we have endured.

The benefits of encouraging ourselves to end our incarceration, give ourselves emotional parole, and reconfigure emotional memories and patterns are now well documented.

Why? If not for another reason, because now we know that it is no longer necessary for us humans to put up with it. And it is no longer justified to inflict our emotional shortcomings on others, young or old, so that they will replicate what we have done and resort to emotional self-incarceration for themselves.

So we should at least talk about these things, share them and shamelessly seek help to understand them. We must appreciate the reality that none of us are perfect, that we are unique, and more particularly, we are blessed with the ability to heal ourselves emotionally.

And if that’s not enough, just accept that we don’t deserve this toxic form of incarceration when help is now at hand. There are a number of good books and proprietary self-discovery programs available for finding a new level of happiness.