I can remember saying as a child that I was upset, or angry, or disappointed, or hurt. Often I would be told, ‘That doesn’t make sense…’, followed by an explanation of why my feelings weren’t rational and therefore – by implication – weren’t valid. Maybe it ‘made no sense’ to be hurt by what someone said when they hadn’t meant it that way, or it wasn’t ‘logical’ to be angry when a situation was of my own making.

If anyone has ever told you anything like this, I can reassure you now that they are wrong. Your feelings are what they are. Right and wrong don’t come into it. That’s what makes them feelings and not thoughts. Rational thought is right or wrong, logical argument is right or wrong, but feelings are just that: feelings.

We have feelings we want and feelings we don’t want. Feelings we can shout about and feelings we shouldn’t express. Feelings we enjoy and feelings we don’t. Feelings we share and feelings we keep to ourselves. None of these feelings is wrong or invalid, even though voicing them may not always be appropriate.

It’s true that you can change your feelings – your emotional reactions – over time. But you need to accept your mind’s natural response first before you can start to adapt it. It’s no good telling yourself that you shouldn’t feel this or you mustn’t feel that. Of course you can, and then if you don’t like the feeling you can work to change it.

I’ve known people admit to feelings they felt dreadful about – having a favourite child for example, or disliking someone who had only ever been kind to them. Well clearly these aren’t feelings to be acted on, or even openly talked about, but they are still valid. Only by recognising them can you hope to address them and eventually change them.

If anyone tells you that you have no right to feel angry, or you shouldn’t be upset, or there’s no sense in feeling regretful, or you ought to feel grateful, or you mustn’t feel hurt, you have my full permission²⁶ to ignore them completely (but politely). You feel what you feel. In fact, if you start the sentence ‘I feel…’ and are interrupted by the word ‘But…’ it almost always means the other person is about to try to invalidate your feelings. The best response is to repeat firmly, ‘I feel…’.

Feelings aren’t bad. If you don’t like a feeling you can try to change it, but don’t feel guilty about it. The problem with people suggesting that your feelings should be rational is the implication that you can control them. That in turn implies that you are to blame if you have feelings that you ‘shouldn’t’. Not so. You can control whether you express them, and in what way, but you’re not responsible for your instinctive emotional responses.