Why are emotions valid?

The answer is because to say they are not is to disconnect.

The improv troupe that does not accept each other's immediacy fails. The lovers that as soon as deny each other's emotional life, disintegrate. The leader who disregards their employees situations finds a mutiny.

But is it valid to feel that a gender is the enemy? To feel a paranoid subtext hovering over the interactions of another race? To feel based on a false fact? Surely, there are emotions that poison us.

We live a world more emotional than ever, and feeling more disconnected than ever. We're sensation junkies. And we're generating more information in two days than we did all of history to 2002. Our institutions of authority are failing, we are losing the capacity to determine what's important and what's not. No one can operate competently with such a high emotional temperature, and we're simplifying and labeling, simplifying and labeling. Everyone I talk to recognizes there's a deep problem.

In a relationship, how do two people solve an emotional complication? Say one partner is feeling consistently in ways that are damaging and hurting themselves (and usually the other too?) How can you remain connected to one another, but still recognize the destructive nature of the behavior, the falseness of an idea, the corruptive quality of a belief, the invalidity of the emotion laying claim into these, the behavior, the idea, the belief?

There are some poets out there who write with the only idea of "self-expression," and they write shit, often, without ever looking back to begin the real work of, "Is this good or bad? Why did I write it? What can I salvage? How can I move forward? How can I connect?"

But like economies, we break down in order to rebuild, to make way for new ideas to take root, to move and to change and to, ultimately, grow. Crisis and pain is a part of life. Yet, there are some people without the tools, and on the big scale in the economies of ideas, it seems we don't have the tools at all, and are bracing for war, and maybe are already engaged in a soft war.

These "self-expression" poets do not grow, dementedly, and they often do not read anybody else's work.

The poets that do do read, and talk, and describe, re-use, throw out, defend, engage in good faith.

Which, I think is the key, and what disturbs me is to see people turn off this sense all-together, opting instead for the propagandic lens and maintenance of social etiquette and power, shutting down conversation. Guess what assholes, not every opinion is valid. Not every poem works. If your belief is that your emotions are always valid, and you go to all lengths to protect that -- you are operating in a system of blinding.

You are not supposed to go unchallenged. You are supposed to engage the material.

I think the lovers that can talk about their emotions and behaviors as poems, or movies, or music or [insert emotional unit] can describe their experiences, listen, talk, challenge, defend, engage in good faith -- they are the couple that grows. Because they are seeking to understand themselves and each other in way that wants to move forward.

And that's the goal, isn't it?

TL;DR there is no therapist for the world.