Emotions are meant to be felt and to move. If you don’t feel them at the moment they will come out at another place and time, not necessarily of your choosing. Even worse, if feelings aren’t acknowledged at all, they can act like teenagers, moving into the background and plotting another more extensive means of gaining attention. Things can escalate from there which makes for an explosive situation at some point.
If you do feel them they should move through like a spring storm, here providing nourishment and change and insight, and then leaving again. This goes for all of them. No life is continuously joyous nor is it consistently devastating. There are ups and downs to every life in every day. If not, then something is stuck.
Emotions that don’t move keep us from interacting with our world and keep us from interacting with ourselves as well. Happiness that borders on manic and that never varies is like the same cheerful song played continuously at high volume. After a while it isn’t happiness but torture and all we want is rest and silence and peace. Anger that never changes can strike out at everything indiscriminately or build up such a force of rage that when released it lays waste to everything in its path. Meanwhile it blinds the person to any other emotion and shapes all experiences to fit it’s needs. Sadness that stays becomes the monochrome of depression washing all color from life, demotivating us until the meaning of our being follows the color that has left.
If an emotion isn’t moving it’s a signal that something is stuck. Some critical thing in our life needs to be attended to. It’s a “stop everything right now” signal that says carrying on and “I’ll get to that later” are no longer relevant to the situation. If a feeling has gone on for a very long time, stop and listen to what it has to say. After it’s said all the things it’s repeated over and over again forever, which have gotten you nowhere, after it feels you’ve actually listened by being there to hear and feel it’s story, it will start telling you new things, like what it will take to get this to move. And maybe, just maybe, being felt will be enough.