“Life is full of paradoxes, as roses are of thorns.”
– Fernando Pessoa
My thoughts after this week of psychotherapy work: how much comfort certainty can bring. And how much it can sometimes rob us of the fullness of life.
We often want one clear feeling, one clean answer. One version of the story that will tell us what to do, who is right, who is wrong, whether we should stay, leave, forgive, grieve, speak, or finally let go.
But the depth and beauty of life, and especially of relationships, often live in complexity. And complexity is difficult to hold. It asks us to make space not only for the feelings we prefer – joy, love, gratitude, hope – but also for hurt, disappointment, anger, grief and longing.
Why Certainty Can Feel So Comforting
Certainty gives us relief. It can make the world feel more manageable. If we can decide that a person is only bad, we do not have to feel how much we still miss them. If we decide something was only good, we do not have to face the pain that also lived there.
This is not because we are dishonest. It is because the mind often tries to protect us from pain. Simple stories can become a kind of shelter – they help us move away from the discomfort of not knowing.
But sometimes certainty comes too quickly. Sometimes it arrives before we have really listened to ourselves. And then it can close something down, it can make us cut away parts of our own experience just because they do not fit neatly together.
Conflicting Feelings in Real Relationships
Much of our emotional complexity appears in relationships. We can feel love and resentment towards the same person. We can want to be close and also feel suffocated. We can feel loyal to family and still need distance.
We can miss someone and know contact would not be healthy. We can feel grateful and angry at the same time. We can understand why someone acted as they did, and still feel wounded by it.
This can be hard to admit, especially if we were taught that feelings should be consistent. If you love someone, you should not be angry. If you are grateful, you should not complain. If someone hurt you, you should not miss them. But real relationships often involve mixed feelings. The inner world is rarely as tidy as we wish it to be.
How Therapy Helps Us Hold Emotional Complexity
The question is not whether these feelings are allowed. They already exist. The deeper question is whether we can bear to know them.
Therapy can help us become less frightened of our own complexity. Instead of asking, “Which feeling is the real one?” we may begin to ask, “Can I make room for all the feelings that are here?” Not to stay confused forever, but to understand ourselves more honestly before we choose.
And this is not easy work. It can be painful. It asks us to stay with discomfort and to go gently into the deeper corners of ourselves – the places we may have avoided, protected, or left untouched for a long time. But sometimes this is where something important begins: not in becoming simpler, but in becoming more truthful.
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