Don’t Tell Me What to Feel

Except of my latest artwork to be exhibited at Tembusu Art Gallery from 18 September

Have you ever felt completely torn because you were experiencing two opposite emotions at the same time - and then guilt-tripped yourself for it?

That was me recently at the Japanese Speech Contest. I won 2nd runner up. On one hand, I felt grateful and proud to be among the top 3 of such a prestigious event. On the other hand, I was deeply disappointed because I had secretly hoped for (at least) 1st runner up.

The clash of emotions was so loud it almost split me in two. My inner critic went wild:

“Who do you think you are?”

“You should be grateful, not greedy.”

“Stop acting superior. You deserved the loss.”

Instead of simply feeling my disappointment, I tried to suppress it - forcing myself to “just feel grateful.” In doing so, I was gaslighting myself, making my entire experience wrong.

Growing up, I thought emotions were binary: you’re either happy or sad, grateful or disappointed. If you felt disappointment in a “happy” situation, something must be wrong with you. Maybe you’ve heard this too - people telling you how you should feel in a particular situation. These days, it irritate the heck out of me when I'm being told that.

But here’s the truth I’ve been learning: emotions aren’t binary. They’re layered, messy, and sometimes contradictory. And that’s not wrong - that’s being human.

Through my own healing journey, I’ve learned how much suppressed emotions get stuck in the body. The simplest way I explained it to my younger daughter was: negative emotions are like poop. You need to let them out or they’ll clog your system. (She got it immediately. 😂)

A meme I created in 2024 to emphasise the importance of processing emotions in my non-art related IG @caihuithedaydreamer

Science says emotions take about 90 seconds to move through the body if you let yourself feel them. But most of us were never taught how. I grew up in a home with constant volatility - anger meant destruction, threats, and sacrifice. I became highly attuned to others’ needs and learned to neglect my own. Showing, let alone processing, emotions felt unsafe. Especially anger.

Only recently did I learn: anger doesn’t have to be destructive. Emotions don’t have to be scary. What my nervous system needed was regulation, not suppression.

This is why art has been such an important part of my healing. For 6 years, creating with pastels - using my fingers, blending colours, focusing on the process - has quietly regulated my nervous system. It gave me a way to reset.

And with my most recent piece, I realised something even bigger: feeling multiple, even conflicting emotions is not a problem. It doesn’t mean I’m broken. It means I’m human.

This new artwork taught me its own affirmation: Nothing Needs Fixing.

When I tried to control the outcome too much, the paper scarred. Just like in life, pushing too hard only worsens the wound. But letting emotions flow - messy, imperfect, contradictory - that’s freedom.

This artwork will be shown at “The Imagination Factory” exhibition, TAG@TPD (Tanjong Pagar Distripark), 18–22 September 2025. I’ll share details of the opening and artist talk on IG soon.

Honestly, I feel vulnerable sharing this piece. It’s not as “polished” as my usual work, but it feels truer. It captures the reality of emotions as waves - raw, fleeting, layered, never neat.

So I would love to hear from you:

👉 Do you ever feel guilt or shame for having conflicting emotions?

👉 How do you deal with them?

Let’s talk.

Because we grow stronger when we stop pretending to be “fixed” and start sharing what it really means to be human. ❤️