Feeling vs. fighting the pain

When I was younger, it was very typical of me to react to my hurt feelings by 1. becoming angry 2. leaving the situation - running instead of facing the conflict 3. refusing to communicate with the big meanie who hurt me. Over the past 10 years, I think I've gone through more emotional drama than in my entire life combined. I've always involved in drama and, for some reason, I know strange people (like a woman who killed her DH, my former boss, than killed herself in jail ) -- but that's neither here nor there... just drama. Everywhere. Okay.. so back to my point. Do you think that we make things harder on ourselves by fighting the yucky emotions? It's hard to explain. Hmmmm. The past 10 years has changed me... for the better, mostly, but also, not so great. I used to completely fight my feelings - like I absolutely hated being upset. I literally could not cope at times. I felt like my world was falling in on me. It was over. Then a lightbulb must have gone off or something because I realized that the pain is temporary and the harder I fight the yucky feelings I have, the longer they linger. So.. I started thinking about this because of the message board I host. I notice a lot of others seem to not be able to let go of the pain - which I understand. I guess I'm trying to actually figure out how I did it. I'm not immune to emotional pain, but it just doesn't linger as it did in the past. It comes and goes.. and sometimes it makes a few short pitstops :)