Posted on

Get Better at Feeling Bad

I don’t want to feel “bad.”  I don’t want to feel depressed or anxious or small or insecure or overwhelmed.  I doubt you want to feel those emotions, either.    Clients come in all the time looking to feel better, to not feel those difficult emotions.  Earlier in my career, my goal was to help clients in that pursuit.  Now, that’s still A goal in my work.  But it’s not THE goal.  Now, another goal is to get better at feeling bad.

People struggle with feeling pain.  We try to fix it, run from it, deny it; anything we can do to avoid having to experience it.  That fear and avoidance drives addiction.  It creates additional (delayed-onset) pain when we engage in unhealthy behaviors and thought patterns in order to avoid the feelings that we fear.  This creates a cycle of pain, fear, and avoidance that gains momentum the more often we engage in it.

The driver of this self-perpetuating cycle isn’t the hard emotion.  It’s the fear that the emotion will be unbearable.  I frequently tell clients that I don’t believe in the concept of boredom.  I think “boredom” is the name we give to empty space and time in which we start to feel difficult emotions.  When a client says, “I’m not good at being bored” I ask, “what do you start to think about and feel when you’re bored?”

Many people will avoid “boredom” because they’re afraid of what they might have to think about and feel.  They’re afraid of how painful it might be.  The problem, then, isn’t the pain; it’s the fear of pain.  The more we avoid pain, the more our psyche sees it as something worth avoiding.

We’ve got to get better at feeling bad.  We’ve got to stop seeing it as an end point in which we’ll be stuck.  Pain is a part of life.  Pain is a transient experience.  It’s not the enemy.  If we see it as those things, we can remove some of its power.  With that mindset we can know that it doesn’t have to be something we’ll be willing to avoid at all costs. 

I’ve been told that the difference between cows and buffalo is this: when a storm is approaching, cows will try to run away from it, getting caught in the rain for a longer period of time.  Buffalo will head into the storm, allowing them to be rained on for a shorter period of time.  Be a buffalo.  Get better at feeling bad by allowing yourself to feel bad.

Posted on

Everything Reinforces Something

What are you doing right now?  Well, obviously you’re ready this blog.  But why are you reading it?  You’re probably looking for a way to feel better.  So, you’re taking an action in an attempt to make that happen.  What does that reinforce in your psyche?  Among other things, it reinforces that no matter how powerless or hopeless you might feel, no matter how low your self-esteem might be, you’re still worth the effort of researching.  It reinforces in your psyche that there must be a way to feel better.  It reinforces that you are capable of taking action. 

Now, what if you had told yourself that there’s no point in trying and you hadn’t gotten online to start doing a little research into finding a therapist?  What would that have reinforced?  Maybe it would have reinforced that you aren’t capable of making a small effort, that your situation can’t be improved, or that you aren’t worth the effort.  What would be the implications of that in terms of depression, anxiety, addiction, etc.?

The ego (the way we see ourselves, and subsequently the way we engage the world around us) is an accumulation of thoughts, feelings, and experiences.  The way I see and feel about myself and therefore the decisions I make today, are influenced by the way I saw and felt about myself and the decisions I made yesterday.

As children we learn to cope with stressors, including trauma, in many different ways.  We collect those tools of coping, some of which are more reliable than others, day after day.  Those tools (decisions) influence the way that people respond to us, which influences the way we see ourselves.  And how we respond to stressors shapes what we see ourselves as capable of doing.

Here’s an example:  When I ran an outpatient program for children and adolescents, sometimes a client would start to feel anxious.  Because they, their parents, and other therapists had used the term “panic attack” so often, they would start to see “heightened anxiety” as a panic attack.  Since panic attacks often do require immediate intervention, they would ask for a medication in that moment.  With a calm, assured tone and affect, one of my responses was something to the effect of “Yeah I can get that for you.  Give me five minutes and let’s go get it together.”  The client would usually have the experience of being able to tolerate something they didn’t think they could tolerate.  They begin to see themselves in a slightly different manner, which influences what they think they can do next time.  And next time, I would have them give me two more minutes than last time.

We don’t always realize that we have an option to respond differently and therefore see ourselves differently.  Everything reinforces something.