As a psychologist, I’ve helped individuals work by way of nearly each form and dimension of inauspicious emotion.
However throughout this large number of struggling — from panic assaults and melancholy to anger points and low vanity — there’s one frequent issue these individuals all appear to share: an unhealthy relationship with their feelings.
Most of us don’t study very a lot about our feelings or how they work once we’re younger. So we develop up believing that if an emotion feels dangerous it is dangerous.
The difficulty is, that’s merely not true:
Your feelings aren’t the issue. It’s your relationship with feelings that’s making you sad.
If you wish to really feel higher emotionally you should construct a more healthy relationship along with your feelings. And the easiest way to start out is by recognizing the indicators of an unhealthy relationship with feelings.
Picture: Kirill Balobanov/Unsplash
Listed below are 5 indicators you might have a dysfunctional relationship along with your feelings:
1. You assume there are ‘good’ and ‘dangerous’ feelings
The basic error on the coronary heart of all emotional struggling is the idea that feelings are good or dangerous.
Fortunately, that is nonsense.
Feelings aren’t good or dangerous any greater than totally different colour visitors lights are good or dangerous.
Chances are you’ll not like crimson lights, however that doesn’t imply they’re dangerous, harmful, or an issue to be fastened. Equally, it’s possible you’ll not like feeling unhappy or afraid or ashamed or some other troublesome emotion, however that doesn’t imply they’re dangerous, fallacious, faulty, and so on.
Sear this into your mind:
There isn’t a such factor as a great or dangerous emotion.
Feelings are morally impartial phenomena. Just like the climate, the colour of your pores and skin, or your desire for espresso ice cream over mint chocolate chip, good or dangerous has nothing to do with it.
Simply because some feelings really feel dangerous, doesn’t imply that they’re dangerous.
If you contact a sizzling range and really feel ache taking pictures up your finger, is the ache dangerous? In fact not! Ache is only a sign telling your muscular tissues to maneuver earlier than your pores and skin will get severely burned.
Equally, whereas grief, trepidation, irritability, melancholy, terror, guilt, frustration, anxiousness, disgrace, panic, or some other troublesome emotion could really feel dangerous, meaning completely nothing about its ethical standing or usefulness.
Prefer it or not, concern is commonly much more helpful than happiness.
If you wish to begin constructing a greater relationship along with your feelings, cease judging them nearly as good or dangerous and begin accepting them as they’re.
The extra one judges, the much less one loves.
~ Honore de Balzac.
2. You intellectualize your feelings
Think about you simply acquired residence after a troublesome day at work — perhaps you made an embarrassing mistake throughout a presentation in entrance of your whole firm.
As you stroll by way of the door of your own home, your partner says:
Hey honey, how was work… Oh gosh, you look horrible. Do you’re feeling okay?
Now, realistically, which of those two choices would you be extra seemingly to decide on as a reply:
- I’m simply actually wired.
- I really feel ashamed and embarrassed.
When you’re like 99% of the adults I do know, you’re in all probability going to select one thing a lot nearer to Choice 1 than Choice 2.
That is attention-grabbing as a result of Choice 2 is extra correct. Certain, it’s possible you’ll really feel pressured, however the core of what’s fallacious and the way you’re feeling is embarrassment and disgrace.
However right here’s the factor:
It’s surprisingly laborious to speak about how we really feel in plain emotional language.
However, once we use extra conceptual or obscure language to explain how we really feel — a course of known as intellectualizing feelings — it feels rather less painful.
However avoiding how you’re feeling emotionally as a result of it hurts isn’t an excellent long-term technique.
Certain, it feels rather less dangerous in the mean time. However long-term, know this:
Avoiding how you’re feeling with obscure or overly mental language is a delicate avoidance technique that teaches your mind to be afraid of your individual feelings.
And the way wholesome can your relationship along with your feelings be if you happen to’re frightened of them?
As a substitute, think about this the following time you’re feeling a powerful painful emotion:
If I used to be 5 years previous, how would I describe how I’m feeling proper now?
Have the braveness to make use of plain emotional language to explain how you’re feeling.
Ripe in knowledge was he, however affected person, and easy, and childlike.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
3. You attempt to ‘repair’ different individuals’s feelings
You’re a pleasant individual, proper?
You want to assist individuals if you happen to can. If somebody is struggling or in ache, you wish to assist reduce that ache if it’s inside your energy to take action, proper?
In fact, you do! As a result of most of us are good, variety individuals, we empathize when persons are struggling and wish to assist.
However right here’s the factor:
Regardless of our greatest intentions, we’re not all the time very good about serving to different individuals — particularly with regards to emotional struggling.
See, most individuals have this humorous behavior of making an attempt to repair issues that aren’t issues — like feelings.
Right here’s an instance from my very own life:
The opposite day my 3-year-old daughter crashed her bike and scraped her knee. She got here working over to me sobbing and I immediately felt dangerous for her.
Like most mother and father, I don’t like seeing my children upset or in ache. That is why it was — and all the time is — laborious to suppress my preliminary response of claiming one thing like Oh it’s okay, honey. It’s not that dangerous. You’ll really feel higher quickly.
I desperately wished to say one thing to reassure her and make her really feel higher.
However I managed to carry again and mentioned one thing very totally different as an alternative: Oh gosh, Bia! That will need to have been scary to fall off your bike like that.
Now, you may assume to your self:
Nicely, that’s dumb. For one factor, she already knew that falling off her bike was scary. For one more, you’re simply drawing extra consideration to her ache, which is prone to maintain her upset even longer, proper?
It will appear that approach… However right here’s the factor:
Regardless of how painful, feelings aren’t harmful.
This implies, that regardless of how a lot they appear the half, feelings aren’t issues — even the actually painful ones.
And if feelings aren’t issues, meaning treating them as such is misguided at finest.
If I had instructed my daughter to not fear and that all the pieces could be nice, it might effectively have distracted her from her concern and made her really feel higher within the second. However the longer-term penalties would have been a lot much less nice.
Particularly, by telling her that It’s not that dangerous… or that You don’t must cry… I might be implying that it’s not okay for her to really feel afraid. That concern and different painful feelings are dangerous issues — issues to be solved and gotten rid of as quickly as potential.
Now, what sort of a psychologist would I be if I used to be educating my youngsters to be afraid of their feelings?
My level with all that is easy:
If you deal with feelings like issues, you train your self to think about them as issues.
And the extra you consider your feelings as the issues, the extra afraid of them you’re going to be.
Look, coping with troublesome emotions is difficult sufficient. Nevertheless it’s borderline inconceivable if you happen to’re additionally afraid of them.
As a substitute of making an attempt to repair different individuals’s issues, attempt validating them as an alternative. Allow them to know that you just care and that you just’re there for them.
However most significantly, allow them to know that it’s completely okay to really feel no matter they’re feeling, regardless of how scary or intense.
Even the very smart can’t see all ends.
~ J.R.R. Tolkien
4. You run away out of your feelings
If you really feel dangerous your intestine response is to do one thing that makes you’re feeling higher as quickly a potential:
- Contact a sizzling range → Pull your hand again
- See a rattlesnake → Again away
- Break your arm → Take some Tylenol after which go to the physician
And in conditions like these, that pain-avoidance technique works out effectively.
However avoiding ache doesn’t all the time result in higher outcomes. It usually makes issues worse:
- Really feel drained → Watch Netflix as an alternative of understanding
- Craving ice cream → Blow off your weight loss program and go nuts
- Lusting after that new iPhone → Neglect financial savings and purchase it now
In terms of painful feelings, avoiding them by no means works out in the long term:
- Distracting your self from anxiousness solely makes you extra anxious.
- Numbing out your grief solely perpetuates your disappointment.
- Venting all of your anger solely intensifies it.
The reason being fairly simple:
If you run away from one thing, it teaches your mind that it’s harmful.
Now, within the case of a sizzling range or a rattlesnake, these issues are harmful, so reminding your mind of them is an efficient factor and may make it easier to keep away from them sooner or later.
However right here’s the deal: A longing for ice cream isn’t harmful. It doesn’t really feel good, nevertheless it’s not going to place your survival at stake.
Equally, feeling anxious isn’t harmful. It is perhaps uncomfortable, however anxiousness itself isn’t going to harm you.
However while you get within the behavior of immediately avoiding your anxiousness by distracting your self, numbing it out, or making an attempt to repair it by worrying about it, you create a second layer of hysteria. Now you’ve acquired anxiousness about anxiousness!
Operating away from painful emotions could provide you with some aid within the short-term however it’ll all the time be on the expense of your long-term emotional well-being.
Consider carefully earlier than you run.
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to 1’s braveness.
~ Anaïs Nin
5. You belief your feelings
I like to finish with this one as a result of it all the time throws individuals for a loop…
I’ve simply spent the final 6 minutes of your day making an attempt to persuade you that feelings aren’t dangerous or harmful. And that you must spend much less time avoiding them and extra time accepting them.
However, noticeably absent from something I’ve written is the concept feelings are some type of particular internal knowledge that you should always tune into and cling to with religious-like fervor.
I might by no means say one thing like that as a result of if you happen to’ve been being attentive to life, it must be fairly darn clear that feelings are simply as prone to mislead you as they’re to information you.
For instance:
You get residence from work after a protracted, exhausting day and collapse onto the sofa. As you’re reaching for the distant to activate the TV, an annoying thought crosses your thoughts: I mentioned I used to be going to go to the fitness center at present after work…
After just a little internal debate with your self, you decide on the rationalization that I’ll simply stand up early tomorrow and go to the fitness center earlier than work. It’s solely 9 or 10 hours late.
Consequently, you’re feeling some aid from the anxiousness of getting promised your self you’d train however really feel like watching TV as an alternative.
Now, how smart is that feeling? It’s pushing you to remain on the sofa, pour your self a glass of chardonnay, and watch Netflix. Must you take heed to that feeling?
In fact not!
Except your work includes 8 hours a day of laborious guide labor, likelihood is train could be excellent for you — bodily, emotionally, perhaps even spiritually — though you don’t really feel prefer it.
Feelings might be helpful. However simply because they’re generally useful or instructive doesn’t imply they all the time are.
And simply because they will lead you to excellent issues doesn’t preclude the chance that they will simply as simply lead you to very dangerous issues.
Individuals who have a wholesome relationship with their feelings take heed to their emotions however hardly ever belief them. They take note of how they really feel however don’t essentially act on their emotions instinctively.
Domesticate a wholesome skepticism of your feelings. And when doubtful, confirm that your emotions align along with your values earlier than you make any selections.
You’ll really feel higher for it in the long run.
Somewhat than love, than cash, than fame, give me fact.
~ Henry David Thoreau
Nick Wignall is a psychologist and author sharing sensible recommendation for emotional well being and well-being. He’s the founding father of The Pleasant Minds publication.
This text was initially printed at Medium. Reprinted with permission from the writer.
