2020-09-23 Be curious with your
By nature, most of us are judgmental with our emotions — especially the difficult ones:
- You feel anxious and afraid and then immediately criticize yourself for being weak.
- You feel sad and instantly start worrying about getting depressed.
- You feel frustrated and angry and then beat yourself up for not keeping your cool.
This is understandable if you grew up being taught that it’s not okay to show — or even feel — strong emotion. It also makes sense because, in a crude way, we tend to assume that when something’s painful, it should be fixed or avoided.
But here’s the thing:
Just because something feels bad doesn’t mean it is bad.
In much of life, pain is actually a good thing:
- When your muscles are sore and painful after a good workout, your pain is a sign of growth and health.
- When your finger feels pain after touching a hot stove, that pain is helping you move your hand and avoid a serious burn.
- When you feel a jolt of anxiety after noticing your low fuel light blink on, that jolt of fear helps you remember to get gas.
Not only is pain often helpful, by avoiding it or trying to eliminate it, you could be making things worse on yourself. Think about it:
- It wouldn’t be very smart to stick a piece of tape over your low fuel light just because you didn’t want it to make you feel anxious anymore!
There’s a more general principle here that’s essential if you want to create a healthier, happier mind:
- When you try to avoid painful emotions, you only make things worse in the end.
When you get in the habit of running away from or trying to “fix” painful emotions, you teach your brain that your emotions are bad and dangerous. This means that the next time you feel bad, you’re going to feel bad about feeling bad because your brain thinks emotions are dangerous.
This is why it’s so important to stop being judgmental with your emotions, no matter how difficult or painful they are.
Feeling bad is hard enough without feeling bad about feeling bad.
Instead of a judgmental and combative relationship with your emotions, strive to be curious about them instead. Rather than enemies to be avoided, try thinking about your emotions as friends to be consoled and understood.
Or better yet, try thinking about your emotions as lights on your car’s dashboard: However they make you feel, they’re just trying to help.
Practice being curious with your emotions, instead of judgmental, and you’ll find that they are much easier to live with and understand.
