Those trying feelings
“The best way out is through.” ROBERT FROST
In the first two chapters our aim was to change the way we think about uncomfortable circumstances. In this chapter, we’ll be looking to change the way we think about uncomfortable feelings.
Sometime fairly early in life, most of us developed the notion that it somehow isn’t OK to experience uncomfortable feelings.
If we’re feeling sad, depressed, lonely,
hurt, anxious, rejected, fearful or
embarrassed and we’re wishing we
weren’t feeling that way or thinking we
‘shouldn’t’ be feeling that way (which is
how most of us have learned to think),
we’re unwittingly involved in a highly
unproductive way of thinking.
This perfectly normal but hugely unhelpful way of thinking arises partly from our quite natural desire to avoid anything painful or uncomfortable. But there’s more to it than that. There are plenty of other uncomfortable experiences that don’t give us the same sense of unease. Why are we so uncomfortable about uncomfortable feelings?
Perhaps we view them as a sign of weakness or think others might see them that way.
Maybe it’s a result of others trying to make us feel better when we were upset as a child. Our parents or others may have made suggestions such as ‘don’t cry’. By trying to make us feel better when we weren’t feeling good, they may have unwittingly given us an impression that it’s not OK to feel whatever we’re feeling.
Another possibility is that the behaviour that sometimes results from a child’s feelings, such as anger or jealousy, may reasonably be viewed by adults as undesirable or unacceptable. But the adult’s communication usually fails to distinguish between the behaviour, which may need to be restrained, and the underlying feelings, which never need be restrained. So the child develops the notion that the feelings themselves are undesirable or unacceptable and unconsciously carries this into adulthood.
It’s worth mentioning that one of the most valuable things any parent can do for their children is to validate their feelings; to make it clear that it’s OK to feel whatever they’re feeling. If you didn’t do this as a parent, don’t worry. How could you have known if no one told you? Your parents probably didn’t know either. In Chapter 5 you’ll be able to let go of any concerns about what you did or didn’t do, within reason, as a parent.
Whatever the explanation of our aversion to uncomfortable feelings, the notion that such feelings aren’t always OK is a particularly unhelpful one.
Our feelings are always OK, for now.
Since we don’t have direct control over our unconscious mind, there’s no point wishing we weren’t feeling whatever we’re feeling. On the contrary, we’ll benefit hugely if we can learn to accept our uncomfortable feelings as long as they’re there.
NOT HARMFUL
It’s worth knowing that feelings are always harmless, however uncomfortable they may seem at the time. Nobody has ever been harmed by a feeling.
We may be harmed by what we do as a result of a feeling. People who are depressed or angry may harm themselves or others. But the feeling itself is harmless.
We may be harmed by the source of a feeling, but the feeling itself is a harmless messaging system. Cold can harm us. But feeling cold is just a message to the brain to let us know there’s a problem. The feeling itself is harmless.
ACCEPTING ‘FOR NOW’
Our aim is still to diminish uncomfortable feelings as soon as we can. So when I talk about accepting them, I don’t mean it’s OK to still be experiencing them five minutes, five hours or five days from now. I’m just talking about accepting them for now, as long as we’re experiencing them.
It’s OK for now to feel annoyed,
nervous, depressed, lonely, anxious
or whatever else we’re feeling.
What is, is and there’s no point wishing
that what is, isn’t.
For most, this is no small change in the way we think. It’s a dramatic change with correspondingly huge benefits.
CASE STUDY
Kiera’s life was dominated by feelings. She’d been in a car accident several months before I met her. She was in constant pain and wasn’t sleeping well and so was perpetually tired.
She’d become anxious following the accident and was experiencing regular panic attacks. Her moods seemed uncontrollable, sometimes becoming irritated with her family for no apparent reason, often spontaneously bursting into tears.
Finally the strain of dealing with all her discomfort and the practical difficulties of life following the accident had led to her becoming depressed.
In therapy we were able to resolve all her feelings using the approaches outlined in this book, except the pain, which she learned to manage until medical and physical interventions could resolve that too.
But we were only able to successfully address her feelings once she’d learned to accept them.
Acceptance of her pain allowed her to sleep better. Acceptance of her anxiety, depression, irritation and tearfulness diminished her anguish about each of those feelings and, as we shall see, allowed her to take the actions necessary to resolve them.
LESS UNHAPPY ABOUT OUR FEELINGS
The first and most obvious benefit of accepting uncomfortable feelings is that, while it may not be pleasant to experience them, the effect on our happiness is immediately diminished if we can accept them as long as we have them.
If we’re feeling low and we can accept that it’s OK to feel that way for now, we’ll be less unhappy than if we were wishing we weren’t feeling low.
If there’s something we can do to diminish the feeling, so much the better. In fact if the feeling persists we need to do something. But until we can take action to resolve the feeling, or if it’s just a short-term feeling anyway, we can accept that there’s nothing wrong with feeling this way for now, even if we may ‘prefer’ that we didn’t.
And, as we shall see, for many uncomfortable feelings acceptance is often the most effective way of diminishing or resolving them.
ACCEPT OR PACCEPT?
I tend to talk about accepting rather than paccepting feelings since we cannot immediately change them and it makes sense to accept the things we cannot change. We could equally use the term ‘paccept’ since the key is to stop wishing we weren’t feeling whatever we’re feeling right now.
OBSERVING OUR FEELINGS
Being human inevitably involves experiencing a whole range of feelings so when we experience uncomfortable feelings we can accept them as simply part of being human.
When we start accepting our
uncomfortable feelings life becomes
a great deal easier.
Accepting them allows us to view them more objectively.
Instead of our thoughts being automatically embroiled in whatever we’re feeling, we can just observe the feeling. We can be aware of it without becoming wrapped up in it. If we think of our feelings as waves on an ocean, we can ride up and down on the waves and notice they’re there without becoming engulfed by them.
To make an analogy, if I have a sore finger and I identify myself totally with my finger and the pain, then it’s ‘I’ that’s in pain and ‘I’ that’s suffering. But if I can look on my ‘self’ as being primarily my thoughts or the part of me that’s doing the observing and thinking, then I can see my ‘self’ separately from my sore finger.
This way I’ll still feel the pain but I can view it in a more detached way. I can view it more objectively and at the deeper level that I identify as my ‘self’ my mental anguish or suffering is diminished. This is a key approach in helping people to manage chronic pain.
In the same way we can look on uncomfortable feelings more objectively and so diminish our suffering. Instead of seeing myself as being depressed, I can see myself as feeling depressed with my ‘self’ observing and accepting the feeling.
FULLY EXPERIENCING THE FEELING
There are two steps involved in accepting uncomfortable feelings. The first is to focus on and fully experience the feeling. To many this may sound strange if we’ve spent much of our lives trying to avoid experiencing uncomfortable feelings. Focusing on a feeling and fully experiencing it stops us trying to avoid it.
The second step is to ask ourselves: ‘What’s so bad about this feeling? Is it so bad that I can’t accept it for now?’ Then accept it, saying to ourselves: ‘It’s OK to have this feeling for now.’
Try this exercise:
Exercise
Next time you’re in the shower turn down the hot water just enough so you start to feel uncomfortable. Examine the feeling you’re experiencing.
Recognise that it’s just cool(ish) water hitting your skin and giving you an uncomfortable sensation. Focus on the feeling and fully experience it.
Ask yourself whether it’s doing you any harm. It isn’t. No one has ever been harmed by a feeling.
Ask yourself whether you can bear the feeling. Providing you haven’t made the water unbearably cold, tell yourself that you can bear it. In fact the only feeling I would say is truly unbearable is extreme pain.
Finally ask yourself: ‘If this feeling isn’t harming me, and I can bear it, what exactly is the problem with having the feeling right now other than the fact that it’s uncomfortable?’ Say to yourself. ‘I can accept this feeling for now even though I might prefer that it doesn’t stay around for too long.’
If you’re reading this on a cold winter’s day you can do the exercise right now by walking outside under-dressed.
If you can accept an externally generated feeling such as cold, then in the same way you can accept internally generated feelings such as anxiety, sadness or feeling low. Just ask yourself the three questions above to guide you to acceptance.
A bonus from this exercise once you master it is that you never need ‘suffer’ from feeling cold again, providing it’s not too extended. You can feel the bite of a cold wind, just observing the feeling and accepting it.
The same applies to any other feeling.
WHAT WE RESIST WILL PERSIST
Some feelings such as fear, depression or anxiety can be perpetuated by our wishing they’d go away. Therefore, accepting these feelings can avoid unnecessarily perpetuating them. If we find ourselves feeling low or depressed and concentrate on how unpleasant it feels, worry about whether it will get worse or just wish we weren’t feeling that way, we’ll probably stay feeling low or depressed for a while.
But if we can accept that it’s OK to feel that way for now and simply observe the feeling and fully experience it, it’s likely to diminish a lot more quickly.
CASE STUDY
Gerry had a successful career, a good relationship, was comfortable with himself and his life, and was hopeful for the future.
He’d started practising pacceptance and through this had resolved some regrets and was now able to deal successfully with any issues that arose during the day.
Yet for some reason he had for a long time been experiencing periodic bouts of mild depression. He was still able to function fairly normally and eventually it would go away … until the next time.
Gerry didn’t know why he periodically felt depressed. There were no obvious events or thought patterns that seemed to trigger it. He was active and getting plenty of exercise, so a behavioural approach aimed at getting him more active wasn’t open to us.
We could have spent a great deal of time delving into his past, his childhood and his unconscious thoughts to try to determine the source of the feeling. But I suggested we first try an acceptance approach.
On my suggestion, when he felt depressed he’d spend some time focusing on the feeling, making sure he was fully experiencing it and not avoiding it. He’d ask himself if the feeling was doing him any harm, which of course it wasn’t, and whether he could bear it, which he certainly could.
Then he’d say to himself, with some conviction: ‘It’s perfectly OK to be experiencing this feeling for now and I completely accept it.’ Gerry recounted later that the feeling seemed to diminish whenever he did this.
He repeated the exercise each day. Each time it seemed to diminish further and he thought it cleared up more quickly than previously.
He also noticed that each time he felt depressed it seemed less significant than before.
After a few times going through this exercise the depression stopped recurring and, as far as I’m aware, has never returned some years later.
Depression doesn’t always respond so easily to a purely acceptance approach. Treatment is normally combined with behavioural change and, in some cases, challenging the thoughts behind the depression. Nevertheless accepting the feeling is generally a key aspect of an effective resolution.
By contrast, as we’ll see:
Some uncomfortable feelings can
immediately diminish and even
completely disappear when we
accept them.
For example, accepting that it’s OK to feel fearful about something can immediately diminish the feeling. If we’re anxious about speaking to an audience and we’re worrying about how anxious we are or wishing we weren’t feeling so anxious, we’ll probably stay feeling anxious. But if we can accept that it’s OK to feel anxious for now and that it’s perfectly natural to feel that way, our anxiety will diminish a lot faster and may immediately disappear.
It doesn’t work if we ‘cheat’. If we accept a feeling in order to make it go away, we’re not really accepting it. We need to be willing for it to remain for now. If it goes away as a result of accepting it (being willing for it to remain) then that’s a bonus.
Anger or irritation can immediately diminish if we focus on it and accept the feeling. If someone cuts in front of you while you’re driving, focusing on the feeling and accepting it should immediately clear up any irritation.
The reasons for this differ depending on the feeling. The most common source of anxiety is being anxious about being anxious, so accepting the feeling will usually diminish it as we’re no longer so anxious about it. If we’re feeling low or depressed we may simply be depressed about being depressed so accepting the feeling will diminish that aspect of our thinking.
When we accept anger or irritation, we’re focusing on our feeling rather than whatever or whoever triggered it, so the negative thoughts that would otherwise reinforce the feeling are diminished.
Exercise
Next time you experience an uncomfortable feeling, focus on it, observe it and fully experience it. Instead of wishing it would go away, tell yourself that it’s perfectly OK to have this feeling for now.
Try increasing the feeling. You won’t succeed, but it will at least stop you trying to diminish it, avoid it or wish it would go away. You may be surprised by the result.
THE BEST WAY OUT IS THROUGH
Some feelings such as grief need time to work themselves through. Understanding that this is a natural process helps us to work through these feelings and at the same time can help to diminish the pain.
We may experience grief as a result of any loss. Losing someone we love through death or because they’ve left us, suffering a disability, losing our job, being robbed or experiencing any other significant loss can generate feelings of grief that just need time to resolve themselves.
Accepting these feelings, however, can help to diminish them and is likely to resolve them much more quickly.
SHARING OUR FEELINGS
Another benefit of accepting our feelings is that it makes it easier for us to communicate them to others. While there’s usually no need to act on feelings such as anger (as we’ll see in the next chapter), it doesn’t do us any good to bottle them up.
Just talking about uncomfortable feelings can help to release the tension that may otherwise build up inside.
ACCEPT THE FEELING, CHOOSE THE ACTION
But by far the biggest benefit of accepting uncomfortable feelings is that it enables us to break the link between our feelings and our actions. It enables us to ‘accept the feeling, choose the action’. This is the subject of the next chapter.
LETTING GO OF FEELINGS
When we’ve practised accepting uncomfortable feelings for a while, we can sometimes let them go. It’s simply a case of deciding that we don’t need the feeling any more and choosing to drop it. It isn’t universally possible and the ability to do so varies between individuals, feelings and circumstances.
In my experience as a therapist, it’s especially hard for people to let go of feelings before they’ve fully accepted them. If they do manage to, it’s more likely they’re suppressing the feeling so it will probably return.
The most important attribute remains being able to accept our uncomfortable feelings and any attempt to let them go shouldn’t be at the expense of accepting them.
CASE STUDY
Godfrey had suffered from anxiety throughout the twenty years of his adult life. He became very anxious at the prospect of having to speak to a group and experienced symptoms such as a racing heart and shortness of breath.
Periodically he’d feel anxious without warning and as he worried where this might lead, the anxiety turned to mild panic (rapid acceleration of symptoms).
He’d always viewed his anxiety as uncontrollable and therefore frightening. The idea of accepting his feelings was new to him but he was persuaded to try it.
The next time he felt anxious he focused on the feeling and told himself it was perfectly OK and harmless. He adopted my suggestion of trying to make it worse, which immediately diminished it.
He quickly lost his fear of feeling anxious. For a while he still felt mildly anxious before speaking to groups, but this feeling had greatly diminished, dissipated quickly and no longer concerned him.
He no longer became anxious when under pressure and no longer experienced spontaneous anxiety or panic.
Then one day as he noticed himself becoming mildly anxious as usual before speaking to a group, he decided he just didn’t need to any more. He chose to let the feeling go. He repeated this several more times, until it eventually stopped returning.
He now never becomes anxious and his confidence and abilities as a speaker have greatly improved.
So accepting uncomfortable feelings offers many benefits. It:
- Immediately reduces any dissatisfaction about whatever we’re feeling
- Diminishes any feelings that may be perpetuated by wishing they’d go away and can make the feeling disappear altogether
- Helps us to work through feelings such as grief
- Makes it easier for us to communicate whatever we’re feeling
- Enables us to break the link between feelings and actions (see Chapter 4)
- Allows us to let go of some uncomfortable feelings
These are significant benefits, making accepting our feelings one of the most valuable applications of accepting what is. In most situations, putting it into practice will have an immediate and dramatic impact on our lives. That’s another promise.
Exercise
Start practising accepting any uncomfortable feelings all the time. Try the shower exercise to get you started.
Every time you have an uncomfortable feeling, focus on it, fully experience it and accept it, saying to yourself: ‘It’s OK to be experiencing this feeling for now.’
Make up your mind that you’re going to accept any uncomfortable feelings from now on. No exception. It’s one of the most powerful psychological tools you can learn and practise.
Action summary
This chapter:
- Whenever you have an uncomfortable feeling, fully experience and accept it
- Try the shower exercise
- If an uncomfortable feeling keeps recurring when you’ve fully accepted it, try letting it go
Prior chapters:
- Paccept what is (our circumstances) at every opportunity
- Stop worrying
- Observe non-pacceptance in others (TV, etc.) and consider how you’d now think and act in their circumstances