How Feeling Good Can Feel So Wrong
Silver Falls, OR
When the Going Gets Good, Self Care Gets Optional
Why do we feel shame in bringing our accomplishments and good feelings to light? Your higher frequency feelings deserve consideration in therapy, too, you know. Oftentimes we grew up not being acknowledged enough, or at all, for our personal development, so we feel guilty for taking stock of our joy, as if celebration is superfluous, but sorrow allows for examination and improvement. We were taught that nobody likes a bragger and that we should be stoic and selfless about our accomplishments, but everyone needs a witness because we are social animals.
When Others Have it So Bad
It’s hard to mark our triumphs and we can even feel guilty for them when those around us are in pain. But maybe we have to celebrate the good, to balance out all of the suffering, and if that inspires envy, then so be it. Envy is on the person who has it, and we are only responsible for our own emotions. People will always be dying and being born at the exact same time. One doesn’t cancel out the other.
Maybe We Like Our Pain
It may sound counterintuitive, but we may irrationally fear that our pain might go away forever if we look at the good side of living. It’s like that familiar soreness of a splinter or a blemish or a sore muscle that you feel drawn to finger and press on, to remind yourself of the pain of being alive, pushing on that old memory of working on a baby tooth before it could be pulled. All feelings mean that we are alive and they will be with us our whole lives.
Therapy Buzzkill
Or what if we take a look at that sweet-sweet good side of living, and pain creeps back up and spoils our joy because our lover or friend or therapist just loves to explore the crack in the facade of something that sounds too good to be true? We just want to ride our high for a while! We are reminded that living is all things, good and bad, all of the time. Integration is the key for healthy living: holding all of our feelings at once, being able to tolerate feelings shifting, and the hope of therapy is that doing this in the presence of another helps to heal those past times that only allowed for one feeling at a time.
Your Art Will Evolve
There is a common misconception that self acceptance might render obsolete the need for creativity and spoil our art or our need to make it, but the exact opposite is true. Sitting with yourself, allowing your suffering and accepting all of the parts of you at once opens you up to be even more courageous, to use your suffering as a source of inspiration and expands your wellspring of art to include all of you. It’s in sharing the specificity of one’s experience that renders the universal and creates highest art.
Fear and Loathing Will Come and Go
Even if you feel good now, your world will crash down around you again. Try not to fear pain of any kind, just know that it will come again, and have the faith in yourself that you will be strong enough to sit with it. Every human is equipped and capable of tolerating and adapting to whatever happens.
Whatever You Do, Don’t Sweep Your Feelings Under the Rug
Emotion will ripple through you and keep going if you only allow it. If you don’t acknowledge and accept an uncomfortable emotion, it will stick around and make you miserable even as you try to fight it. If you push a feeling down and sweep it under the rug, you will keep tripping over the hump of denial, which will eventually grow into something too big to ignore.
