Habitual negative emotions can feel like old friends.
Negative emotions are like those old friends who show up uninvited. You know them well, even if you'd rather they didn't hang around. They pop up at the worst times, sometimes stick around for ages, and other times disappear as quickly as they arrived. Just when you think you've moved on, they come knocking again. When you’ve spent most of your life stuck in negative emotions, positive emotions can feel like a threat to your status quo. This gets even trickier if you live in a culture that thrives on negativity. The people around you might not know how to handle you when you’re not down in the dumps—when you’re not complaining, blaming, or feeling powerless. In a world that leans towards negativity, stepping out of that cycle can feel like stepping into the unknown, and that's scary as hell. But sometimes, the old friends you need to let go of are those habitual negative emotions holding you back. People sometimes feel that negative emotions signal depth and authenticity. This is especially true for those who grew up in cultures that worship positivity and shun negative emotions. In these environments, some individuals end up as “scapegoats,” carrying the weight of the negative emotions everyone else is trying to avoid. You start to believe—and often correctly—that everyone else feels the same negativity you do, but they're just faking it, pretending not to have any difficult emotions. People in this scenario can become deeply skeptical of positive emotions, seeing them as inherently fake and superficial. They might even feel like they’re betraying themselves or some ideal if they begin to embrace positive feelings. The result is a distrust of positivity altogether, making it hard to break out of the cycle of negativity. Negative emotions are not “bad.” Negative emotions can feel like old friends because, even though they suck, they remind us we’re human and life is complicated. Just like old friends, they teach us valuable lessons and offer insights into ourselves and our experiences. Both positive and negative emotions are messengers. It’s not about whether the emotion is positive or negative; it’s about the message it brings. The real issue starts when we label emotions as either good or bad and then cling to one type over the other. Just like outgrowing toxic friendships, we need to recognize when our attachment to certain emotions isn’t helping us anymore. It’s crucial to manage or let go of them in healthy ways, so we can live a more balanced life. Positive emotion can feel threatening for many reasons.
In many ways we can take this entire article and flip positive for negative. I discuss our cultural tendency to engage in emotional fixing and its consequences in the article PARTS DRAMA: EMOTIONAL PAIN AND THE URGENCY TO GET PAST IT. If you ever get the chance to embrace your full emotional range without dodging entire categories of feelings, you’ll realize that “positive” and “negative” emotions don’t really exist. Emotions are just messengers. Anger and sadness can actually feel satisfying if they align with your current situation and help you take the best course of action. When this happens, there’s a sense of reward. We stop labeling emotions as positive or negative and start judging based on how aligned we feel. Being in alignment feels strong and solid, even with so-called negative emotions. Being out of alignment feels off, even with positive emotions. And being out of alignment isn’t “bad.” It’s just more information for us. There’s a lot to learn from being out of alignment and finding our way back. Escaping the “good feeling/bad feeling” trap leads to emotional freedom. We can experience emotions as “just sensations in the body” that we don’t have to act on immediately but can use as guidance. Emotions don’t have to be overwhelming or take control when we learn to let them come and go without resistance. Once you master this emotional dance, you can handle resistance when it arises, knowing exactly what actions to take to clear that resistance and flow into right action.
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AuthorProsopon Therapy Archives
July 2024
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