Whenever we experience a negative emotion we can take comfort in knowing that it is simply a part of life. That negative emotion allows us to fully experience the positive emotion and vice versa.

If we were happy all the time, we wouldn’t have the reference point to identify the emotion of happiness. To experience happiness,  you must also have an understanding of sadness.

On it’s face this is not a wild proposition.

But whenever we have a “bad day”, whenever we are feeling less than, this notion goes out the window.

In those moments, most humans look for something outside of themselves to feel better.

Ever reached for a glass of wine (or two) after a “really long day” to “take the edge off” or “wind down”? Ever plow through that whole package of Oreos because you were feeling lonely on a Friday night?

Those actions are intended to bury that negative emotion. It is our attempt to buffer the negative feelings of loneliness or disappointment. We may even be consciously thinking, “A glass of wine will make me feel better,” or “having a piece of cake will cheer me up.”

The problem with buffering is twofold:

once that cake is gone, the feeling will still be there.

Furthermore, this pattern will create only more negative emotion when your clothes fit a bit more snugly or the mirror reminds you that you aren’t happy with your body.

Buffering only leads to more negative emotion. Naturally, we attempt to buffer that emotion and on and on the cycle goes.

We are not taught as children to take ownership of our feelings. We are not taught to experience negative emotions as a part of life.

As children, we are often asked “Did so-and-so hurt your feelings?” “Let’s make you feel better. How about some ice cream…or a new toy?”

It’s completely acceptable in our society to believe that other people “cause” our feelings and that when we feel badly, we need to “fix it” (typically with external things).

It’s no wonder we have an obesity epidemic in this country and offices filled with people who drink too much, shop too much, or indulge in other unhealthy ways.

I support my clients to develop habits of acknowledging and fully allowing negative emotions. Had a “bad day” at the office? How about owning it and recognizing that you feel disappointed and frustrated and just experiencing those emotions?

When your life offers you the “bad” part of the 50/50, just take it and experience it.

Rather than drinking too much wine or eating too much cake and paying for that tomorrow or later on the scale, we work to recognize the yin and yang and life and allow ourselves to experience the darker side of life.

Negative feelings are like your childhood boogey man.

In the dark they seem so threatening and we are paralyzed with fear. We just want them to go away! But when we flip on the light switch we can see that it was just a coat rack and there is nothing to be afraid of.

Similarly, when we run and hide from negative emotions through buffering, they will always seem scary, like something we should avoid and cover up. When we can shine the light on our negative emotions and allow them to pass through us, they quickly fade.

By continuing to allow yourself to experience negative emotions, you no longer have to buffer. The fear of those emotions diminishes.

Imagine what you could do with your life if you were never afraid to experience fear, loneliness, sadness, inadequately, or guilt? How freeing that must be.

Are you buffering negative emotions with food, alcohol, shopping, etc.?

How would your life be different if you were able to eliminate over-drinking, over-eating or over-shopping?

What negative emotion are you covering up? Let’s find out. You might be surprised.

Last month, most of our children were in school. We were at work…in an office…wearing grown-up clothes…with other humans. We didn’t second-guess our toilet paper usage. We planned vacations. We didn’t obsessively track the stock market.

Life has dramatically changed for all of us.

People are scared and feeling lost.

Binging on Netflix

Drinking too much wine

Avoiding work

Ignoring your diet

Skipping workouts

Eating all the ice cream in the house

Any of these sound familiar?

We are struggling. We are gaining weight, we are ignoring our best laid plans, we are skipping workouts, overeating, overdrinking and feeling blah.

Lately, my clients have been coming to me and they want help to stop these behaviors. They want to work on getting focused and motivated. They are pissed at themselves for “falling apart…falling off the wagon…letting themselves go” they are irritated that they aren’t sticking to their plans, that they are unwinding everything they had been working for, why can’t they get it together, GDI!?

As a coach, my job is not to help you learn how to control yourself. My job is to help you understand yourself.

When you are busy beating yourself up and trying to force yourself or guilt yourself to change or stop eating all the things, you are ignoring the dis-ease. You are focusing on the symptom.

In order to truly stop these behaviors, you have to stop berating yourself and look at what is really going on!

Are you avoiding work because you are afraid you are going to lose your job so your work today won’t matter?

Are you drinking that bottle of wine because it feels good and you’re scared about what will happen to your aging parents?

Maybe you are skipping your workouts because you just don’t care how you will look in a bathing suit during quarantine? It’s not like you will be going on vacation anytime soon!!

Are you binging on Netflix because it allows you to escape the news and ignore what’s going on outside?

Would you yell at your best friend for diving into a box of Oreos after a horrible breakup? Of course not! You would empathize with her. You would love her. You would understand why she was feeling terrible. You would be compassionate about her efforts to self-soothe. The last thing you would do is tell her she needs to stop it immediately and explain to her how she was ruining her diet and needs to get it together.

Extend that same compassion to yourself.

Life is getting real right now and it’s kinda scary.

Instead of getting angry at yourself because you are not acting like you are “supposed to”, explore what is really going on. What are you thinking when you turn off the work computer and zone out on Netflix? What is going through your head when you decide to bake that cake?–for yourself, of course.

We are all experiencing some pretty ugly thoughts these days.

What if my parents get sick and I can’t be there with them?

What if we have to quarantine for several more months?

What if we run out of diapers?

What if I get sick?

What if I die?

What if I lose my job?

You have every right to be afraid and upset and worried. Stop beating yourself up for trying to feel better. Stop being such a harsh critic.

It’s okay to be scared and it’s okay to worry about what our future holds. It’s okay that you are grasping at straws to self-soothe. That is human nature.

Life is meant to be 50/50. We are living in the 50% that sucks. Pure and simple. Stop trying to talk yourself out of feeling those rotten feelings. You are a human. That is part of the deal.

Recognize that you are struggling and have some compassion for yourself.

Once you can see how your actions are merely attempts to make yourself feel better and to buffer the discomfort, you can start considering how to shift out of those thoughts and create a new result for yourself.

You can start recognizing when you are feeling freaked out and seeing how your biological reaction is to seek pleasure and soothe yourself. Once you see that, you can start looking for other outlets for those emotions. You can’t do that when you are busy telling yourself you are a terrible person for eating all the Doritos!

The bottom line is that beating yourself up for acting out during times of grief and panic is counter-productive. Have some compassion for yourself. Just as you would do with your friend: let yourself have a good cry, a good ice cream binge, a night on the couch. Recognize the feelings driving those actions, then gently work with yourself to find a healthier outlet for those emotions.

The goal is not to find a solution to erase those feelings. The goal is to recognize that those feelings are PART OF LIFE. They are okay. And it is okay to experience them. They won’t kill you.

You can keep moving forward while feeling all the feels. That is how life works.

See the emotions fueling your destructive behaviors. Acknowledge them. Experience them. Learn to make better choices, despite the feels. Carry those worries with you but keep. moving. forward. consciously.

Now more than ever, people need support. If you need additional support, schedule a free session, I would love to help you move through this chaos.

Lately, I have been finding myself barking back and asking “Why?”

Why do we often reach for a glass of wine or another piece of cake when we are feeling stressed or had a bad day? Why is it so ingrained in our culture that having a glass of wine at the end of the day is how to best find relief from the day’s stress? 

On the one hand, there are certainly some cultural pressures that have conditioned us to believe that this behavior is acceptable, even normal. But have you ever asked yourself why you pour a glass of wine at the end of a stressful day? I did. Here’s what I discovered.

Years ago, when I was again working in a not-so healthy environment, I found myself in the habit of pouring a glass of wine every night after work. Why? I asked myself.  Because it’s been a really long day and I’m tired. Because today was really stressful. Because I deserve it. I worked really hard today. But why? I kept asking because none of these answers really resonated with me.

The more I thought about it and dug into it, I realized that I was coming home at the end of the day utterly spent. Completely exhausted. Feeling a bit depressed. My job was hectic and stressful and at the end of every day I just felt completely out of gas. When I would get home, a new overwhelm would bring up all the things I needed to do at home but didn’t seem to have the energy for. It created a heavy, depressive feeling…like the stressors in my life were never ending.

Like I would simply ride this frantic treadmill until I died of old age or imploded.

So, I would pour a glass of wine. I would pour a glass of wine and sit down and relax and let the booze wash away all those stressors. The dopamine in my brain would skyrocket and I would find some peace and happiness. Finally.

We all do this. Whether it’s with food or alcohol, sex, drugs, shopping, Starbuck’s coffee, WHATEVER. Rather than sitting with our discomfort or accepting the fact that life is 50/50, that sometimes it just sucks, we look to artificial sources to boost those “feel good” hormones.

For me, it was a glass of wine. That glass of wine provided me with an artificial happiness that would vanish the next day. That glass of wine kept me from sitting with my discomfort, accepting the struggle and learning how to take care of myself in a way that didn’t create a deficit the next day. While I wasn’t drinking entire bottles of wine at night, that one glass created a deficit. It delayed the inevitable meltdown that would happen when I couldn’t keep it all together. It’s the equivalent to kicking the emotional can down the road…eventually that can hits an emotional landmine.

Avoiding and buffering negative emotions or discomfort only heightens those feelings. They will come screaming back.

You are avoiding your life and seeking “fake” feelings created by external sources. That is no way to live.

The holidays seem to make this phenomenon even worse. As if our lives aren’t stressful enough, we pile on awkward family dynamics and travel obligations as well. So many of my clients eat because they are uncomfortable around their family. Their families bring up all sorts of old resentments, grudges, and unspoken words and their brains swirl with all sorts of nasty thoughts and cruel self-talk. Eventually, most of us end up face diving into the carrot cake because we want that rush of endorphins, that temporary high to alleviate all our feelings of discomfort.

What would it be like to just sit with those feelings?

What would it be like to just monitor those feelings your body? To become aware of those thoughts that make you so uncomfortable so that maybe you can start to work on those thoughts? After all, feelings are just a vibration in your body. What’s so scary about that?

If we can’t learn to allow and process emotions, we will never learn to stop indulging in those urges and using external things (food, alcohol, etc.) to make us feel better.

This holiday season, I am challenging all my clients to sit with the negative thoughts and emotions that bubble up for them. Observe them. Recognize that life is not supposed to be sunshine and rainbows all the time. Maybe today was a bad day and you are feeling sad. Why is that so terrible? Sadness provides a basis to later experience happiness.

Instead of running from those feelings, I challenge you to do a brain download every time you start feeling negatively. Figure out what thoughts are causing you to feel that way. Are those thoughts factual? Why are you choosing those thoughts? Is that negative feeling really that terrible?

Trust me, if you can learn to experience and sit with negative emotions and stop being afraid of them—fear, anger, jealously, sadness—nothing will ever be scary ever again. Think of what you could accomplish and who you could be.

Coach with me and I will show you how.

Get. Uncomfortable.