One of the drawbacks of living in a society where everyone is so interconnected and everyone’s lives are constantly on display, is that it blurs the lines of reality.

If a Martian were to observe our society solely through the lens of Instagram or Facebook, they would believe that all humans are incredibly beautiful, happy, and blessed. They would believe that on our planet, we have wide variety of products that we can buy to solve all of our problems: products that will make our bodies beautiful and thin, our bank accounts fat, and our love life abundant.

Not only do these outlets influence our beliefs about ourselves but they perpetuate the belief that we should be happy all the time. If we are not happy all the time, we are out of the norm. Think about it — anytime we see someone who is visibly sad, our question to them is invariably:

What’s WRONG?

As if being unhappy in any moment means that something is wrong with you. Something must be fixed. In fact, you can probably throw some money at that unhappiness and “fix” it.

When we buy into the notion that we are supposed to be happy all the time, we freak out anytime we are not happy. We don’t know what to do with those emotions so we avoid them, we resist them, or we react to them. We get into a mad scramble to get rid of them ASAP.

For some people, negative emotions means that someone has done something to them. Someone else is to blame. They lash out with anger and defensiveness which seem much more productive and valid than feeling guilt or shame. Instead of recognizing their role in anything and feeling shame, they reject that emotion. They reject the idea that they are faulty and lash out at those around them. They react to the negative emotions in a way that creates more negative ripples in their life.

They REACT to and RESIST negative emotion and in turn just amplify their problems.

Others spend most of their time avoiding the negative emotions. They reach for anything they can to self soothe and dull the emotion. Bad day at work? Feeling like a failure? Go for that extra glass of wine and a piece of chocolate cake. You deserve it. You’ve had a bad day.

They AVOID negative emotions and bury them in substances or actions that generate dopamine. This eventually creates more problems (excess weight, overdrinking, overspending etc.)

We’ve all been guilty of an impulse splurge.

But what is really at work is our desire to NOT feel those negative emotions of shame, self-doubt, or fear.

Instead of experiencing them, we bury them in dopamine hits from sugar, alcohol, shopping, sex, whatever. Or we throw the negative back at those around us — they are the problem, not us.

This approach only works for brief periods of time. Like a boomerang or a beachball held under water, eventually both will gain force and resurface even stronger.

Once we are done with our little excursion of avoidance, those emotions are right there waiting for us.

Only now they are stronger because we have over-consumed, gained weight, feel hungover, made poor decisions, etc. and we have to face those consequences ON TOP of the negative emotions we were trying to avoid.

Around and around we go ultimately only increasing our negative experience through out acts of avoidance, resistance and reaction.

I recently had a free mini-session with a client who believed she was “fine”. No problems, no negative emotions to deal with. Every time we identified a negative thought and tried to discuss the associated emotion, she would immediately shift and offer the other pretty thoughts she was thinking instead. She immediately shifted to positivity any time a negative emotion came up:

I’m not always thinking I’m a horrible person and a failure, it just pops into my mind sometimes. I really think I’m a pretty good person.

Then, two weeks after our first session she had a complete burnt out meltdown. She fell into a black hole and eventually had to take time off work to regroup.

She had spent so much of her energy ignoring all her nagging, self-judging thoughts and suppressing the associated emotions, that eventually it blew up in her face.

It is not sustainable to paint over the ugly parts of our feelings and just pretend like they are not there. 

Now my work with her focuses on examining those negative emotions and thoughts and truly processing them rather than resisting them.

The point is that our lives are supposed to be an equal balance of positive and negative. Good emotions and bad emotions.

We know we are happy because we have experienced the emotion of sad. We know we are excited because we understand how it feels to dread something.

If we don’t open ourselves up to experiencing the negative, we can’t ever truly understand and appreciate the positive.

When we convince ourselves that we are supposed to be happy 100% of the time, we set ourselves up for failure. We set ourselves up to avoid, react to, or resist our negative emotions to “fix” them. In the end, all of those approaches only serve to make us more miserable! None of them resolve anything. They simply magnify the misery in the long run.

What I offer as a solution is to simply co-exist with negative emotions and understand that they are a part of the human experience.

Be open to experiencing all that is available to us in this life — the good and the bad.

If we can stop freaking out every time we have a negative emotion and we can simply experience it, it will diminish in power and eventually will pass. We can adjust our thinking to stop spinning in toxic thoughts.

Fully experiencing the bad days is so much more productive and easier than patching up the relationships we destroy when we react with blame and anger or losing the 15 pounds we gain when we avoid emotions through food or other outlets.

Recognize how you are handing your negative emotions and ask yourself: What is the worst that could happen if I just experienced this disappointment right now?

After all, it’s just a vibration in your body.

Whenever you catch yourself reaching for the chocolate cake or buying needlessly on Amazon, examine your predominant thought and emotion. Are you trying to make yourself “feel better”? How is that working out for your waistline and your bank account? What is you just experienced the emotion and journal about it instead of eating or shopping?

I spend a significant amount of my time supporting my clients to process their negative emotions and examine the impact their choices to resist/react/avoid are having on their lives and I challenge you to do the same.

The process isn’t hard, it’s what you discover once you start doing the work that might surprise you.

Photo by Austin Guevara from Pexels

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.