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

I recently had a mini-session with an attorney who wanted to work through her over-eating tendencies. As part of the process we examined the circumstances that led to her overeating. Most days when she comes home, she changes clothes, cooks dinner, does the dishes, and picks up around the house. Finally around 8:30pm she sits down on her couch and turns on her favorite Bravo show from her DVR with a handful of cookies. At that point in the day, her predominant thought is That was a long day. I’m so ready to relax.

Habits are based upon patterns in our lives. We have certain cues that set us up for the pattern.

Over-eating is pattern that is predominantly driven by environmental patterns (e.g., sitting down alone at the end of the day and watching television) and thought patterns (Today was a rough day, I just want to relax).

Once you identify the pattern and the cues, you can get to work developing alternative habits and patterns. But before we can do that, we must determine why the pattern exists:

What “reward” are those cookies offering you.?

Sugary foods and alcohol provide our brains with a quick dopamine hit. When we engage in our pattern–sitting on the couch, turning on the tv–our brain gets excited because it knows a hit is coming. It is craving the hit not only because of our pattern but because the hit offers a reward.

The reward is dopamine. At these times during our days, my clients are feeling tired and worn out. Secretly, they are often a little sad. They are swimming in thoughts like I wish I had more time to do the things I enjoy or I really don’t want to go back to work tomorrow. Those thoughts feel terrible. Why feel terrible when we can bury that gross feeling with a rush of dopamine?

Now we add the thought, I’m worn out, it’s been a long day, I deserve a break and we create a recipe (a pattern) for disaster.

Rather than experience the emotions that come at the end of a long day when there is nothing left to do, we push away from it and bury it with a flood of dopamine from a sugary treat or alcohol.

Why do we do that? What is so terrible about experiencing the fatigue and those feelings at the end of the day?

When we avoid our emotions in this way and bury them with the rush we get from external things, we are trading our long-term happiness for momentary relief.

Ultimately, my client wanted to stop over-eating and she wanted to lose weight. That was going to require her to change this habit of buffering negative emotions.

At the end of a long and stressful day, we often experience a wide array of emotions. Some of us experience a bit of sadness or dread as we realize This is my life. This is how every day is going to be for the next 30 years. How can I maintain this pace forever? I don’t want to do this anymore.

Those thoughts feel terrible and they are posing some important questions that bear examination. That examination will never come if we spend our nights avoiding a true examination of our lives. In order to build a better and happier life for ourselves, we must be willing to examine those negative thoughts and to do so we must be willing to examine those negative emotions.

At the end of a “long day” what if we just experienced whatever came up?

What if we were willing to examine those feelings and accept them as part of the 50-50? Instead of burying them with a dopamine rush, we just sat with them and let them pass through our bodies?

Part of they reason my client was over-eating was because she was trying to cover up some negative emotions. First, we identified what those emotions were and what thoughts were causing them. Then we developed strategies to just accept those emotions as a part of life and perfectly normal. From there, she no longer needed to buffer because there was nothing to fix. Nothing had gone wrong.

She was just a human, having a human experience.

When you open up to the awareness that our lives are 50-50 and that negative emotion does not need to be “fixed” or covered up, you can start to shift away from your over-eating habits. You can develop new habits that accept what you are feeling.

The next time you find yourself saying I’ve had a long day, ask yourself

So what?

What kind of a “pass” are you giving yourself because you are feeling something negative? How are those choices impacting your life?

Ready to start some new habits? Get started today.

Photo by Adrienn from Pexels