I did a recent exercise in a meditation group – I went around the room and asked people if there were positive and negative feelings. Everyone agreed there are positive and negative feelings. After all, many of us have great difficulty accepting the so-called negative feelings – anger, sadness, grief – especially anger. We prefer “positive feelings” joy, happiness, enthusiasm.
But what if it turns out there are no positive or negative feelings. I prefer to think of feelings as pleasant or unpleasant; comfortable or uncomfortable; easy or hard.
The more we can accept our feelings the easier it becomes to accept ourselves. And self-acceptance is the key to healing our wounds and feeling good about ourselves and our lives.
It's also true that the more we reject or deny our difficult feelings, the longer it takes to heal the wounds behind them, and it becomes harder to feel good about ourselves. If we simply suppress difficult feelings, they’re likely to emerge as acting out behaviors that don't work for us and that we may not understand.
Our experience is in two parts – what happens and what we tell ourselves about what happens. We don’t have much control over what happens. But we have myriad choices how we describe our experiences to ourselves.
What we tell ourselves about our feelings plays a major role in how we feel about ourselves. There are two common misconceptions that tend to needlessly prolong suffering when we harshly judge our feelings and therefore ourselves.
The most common is the idea that we shouldn’t have certain feelings. This most often shows up when people feel anger. But it also applies to other uncomfortable feelings.
The other popular misconception is the idea that if we are experiencing difficult feelings, then something is wrong, we’re not okay or we’re doing something wrong.
Both these ideas are simply not helpful. They make our lives more difficult and prolong our suffering.
You can know you’re okay even if you don’t feel okay. Difficult feelings are not an indication that you’re not okay or that you’re doing something wrong.
I knew a man whose wife died after many years of marriage. For some time, his friends and family were supportive and attentive. But eventually they began to drift back to their regular lives. They became less available to hear his grief. Yet, he still grieved. Over time he began to internalize the subtle and not so subtle messages he was getting that he should be over it by now – that his sadness, anger, frustration - his “negative feelings” – were inappropriate. It was time to “move on.”
The more he internalized those thoughts, the harder it became to feel good about himself and be gentle with his grief. It became harder for him to recover from his loss, because of this nagging that he wasn’t doing “it” right.
Feelings come and go in their own time. They’re like clouds – wispy at the edges, dense in the middle and wispy again as they pass away. And they always pass. Indeed, all things are impermanent, especially feelings and states of mind. Difficult feelings become more difficult when we resist them. The more we resist our grief or sadness, the longer they stay and the more intense they get.
All feelings are legitimate, including anger. Anger is a legitimate response to loss. Anger has a bad reputation for the wrong reasons. People equate anger with doing angry things. But the art of anger is to feel so angry you can lash out, yet you retain your ability to make good choices and refrain from harming yourself or anybody else.
Feelings are not a call to action. We may feel like we want to act on our feelings. But we can still choose whether to do so.
Feelings are not good or bad. They’re just comfortable or uncomfortable. Anger, sadness, frustration are all a legitimate response to difficult or traumatic experiences.
We may suffer because of those experiences. But we only increase our suffering when we tell ourselves that our feelings are inappropriate, or they make us wrong, or having certain feelings means we’re bad people.
Once I had an opportunity to see The Dalai Lama speak. During a question-and-answer session someone asked him about anger and frustration. He simply said, “I experience those things,” like it was nothing. And that was it. He didn’t resist them or judge himself harshly because of them.
As for my friend, his healing began to accelerate when he was able to put aside the negative thoughts and harsh judgments he had attached to his feelings. The more he was able to accept his feelings, the more comfortable he became with himself, and the more he was able to devote his energy to healing from his loss.
Possibly the best wisdom I ever heard about feelings came a Zen teacher I once saw. Someone asked him, “What do I do with all these feelings?”
And he answered: “Welcome them, Be kind to them, Treat them as honored guests. And eventually they will leave.”
Be kind to them. In other words, difficult feelings offer an important opportunity to treat yourself with kindness and gentleness, an opportunity for self-compassion. You deserve nothing less.