So often in our lives we try to push back or hide from our negative emotions: anxiety, stress, fear, shame, heartbreak.
It can be painful to feel big emotions, especially negative ones. And sometimes those emotions get overwhelming.We don't want to feel pain or be overwhelmed, yet pushing negative emotions away or bottling them up doesn't keep them away for long. When the negative emotions get too big to keep pushing down, we can hurt ourselves more by ignoring them. The more we hold off on allowing negative emotions to surface, the harder it can be to experience all the good that exists in our lives.
There's a lot of advice out there to focus on positive emotions. Things like joy, peace, and gratitude. The idea being that the more we look for these emotions, the more we'll experience them—and don't we want more of that in our lives? It feels good! Keep a gratitude journal, go out and do some "joy hunting," appreciate all the good you have in your life.
While it can help to focus on the good things in our lives to have a gratitude practice, if we don't face the negative emotions we're experiencing, they will continue to simmer inside us and potentially boil over at some unexpected time. Mine have boiled over a lot lately.
Negative emotions are not a bad thing in and of themselves. They are signposts showing us the things we care about, highlighting stories and beliefs that are holding us back from what can be ours, indicators that something is out of balance.
When referring to negative emotions, I am not talking about real and experienced trauma here. Many of us have had traumatic experiences in our lives that trigger negative emotions - fear, shame, anxiety. Those experiences are best supported by a licensed professional that centers on the type of trauma support that is applicable to each individual's situation.
This year has brought a lot of change with it for both Michelle and me - personally and for Creative Pathways Studio. As I shared last month, we've each made the decision to go back to work. Has anyone reading this looked for a job in the last few years? In the best of times, it's a difficult task…these days, in this job market... it is brutal!
The emotional rollercoaster is wild!
We have both seriously gone from the highest highs - finding a job that matches our experience, offers an exceptional salary, and has an inclusive and creative culture… it's exciting! And of course we get our hopes up. You have to. You have to be excited about a role or opportunity if you want to have a chance of landing it.
To the lowest lows - the stories in our heads: they'll never notice my application, my experience isn't enough, I'm not enough, no one likes me or will ever hire me, I'm a disappointment to my family and to myself. Seriously, it goes on and on. The anxiety ratchets higher when we start adding in my fears and shame about money… having enough, having too much, what it means about me as a person, blah, blah, blah.
The negative feelings, the anxiety, fear, and shame have been overwhelming at times. Picture a bucket filled with the waters of these feelings… add one drop more and it overflows. For me, that's how I feel some days. And life keeps happening - kids leave for college, cars break down, cats need to be fed and played with.
My bucket has overflowed so many times in the past weeks. I've learned that when this happens, it's time to stop and listen for the stories I'm telling myself. I take the stories and the doubts and the questions to my journal and I take them to people I can talk to about them. People I trust to listen and allow me to feel the bad feelings and share how they look at their own negative stories and feelings. People who show me how to love myself even when I'm feeling anxiety, fear, and shame.
I've started calling my negative feelings monsters and trying to personify them, picture them. What does a shame monster look like? An anxiety monster? When I personify them, they become more real, less nebulous and not only is it easier to have a conversation with them, but it's also easier to shrink them to not be so over-powering. Easier to poke holes in the stories I think they're telling. They transform from scary monsters to something more like the monsters in Monsters, Inc. I can more easily see the lessons they are trying to teach me. And it weakens their hold on me, allowing me to then see all the good things in my life.
Cheers to all the good things in your life!