The Pursuit Of Happiness:
“How do I make this feeling stop” “I want these thoughts to go away” “My goal is just to feel happy!”
When painful emotions come up for us they can cause us so much disruption to our lives that all we want is to get rid of them. We buy into the idea that being happy is the default way to be, and that painful emotions equals deviating from ‘normal’ and psychologically ‘healthy’.
What happens when getting rid of unwanted feelings becomes our agenda?
We become preoccupied with the emotion
We avoid situations, activities, and people that bring about the uncomfortable emotion
We keep ourselves distracted to ‘block’ it out
We worry or get frustrated over experiencing the emotion, tune into it constantly, and ask ourselves why it’s still there
Attempting to get rid of uncomfortable feelings is effortful, draining, and possibly temporarily relieving, yet at a personal cost without amounting to much of a long-term resolution. It can send us into this spiral of trying to push it away whilst also therefore giving it more attention. The more we try to grapple with and suppress the feelings that we don’t want to endure, the more all-encompassing they ultimately become. It’s like trying to sink a beach ball.
The truth is: pain, grief, anxiety, self-doubt, and all the others will always be our visitors, and are a natural and inevitable part of the human experience.
Our job is to notice these visitors and to be the decider of how to greet them. Do they serve a purpose and have something worthwhile to tell us? Sometimes we do listen to their advice and take a much-needed break. And sometimes we tell them: “thanks, I notice you, but I don’t need you at the moment” “I hear you, but I’ve got this and i’m going to continue on now”
Acknowledging, accepting, and then choosing to persist with actions that are important to us is a more realistic and empowering response than to struggle against a hard feeling. And so, while we can’t control the inevitability of feeling the full spectrum of our emotions, accepting each of them as they occur and still living a meaningful, in-the-present, values-driven life despite them hovering around, limits their control on us.
Inspired by this little guy, and my key takeaways from professional development on Acceptance and Commitment by Russ Harris, author of The Happiness Trap and teacher of ‘values driven action’
By FSS Psychologist Roselyn Yeh