Heaping On The Misery

Judging the way you feel is like heaping misery on top of whatever else you got going on. This episode breaks it down in a way to help you release the judgment. 

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Transcript

0:16

Hey my friends. So I wrote about something on social media last week and I want to talk about it a little bit on here because I think it is really important. I had a day where I was just annoyed all day. Like I found everything irritating. The woman who was aggressively clearing her throat for an entire morning. How difficult it was to peel my avocado, the coworker who didn't pay attention and subsequently had no idea what was going on. The stranger who asked me how my day was at the coffee machine, like everything was just annoying. And I noticed that I started to shame myself about this. I was telling myself that I shouldn't be annoyed by these things. And I was like, What is wrong with me today? I was totally judging myself for feeling annoyed. I realized that I was overlaying a moral judgment on being annoyed-- that it wasn't good to be annoyed, and I shouldn't be annoyed and it means something bad about me that I am annoyed. And that is when I caught myself, thank goodness. Because the idea that some emotions are better than others is utter bullshit. One emotion isn't morally superior to any others. I think a lot of people pretend that there is a moral delineation of feelings, but there really isn't. Emotions are just vibrations in our bodies. A chemical gets released in our bloodstream and we experience sensations which we interpret into our emotions. That's it. It's a physiological process. I think where people get tripped up is they conflate the feeling with reacting to the feeling. There's a big difference between feeling a sensation in your body and acting out because of it. Those two things are not the same at all. If someone yells and punches a wall because they're angry, the yelling and punching the wall isn't the anger. That is their actions. Usually taken because they don't have the skill to tolerate the sensations of anger in their body. But you can feel anger all day long without reacting to it. You know this if you've ever been angry and haven't yelled or punched a wall. Those reactions are optional. Not everyone who gets angry will do those things. I can feel annoyed all day long without reacting to that or acting out because of it. The annoyance is nothing more than a sensation in my body. It isn't right or wrong or good or bad. What matters is how we handle our emotions. Can you feel your feelings without reacting? Can you use them constructively in a way that serves? Our emotions can be an incredibly rich source of information for us. They tell us a lot about what is going on in our inner worlds. They inform us when something doesn't sit right with us. They inform us what we like and dislike. We feel what we feel and we have the right to feel any kind of way. But we don't have the right to act any kind of way. And luckily those things are not the same thing. No matter how many people get that confused. I think the people who think that reacting to the feeling and the feeling are the same thing haven't developed very much emotional maturity yet. It's like the toddler who screams in the store because they can't handle the disappointed feeling of not getting what they wanted. And I'm really not trying to insult anyone here. Emotional skills are one of those things that aren't really taught. And if you are not fortunate enough to have emotionally healthy parents, you probably didn't get very much exposure to emotional skill building. And that's okay. But as an adult, it is really important to make sure to start learning emotional skills and to be able to handle feeling the feels without reacting to them. I recommend revisiting episode 96 titled 1000 pound sisters for a how to on feeling emotions in your body in a way that will help you not react to them. Because ultimately, the ability to feel your feelings without reacting to them is a skill that anyone can learn. With some practice, anyone can become really good at noticing their feelings and making informed decisions based on that information without ever taking it out on another person, or lashing out at anyone, or engaging in destructive behaviors that don't serve them. This is one of those skills that drastically improves relationships. There's so much less damage control you have to do when you're not reactive. And life gets easier my friends when you don't judge yourself for the way that you feel. There is a special kind of misery when you heap judgment on top of whatever else you're feeling. And it just isn't necessary. The whole experience becomes easier when it just is what it is and it'll pass. The feelings always pass. I was annoyed all day one day, but the next day I wasn't. The feeling passed. And the experience of it was much lighter when I finally stopped judging myself for it. So that's what I want to leave you with to noodle on this week, my friends. And as always, if this is a skill you would like help in cultivating, the link to book a session with me will be in the show notes. All right, my friends. Until next time, be well.