by Aileen Journey

It’s an honest truth, people want to feel good. They want to feel good always and want to avoid feeling bad at almost all costs.  The problem is that people don’t always know what will help them feel good and avoid feeling bad.  The other problem is that there are long-term and short-term solutions. Alcohol may make a person feel good for a few hours, but generally it won’t solve any long-term problems.    The somewhat ironic answer to helping someone feel good more often is to let themselves feel bad whenever necessary.

What? Feel bad? That seems insane. How can feeling bad help make you feel better?  Well, for one thing, if you accept that feeling bad is okay and you don’t just try to find some short-term relief, you’ll have more chance of being able to stay focused enough and learn enough about what’s bothering you to find a long-term answer.

For example, I was feeling lousy every day. I was tired and sad and irritable.  I didn’t want to just take caffeine or sleep a the time, those were short-term solutions. I wanted to feel better long-term. I wanted to find out what my core problem was.  I let myself feel bad.  I also created hypotheses of what the problem was and tested it . I went to doctors and had myself checked for everything we could think of.  When all the test came back negative, I went on to talking to anyone about what I felt and got their  ideas about what it might be. This went on for months.  I started tracking my different symptoms. That meant that I had to let myself feel them.  It sucked. I have to be honest. I was miserable and working was incredibly difficult.  I felt that it was important, though, to finding the root cause and not just letting myself feel lousy day and night.

I finally found a combination of interventions that let me feel comfortable most of the time.  The issue, though, is that I let myself feel miserable. Sometimes I just have a strange, down mood or feel unmotivated even though I’m not tired.  Instead of ignoring it or trying to eat my way through it, I let the feelings exist in me.  I try to sit quietly and let the feelings bubble up to the top of me and even take over my whole body.

The way I see it, it’s like the negative feelings want a voice. They feel shut out and angry if you don’t listen to them. If you try to drown them out with food or drugs or sex or even activity they feel hurt and abandon and angry. They start to yell louder, making you feel worse and worse.  If you continue to ignore them they start to act like angry and hurt teenagers, they start to lash out at you.  Perhaps instead of feeling  a little lousy, you’ll start getting physical symptoms, headaches, insomnia, etc.  If you sit and listen to the miserable feelings, it’s like giving them a voice. They’re part of you and they just want ta say.  When you really sit and listen without judging then these hurt feelings and discomfort can find a way to communicate their pain to you.

Sometimes I recruit my dreams to help me understand what’s going on in me. I try to remember my dreams and write them down. There’s  a web site called dreammoods.com that I look at to help me figure out what the symbols in my dreams might mean. Sometimes it helps, sometimes not so much.

You don’t necessarily have to figure everything out consciously to help reduce the pain, you just have to truly listen to your own pain and discomfort.