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Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse
- atomical 9y agoI have learned some strategies for dealing with emotions from Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns. By controlling your thoughts you ultimately control how you feel.
- sundvor 9y agoThanks for this recommendation. Bought the Audible version (1 credit) for someone I believe could benefit; will see how we go.
- ballade 9y agoPerhaps to a certain degree, but people with imbalanced brain chemistries who are affected by bipolar disorder, personality disorders etc. cannot simply 'think' bad moods away. It's unfortunately more complicated than that.
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- projektir 9y agoI don't see the parent calling it simple. Thought control isn't simple and is part of strategies like CBT which seem fairly effective in treating people with imbalanced brain chemistries, which is going to be all the people who care about this stuff anyway.
- atomical 9y agoThe book addresses your points.
- Swizec 9y agoIt's simple, if you want to fly, just fall and miss the ground. Simple doesn't mean easy. I used to suffer from severe clinical depression and ultimately the only thing that's helped was to learn how to control my thoughts. It still rears its head when I'm tired, hungry, or drunk enough so I don't have the energy to control my thoughts. Hell, sometimes I just relax too much and forget to and it comes rushing back. But on the bright side, the need for constant productive output has really helped both my career and my physique. Pros and cons I guess. Ultimately I find this much more desirable than the antidepressants that just made me numb to everything.
- peepopeep 9y agoBy controlling your thoughts, you control the universe. Mind blown.
- Apocryphon 9y agoIt's bad feels all the way down.
- danschumann 9y agoTherefore.. Feeling good about feeling good, can make you ecstatic. <punExplainer>When you keep feeling good about your previous good thought, the system is stable, hence, 'static'.</punExplainer>
- averagewall 9y agoI wonder if causality is backwards. Perhaps if your negative emotions are really causing problems, you're more likely to actively to to stop them by telling yourself not to feel them.
- spiznnx 9y agoThis was my immediate thought as well. If you don't have problems with your emotions, of course you won't try and tell yourself "I shouldn't feel like this".
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- Gibbon1 9y agoI think the answer (from personal experience) is that overused 90's word; synergy. Step 1: Feel sad, depressed, stressed, lonely. Step 2: Beat yourself up over #1 Step 3: Misery^2.
- pdpi 9y agoIt's both — it's a feedback loop. Here's a typical couple of days when you're dealing with uncontrolled anxiety: You feel like shit, that makes you unproductive and slow and dull. End of the day, you didn't get anything done because you stare at your text editor and your brain just refuses to engage in anything but panicking over... something. You get home, Now you still fill like shit the same as before, but also feel like shit over the fact that you didn't get anything done today and and you need to make up for it tomorrow. But then you don't get any proper sleep and you still have to catch and on lost time and you're in for a pretty bad day, but you shouldn't think like that, why are you wallowing in self pity, just get over yourself and get stuff done. But that doesn't really work, oh shit oh shit oh shit thingsarespiralingoutofcontrolwhatdoIdo? You fall into that trap and now you're proper screwed. Anxiety is causing problems, problems are causing anxiety. The alternative is to learn to cut the second order effect short, which stops the loop. Yes, you had a bad day, and yes, your project is delayed because of it. What's done is done, and you can't fix it, so just accept it. Let people know you're behind schedule, replan if necessary, and move on. In many ways, breaking that cycle is an exercise in allowing yourself self-compassion without indulging in self-pity.
- thinkfurther 9y ago> We found that people who habitually accept their negative emotions experience fewer negative emotions and > those who generally allow such bleak feelings as sadness, disappointment and resentment to run their course reported fewer mood disorder symptoms than those who critique them or push them away, even after six months Yet the comments so far are mostly about "controlling your thoughts", rather than accepting negative emotions (and maybe looking at what they're trying to tell you rather than killing the messengers).
- Barrin92 9y agothis mirrors my experience after going through a bout of anxiety disorder during my time in college. Just a few sessions with a psychologist who suggested 'mindful' behaviour (defined as observing your own emotions and not judging yourself rather than being involved in them) helped a pretty great deal. As most people who have dealt with this probably know, trying to surpress anxiety symptoms does not help at all and mostly makes the attacks worse.
- PeanutCurry 9y agoI think recognizing why we feel a certain way is important but a little different than what the article is discussing at face value. A lot of what the article discussed seemed to describe people feeling added emotional stress because of a reluctance to believe that the negative emotions afflicting them were okay (for lack of a better term). It's like the difference between struggling to swim out of a powerful current versus simply letting it carry you and waiting for the lifeguard because you know you're already caught. Granted, you should probably signal the lifeguard but that breaks the metaphor.
- FooHentai 9y agoHow about the waterfall metaphor - If you get washed over a waterfall (or a wier) you'll stick in the eddies below, your instinct will be to swim up and try to keep your head above water. But, doing this will ensure you keep getting washed back under the waterfall. Instead, a better approach is to swim down, then away downstream. Point is directly fighting against something can keep you trapped by it. Rolling with it and working yourself into a better position without resistance can, eventually, take you away from the problem.
- aphextron 9y agoI've come to accept this with regards to sexist/racist thoughts. Once you realize that it is a normal, ingrained biological urge to have these thoughts as a result of human evolution and cultural conditioning, it frees you to stop "feeling bad" about having those thoughts and trying to block them out, so that you can objectively assess the flawed assumptions behind them and reason yourself past them without the need for self shaming.
- colordrops 9y agoThis is a great insight (at least for me) and has shed light on a problem I've been grappling with for a long time. Thank you.
- minikites 9y agoWhen you hear something new, your first reaction is what you've been taught. Your reaction to that reaction is what you have learned.
- notgood 9y agoLooking at a young woman and the first thing that clicks on my head its asking and answering "is she attractive?" in a matter of milliseconds; its annoying as hell... why can't my first through be something more interesting? or at least why can't it be nothing at all so it doesn't interrupt my thinking? but I have come to realize that this is a more of a hormonal reflex than what we usually consider "a thought"; an annoying reflex which exists in a lot of other species as well, not just humans. I have noticed this reflex only weakens when I'm feeling depressed or other strong negative emotions; which I guess makes a lot of sense in an evolutionary context.
- davidreiss 9y agoWhy is it annoying? Who told you that you need to feel bad?
- tpallarino 9y agoI understand why you're getting downvoted but I think this is a really good point.
- pfista 9y agoThis paradoxical idea of sitting with and being close to the very things that make you suffer is central to Alan Watts' teachings, who westernized Zen Buddhism in a secular way. Robert Wright also talked about this very topic in a recent episode of Fresh Air.
- nyrulez 9y agoThis article is going to make you feel bad about "feeling bad about feeling bad"...don't go there. You've been warned.
- jrs95 9y agoToo late...I don't even know what level I'm in anymore. Hopefully this will stop before I experience a depression stack overflow.
- nyrulez 9y agoWhat we really need is an article on how to increase our emotional stack depth so that this recursive badness doesn't matter at all.
- notgood 9y agoJokes on you, at 2 levels I already overflowed. I would buy more emotional DDR memory for myself but the human body is closed hardware with no extra slots available.
- westmeal 9y agoThere's a slot in the back but it unfortunately isn't backwards compatible.
- lr4444lr 9y agoI was going to make this meta-text joke if no one else had beaten me to it. Bravo, sir. But do you feel bad about giving people that ominous warning?
- nyrulez 9y agoI feel pretty good about it actually...the stack is looking good at the top at least, even if it's shitty all the way down.
- bhnmmhmd 9y ago
- thinbeige 9y agoMaybe this sounds too simple and not academic: The more I am busy (with meaningful work) the less time I have time to feel bad about feeling bad or just thinking about this. This doesn't mean one should escape into random work but that there maight be a slight correlation.
- colordrops 9y agoI've found that when I'm in a better mood I find myself more busy with meaningful work, so the correlation may go the other way.
- thinbeige 9y agoIDK and in my case the cause effect direction is the other way. Imagine you get busy because of external deadlines you cannot influence and you need get things done and don't have time to think a second about anything unrelated. Even if you are in a bad mood and don't want to work you MUST because of the deadlines. Once you are working towards the deadlines, all bad feelings are gone. Not sure how it works the way around, I am happy, now I make myself busy with random taks? Edit: Still thinking about your opinion and now I might agree. If you feel good you might have the willpower to start new meaningful things which make you busy again.
- FooHentai 9y ago>The more I am busy (with meaningful work) the less time I have time to feel bad about feeling bad or just thinking about this. It can help as a distraction but not to fix the long term thought patterns - Anecdotally, I was super busy with meaningful work at university, but I was the most depressed I have ever been. The work offset it for some time, but it took a lot of non-work effort to improve the thought patterns.
- thedevil 9y agoI learned to accept that I feel bad sometimes and it made me happier. But I went farther than that. I also learned to accept that my ideas and behaviors are inconsistent and it helped me better understand the world and myself. And finally, I learned to accept that I sometimes do bad things (and desire to do even more bad things) and it made me a better person. (Disclaimer: my experiments have n=1, no control group and subjective measurements chosen in hindsight.)
- KGIII 9y agoThat touches on a couple of Buddhist thoughts. The human condition is suffering. Suffering comes from desire. Rather than desire your unhappiness to disappear, you've accepted it. Thus, you do not suffer from it. Or so they say.
- megous 9y agoI think the same goes for worrying too much about and trying to assert too much control over one's impulsive behavior. Like trying to eliminate it completely. It may paradoxically bring more of it.
- joe_the_user 9y agoI don't know if this claim is true or false but I'm pretty sure that doing a study on this kind of thing is an extremely fraught enterprise. Edit: more so than even simpler psychology studies, many of which are coming back with problems. How does one determine that someone is really "feeling bad about feeling bad" or whether they're satisfying some expectation of the experimenter or doing something else? And moreover, cause and effect can be slippery, maybe those with more extreme problems tend to be caused to do the thing the experimenter thinks is a mistake rather what they do having an effect.
- throwawaywonk 9y agoWe should probably get rid of all of the social sciences just to be on the safe side then. I mean, really, how can we know anything about anything really?
- lalos 9y agoAlan Watts said it better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emHAoQGoQic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emHAoQGoQic worrying about worrying about worrying
- jasonkostempski 9y agoAre there any existing recordings of Alan Watts that don't contain a distracting background track? If what he has to say is actually useful, there is no need for the cheap trick.
- nicky0 9y agoYes: https://www.alanwatts.org/ https://www.alanwatts.org/ Also (good starter collection): https://www.discogs.com/Alan-Watts-Out-Of-Your-Mind/release/2831541 https://www.discogs.com/Alan-Watts-Out-Of-Your-Mind/release/... (There seems to be a small industry of YouTubers taking snippets of Watts and adding music and images to make short inspiring videos. To be fair, most of them don't do the background music thing.)
- lisper 9y agoSomething I wish my parents had told me when I was growing up: You, the thing listening to this advice, is just a small part of a greater whole, much of which you (the thing listening to this advice) are not consciously aware of. This is because you were built by your genes to be good mainly at one thing: reproducing. That's all your genes care about. They don't care about your happiness or achievements or having a fulfilled life. In fact, they don't even really "care" about reproducing, except the same way that water cares about flowing downhill. Your negative emotions are real. The pain you feel is real. But it's not you. It's something that is being done to you. In that regard it is exactly the same as physical pain, which is also not part of you, but rather something done to you. The fact that you're depressed is no more a character flaw than the fact that it hurts when you skin your knee.
- Zyst 9y agoI actually go the completely opposite way, and I'm the happiest person I know. I own everything, everything that happens to me, everything that goes wrong around me, I take my share of responsibility in it. Analyze what I can do to improve it, and do it. When I think like what you mentioned I tend to lose control of my emotions, I feel angrier, I feel sadder. When I own what happens to me, I feel peace. I know almost everything can be improved. Maybe not short term, but eventually. Coming back to the other side, I think the core of it is that thinking that stuff is happening to me makes me feel like a victim. I don't take responsibility for anything, thus it must be the fault of some external factor. I try to rationalize and assign blame. All in all, it's a much more negative experience for me.
- simplify 9y agoAs usual, the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. There are things you can control, and there are things that you can't. Improve the things you can, and don't feel bad for the things you can't.
- gfodor 9y agoExactly -- I think it's important to continually act in a way consistent with improving outcomes. This doesn't mean you will always get the outcome you want, but much like luck favors the prepared mind, continual, continuous, consistent action towards higher goals does eventually cause results.
- mirimir 9y agoBeen there, done that :( For me, it's been a negative spiral that ends with behavioral paralysis. Over the years, I've managed to train myself to be amused by feeling bad. Because it's so pointless and silly. And so I smile, feel happy, and consider what needs done. Sometimes what needs done is sleeping for 15 hours. But that's very different from refusing to get out of bed.
- ahugebeach 9y agoIs this why some antidepressants work, they can break the cycle ?
- ajkjk 9y agoThat's what being on an SSRI has felt like to me: it seems to dull neurotic 'loops' in my head. It doesn't make them go away entirely but, maybe, (it's hard to explain) it seems like the loop doesn't bother the rest of my brain as much.
- ThrustVectoring 9y agoIt feels like a "duh" thing to me. Emotions are adaptations. They trigger in particular circumstances and they cause particular behaviors. The entire point of having an emotion is to engage in emotionally appropriate behavior until the circumstance has passed. Positive emotions are attractors towards the triggering class of circumstances, while negative emotions are repellers. "Feeling bad about feeling bad" pretty much works out to be something like "naive gradient descent on the function that maps attention onto emotional valence". This doesn't solve the underlying situations that cause you to feel bad - it's like not looking at pictures of your dead wife, rather than grieving, getting support from friends and family, and then moving on with your life.
- pizza 9y agoYou rang? Emotional Valence and the Free-Energy Principle (2013) http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003094 http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jou...
- egypturnash 9y agoI feel like this validates my tendency to deal with a serious Low Mood by turning out the lights, lying on the floor with headphones on, and listening to the saddest, loneliest music in my collection for a while. I'm gonna feel sad whatever I do, and I may as well make some time to give in to really feeling sad and getting it out of the way. When I feel bad I generally do a quick mental checklist: Have I drunk any water lately? Have I eaten? Have I had my pills? Usually the answer to at least one of those is 'no' and I feel better after correcting them. Then since my need for a warm place to sleep is pretty well settled, it jumps up a few notches to checking when the last time I cuddled someone was, how I feel about my current project, etc.
- lamby 9y agoThank you for sharing this.
- madiathomas 9y agoThis article sounds like a long version of Carl Jung's quote -> "what you resists, persists" to me. That's how I deal with pain. I don't try to resist it. I simply allow myself to go through the pain. Cry occasionally if I had to. Feeling bad about feeling bad doesn't make me feel better, it simply delays my healing.
- gaius 9y ago"Men are affected not by things but the view they take of them" -- Epictetus, Stoic philosopher
- teekert 9y agoIf this piece interests you, you should read the "subtle art of not giving a f*ck." Its a nice down to earth book about dealing with negative emotions and high expectations. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28257707-the-subtle-art-of-not-giving-a-f-ck https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28257707-the-subtle-art-...
- vldx 9y agoEh, you can skip that (it's not a bad book) and go directly read the Stoics.
- teekert 9y agoDoes the work of the stoics make you laugh and speed your eyes over their witty pages and puns? I also liked "a guide to the good life" [0], but the Subtle art is a much easier and lighter read. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-Stoic/dp/1522632735 https://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-Stoic/dp/1522...
- vldx 9y agoThanks for your downvote; it substantially aids your argument. As I've said, the book does re-package some millennia old ideas and adds couple of hundreds usages of the f*ck world -- because it's of highest priority to be witty for some, apparently. Hell, CBT essentially does the same -- but it doesn't feels witty as it should be, right? Witty is of utmost importance after all.
- theBobBob 9y agoSomewhat similar to some problems I used to have with sleeping. If I was particularly stressed and had trouble getting to sleep a couple of days in a row. Then I would be stressed, tired because of lack of sleep and now starting to stress about not being able to get to sleep leading me to find it even harder to sleep.
- gadders 9y agoOverthinking is a curse. JFDI.
- rashthedude 9y agoNo shit.
- jnty 9y agoThis effect is at the root of homesickness, I think. In my experience you're never really homesick when you're happy - homesickness only happens when you're sad for some reason and you can't separate it from the place/situation you're in. That reason is only sometimes a direct result of that situation, but your instinctive response is to think "this would be better if I were at home" regardless. Getting over homesickness seems to be about being able to accept the bad thoughts as you would do at home and move on, rather than "feeling bad about feeling bad" in the form of wishing you could just go home. I'm fortunate enough to have never experienced it, but I imagine serious grieving is like this too.
- pvdebbe 9y agoReminds me of Mr Prosser who felt bad about vacating Arthur, then felt good about feeling bad.