Good Thoughts on Feeling Bad: What If We Stop Chasing Happiness?
After last August left me puddled on the proverbial floor in a pile of burnout topped by a mild depression, I tried to be proactive about this August.
By expecting it to be hard and planning ahead, I thought I could ameliorate the stress and general awfulness of the month (oppressive heat trapping us all indoors and leading to the southern version of SAD, the emotional turmoil of all five of us going back to school, the extra events and social demands of the new school year, etc.). My idealist self really hoped I might, by anticipating and adjusting for the impending difficulty of the month, be able to make this year's August feel, if not delightful, at least manageable.
As you can probably guess, that didn’t happen.
I could blame it on the things I could neither control nor predict, like the nasty ear infection my 3yo endured, interrupting our sleep for a solid week, or the hurricane that took out our power for two days at the end of the month and made August last into September by pushing open house and various other events to the next week. But I haven’t been able to shake the sense that I failed, that I am at least partially to blame for this malaise.
It’s been rough. I’ve been struggling emotionally. Again. (Cue the litany of derisive self-talk.) And when I’m feeling low, creative inspiration is not easy to come by, especially since my inner critic is pretty convinced that no one wants to hear about me feeling bad AGAIN. So then I get to also feel bad about not posting/sharing anything like I know I should be doing for my business. Which makes me wonder if maybe I’m not really cut out for my lofty ambitions. And so the cycle goes.
Underlying this unhelpful pattern is the fact that I feel like I should have been able to avoid feeling bad these last six weeks (and in general) and, therefore, that it’s my fault that I haven’t felt great—that it’s a sign I’m either fundamentally flawed or doing something wrong.
But what if I’m not?
What if this is exactly how I should be feeling given the life circumstances of the recent weeks?
What if feeling bad sometimes is just part of the human experience rather than something to avoid, fix, or berate oneself about?
As an Enneagram 4, I’m pretty adept at embracing negative emotions (rather than denying, distracting, or quick-fixing). But I am realizing that I’ve nevertheless picked up the habit of feeling guilty or disappointed in myself for having those bad feelings—seeing them as a sign that either I’m doing something wrong with my life or, worse, I’m somehow broken and unable to “feel good most of the time like everybody else does” (which is something I know on one level is complete BS but also somehow feel deep down is true). It’s like there’s a magical happy spell out there that I don’t have, and if I could just figure it out, I’d be cured of my melancholy nature. This too (thinking we’re missing something that everyone else has) is typical of a 4.
At the same time, I’m very aware that, as a society we fixate on “happy” as “normal” and “healthy” to our detriment. Like the film Inside Out reveals, sadness (in all its forms) is an essential part of the human experience, without which we cannot function well. (If you haven’t seen the film, do it! We watched it again recently with our young daughters, and it’s probably our favorite family movie ever—so many stimulating psychological insights for adults and useful, encouraging illustrations of important abstract concepts for the littles.) I know it’s ok to feel sad (or angry or afraid) and that it’s essential to work through those emotions rather than ignoring or denying them. And yet I still see my own periods of feeling low as a problem to be fixed.
So the question is,
What if I stopped seeing negative feelings as a problem?
Creative business coach Steph Crowder released a podcast episode recently titled “Get Good at Feeling Bad” that helped me clarify this idea. She shared the perspective that life is basically always going to be 50-50, half good and half bad, at least as far as how we experience it.
This immediately resonated because that was a conclusion I came to at 17 one evening when I was reflecting on the ups and downs of my young life. I concluded that it’s almost like there’s some kind of cosmic balance, and no matter what you do, you’re always going to feel bad sometimes. In reality it’s an internal, psychological thing that happens in the human brain. Perspective and comparison are everything—as soon as we start getting used to a great thing, it ceases feeling quite so great. Haven’t we all felt that before?
So let’s accept, as Steph urges us, the premise that we’re all going to feel not so good about half the time. If that’s the reality but we expect things to be easy and fun and pleasant all or most of the time, as Steph says, “we’re going to spend 50 percent of our time fighting ourselves.” She hits on such an important distinction here. “There’s feeling bad,” she says, “there’s negative emotion, because life’s 50-50, and then there’s resisting negative emotion on top of that, which is basically when it turns into suffering.”
I’ve written about the difference between pain/discomfort and suffering before, but I hadn’t quite put it together, or at least hadn’t applied it to this situation, that feeling bad about feeling bad turns our negative emotions into sources of suffering. When we feel bad about how we’re feeling, we add frustration and shame and confusion to our existing negative emotions. And we spend precious energy and time trying to fix (read: fight against) how we’re feeling.
“Just because you are not feeling good right now might not mean that there’s something wrong.”
- Steph Crowder
Steph shared that she “was conditioned to believe that if you are feeling bad, you should do whatever it takes to start feeling better as quickly as you can.” I’m sure a lot of us can relate. But what if we took the time and energy we could spend trying to fix our negative emotions and spent it either doing (simple, non-frantic) things to support our overall wellbeing or continuing to work patiently toward our goals despite how we feel? Not only would we avoid piling unnecessary negative emotions on top of the unavoidable ones, we might also end up moving through that low spot more quickly (even though that can’t be our primary goal).
One of the ironies about avoiding negative emotions is that denying them gives them just as much power as embracing them does: either way, we’re allowing our feelings to dictate how we behave. It’s kind of like how angsty teens, proclaiming their independence, tend to rebel against whatever their parents push on them, which is actually just as much a form of being controlled by their parents as obeying them would be—though a less peaceful one. If you don’t want to be controlled by your (negative) emotions, you have to seek to act independently of your feelings, rather than for or against them.
That said, negative emotions are sometimes a sign that something needs to change. The extreme example would be an abusive situation or a clinical mental illness that needs treatment. Feeling suicidal or overwhelmed with unrelenting despair is not in the normal “50-50 feeling good/bad” category. There are times we need to seek help, rather than sitting in those bad feelings and waiting for them to go away (or at least lighten) on their own.
I also know it's true that we have some control over how we feel and should be doing basic things to support our wellbeing like exercising, sleeping enough, eating well, doing things we love, connecting with others, and practicing some form of mindfulness (prayer, meditation, joyful memories, or just going for a walk without earbuds). So I don’t see this insight as an excuse to forget about those things.
Rather, I see this as a reminder that how we feel in a temporary sense is just that: temporary. Feelings come and go. They give us valuable information. They are largely out of our conscious control and also can be influenced by things we do have control over. But emotions are not The Truth. And they will not (contrary to how our brains may try to make us feel) kill us. Confusion, for example, like physical pain, is a horrible feeling. But in and of itself, it is just a feeling. No one has ever died from confusion (something I need to remind myself of regularly when all my writing and business ideas start spinning me in mental circles!).
A reel on IG (that I can’t find now) shared a powerful reminder along these lines. Mental health, this speaker said, is not being happy all the time. Mental health is having emotions that are appropriate to your experience and dealing effectively with those emotions.
In other words, if life is hard right now, you should be feeling bad! It would actually be mentally unhealthy to feel super happy when you’re going through a difficult time. How you’re feeling is not a problem. It’s how you respond to your feelings that can be a problem.
For me, most of the time, dealing effectively with my negative feelings looks like acknowledging their existence, talking them through with a friend (INFJ external processer of feelings here!), deciding if there’s anything I should adjust in my life in response to those feelings, and then carrying on with the things I know support my overall wellbeing (as well as the things that simply must be done to keep our family moving forward). I avoid making any big or drastic decisions while I’m feeling bad, instead focusing on only small changes, because I know that my feelings can be fickle. For instance, I might decide to say no to a social event that would force me to interact with strangers when I’m already feeling drained, but I wouldn’t decide to quit my extroverted day job. I also know that it’s a good practice for me to intentionally find good things in my life to appreciate (balancing out the Enneagram 4 tendency to fixate on the negative by taking a cue from the optimism of 7s).
Now, I know there are some Christians reading this and thinking, “But the Bible tells us to be joyful all the time!” You’re not wrong, but let me suggest that joy is quite different from happiness or a lack of discomfort. Rather, joy is, I am convinced, a perspective that transcends emotions. It is something we can know and embrace and make decisions off of no matter how we are feeling in any given moment. You see this when James exhorts us to “consider it pure joy” when we “face trails of many kinds” (James 1:2, NIV). He’s not telling us to feel happy no matter what, imho, but rather to remember that nothing can change the most fundamental and important aspect of our reality: that we are loved unconditionally by God and that dealing with hard stuff is an unavoidable part of life. Joy is both deeper and higher than happiness, and experiencing negative emotions is not a sign of weak faith. (I could write a whole post just about that, but I’ll save it for another time.)
I don’t pretend to have all the answers. Far from it! But I do know a few things:
Everyone feels bad sometimes, maybe even about half the time.
Sometimes life is simply hard (or downright awful), and it’s healthy to feel bad at those times.
We can support our own wellbeing, but we can’t (and shouldn’t) eliminate all negative emotions.
When we try to “turn off” our emotional register for bad feelings, we end up also turning off our ability to feel good feelings—we can’t numb selectively.
When we view our negative emotions as problems, we risk turning our simple, natural, healthy emotional pain into suffering.
Persistent negative emotions can be valuable information to prompt us to make some changes in our lives.
So as Steph Crowder says, it’s time to start getting good at feeling bad. It’s time to accept that negative emotions are a normal part of the human experience. Sometimes they may be a sign that adjustments need to be made. Other times, they may just be a natural byproduct of your current reality. But feeling bad is never a sign that you are a bad person, that you are doing something terribly wrong, or that you are any less worthy of love.
Feeling bad is a sign that you are human and that you’re still alive. That you’re not a robot. Feeling bad is a reminder that you are trying and hoping and learning and growing. It’s a reminder that you are not yet in the eternal home for which you were created and for which your soul longs, that place where all tears shall cease and joy will overflow our hearts like like the lemonade when my youngest pours for herself.
It’s natural and normal to want to avoid feeling bad. But the invitation of maturity is to control those impulses and act instead on what we know is true and good and in alignment with who we want to be. And the only way to do that is to make friends with our negative emotions, offering them a place at the table and a chance to be heard.
Only then can we find the inner quiet to listen to the small, still voice that beckons us on to joy.
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