Painful Emotions: Character Insight

Like most people, I don’t like to experience painful emotions and I certainly don’t like to experience intensely painful emotions. As a result, and over the years, I have built and structured my life so that I avoid emotional pain as often as possible.

Much of the time I steer clear of situations that will give rise to painful emotions. With painful experience I have learned where those things happen and what gives rise to them and so I put a lot of effort into ensuring that no repetition of those things occurs. Much of the time this works fine and I don’t even consciously think about these things. However, certain things cause me to feel a lack in my life. I know that I avoid doing things that would benefit me or other people in so many ways because I have memories of the painful emotions involved from previous attempts and so I shy away from the challenge to my ideas of personal adequacy and competence. Fortunately, an alternative exists.

Sometimes I have changed myself so that I no longer perceive those things that previously caused emotional pain in the same way. This can happen through developing the adequacy to deal with threats and problems at their source and so with no real threat any longer apparent I feel no fear and no painful emotions arise. The problem ceases to exist because I have built the reserves of competence necessary to deal highly effectively with such an event. Alternatively, the change can also happen because I change my interpretation of events and circumstances and of threats and fears. Very often the threat derives from a denial of the difference between my imagined self (and how I skew my interpretation of events to fit that imagined reality) and the real results that I actually produce. I have come to realise that I often felt more of a threat to my fabricated and unrealistic self-image (my ego, if you will) than I did by the real world problems that I faced. By accepting my inadequacies and the disappointment that came with that acceptance, I cleared my mind of a lot of emotional baggage and could then get clear about solving the real problems that I faced.

Consequently I now behave differently when I experience painful emotions. I now interpret them as internally generated messages that often show that a difference exists between my desired self and my real self. I now welcome them as messengers that allow me to get a more accurate grip on my reality and in doing so I cope massively more effectively with all of the problems that come my way. Exceptions occur when painful emotions signal actual physical danger where the limbic brain or the gut (it also contains neurons that can stimulate emotions) turn on all the chemicals to stimulate me to get me as far away from danger as quickly as I possibly can. These kinds of reactions tend to have a strong physiological response to prepare us for action whereas most of the time we just feel continuous brain ache and a lack of cheerfulness from the continuous, low level negative emotions that come from repeatedly attempting to do things that we don’t have the capability to do or to solve.

Take Note

Our emotions signal us to take action on important, threatening problems. They tell us to respond and to either to fight, take flight, or to change circumstances to remove the threat. We can also use acceptance of the threat as another response but that does not remove the problem. Since changing circumstances to remove the problem, preferably permanently, always makes for the best solution then painful emotions signal that we must assess the current situation and determine where we can make improvements to control circumstances or totally eliminate the problem.

I now deal with this by taking note of when I experience negative emotions. I sit down and write about how the emotion that I feel and its intensity and what causes that. If I feel bad then somewhere exists a difference between my desired self and my desired outcomes (in terms of what I want from myself and for myself) and with what results I now have (in terms of what I gave of myself and what I actually got for myself). This difference generates the unpleasant emotions and only by dealing with the difference can I hope to improve myself and my circumstances, and hence to permanently eliminate the problem. Consequently, when I sit down and write about what caused my negative emotions I ask myself the question, “What does this reveal to me about the difference between my imagined self and my desired reality and my real self and my real reality?” Since I often prove capable of fulfilling my small desires then if I still feel nonplussed afterwards it is usually because of additional unrealistic expectations. Asking the question, “What more do I want right now to feel satisfied?” usually reveals an additional string of improbably difficult to fulfil desires. When I identify them I can often dismiss them as nonsensical but if I don’t identify them they just sit in the background affecting my mood without me really realising why I don’t feel so cheerful (this is so important to do - I’m amazed at how many times after doing this I find that I had some really dumb, often impossible, added-on expectation that went unfulfilled).

Once I go through this process I get an understanding of the message of my emotions and I resolve to accept my reality and also to find ways to improve myself and to change my circumstances so that the problem does not recur for me and also so that I can move closer to my desired self-image and my desired reality.

This very detached and rational process allows me to identify problems with great clarity and I quickly get to the root cause, which means that my solutions will likely have a high impact on eradicating the symptoms and responses (feeling bad and then behaving badly). Sometimes I give up my desires as impossible, too difficult or of insufficient interest to warrant the effort required to bring them about. I thus quickly match my expectations to my reality, which also negates feeling bad. Often I keep the desire but keep the negative emotions at bay by thinking further about my designs to achieve my desires and the actions, time scales, resources and so on to make them happen.

If you don’t reinterpret your emotions and use them to discover where your real problems lie then you will find yourself forever mystified and swayed by an array of immobilising emotions and consequent, often damaging self-destructive behaviours that wreak havoc and dominate so much of our thought and action.

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