What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings?
Well, negative often means something counter to positive or otherwise less than, which therefore entails a state one should not feel.
In truth, negative is still a feeling and is necessary, just as much as a positive feeling. Experience cannot be defined as it’s occurring, it just is. Once you evaluate, you miss the experience. Therefore, a negative is the same as positive in that it’s all just an experience.
Embracing the experience, bathing in it, often leads to a life full of enrichment. When judging the emotion such as sadness as “negative” you can learn to instead experience it as it comes, much like babies do. We are humans, made in God’s image intended to feel as God feels, and to judge or do anything more or less than find gratitude to feel something so pure, destroys the moment. Not to mention is a really bad habit to get into.
My strategy is to embrace and breathe inside the moment.
Sitting in a bumper car amid youthful eyes, pigtails, and hopeful expressions. The ride was for all sizes 42” and above. My 77” self barely fit in the cart. Around me were those barely crossing the line from restricted red to admission blue.
As innocence was radiating from the children behind the wheel, maybe for the first time ever in that position, I looked at them and then their observing parents. One father’s eyes met mine. His protection sensors went up.
Fathers can feel this sort of thing.
He looked at me. Looked at the other small children. I looked at his wrist. No wristband. He couldn’t get in. Decided to save some money and not spring for the $50 ticket to ride with his kids. I get that.
I sprung for it. Now in a moment I had a choice to make. Do I smash full force with my 265 pounds of momentum gaining energy behind every inch of rubber track, jolting the kids into puberty? Or do I settle, drive around and seek out only my own seed to smash from the side?
The little buzzer went off.
I glimpsed at the sign “no headfirst bumping.” I thought about this rule for a second.
I saw a kid, he was headed my way. I evaded him.
With the 360 degree turn radius I spun around and headed in the opposite direction.
I was rear ended. I went ahead, saw two girls, sisters I assume. Rolling around laughing at the fact they keep getting stuck. I decide to head in their direction, to lightly bump them loose.
They turn into me.
SMASH!
Headfirst and it looked like I was seeking them out. I quickly spin the wheel, to back out, leave them be in the wake of their trauma.
I await the screams from an irritated parent.
I turn around.
SMASH
The child looks at me after the recoil of the abrupt stop of his cart. His head pulls up. The brief life he’s lived shows like a movie projected across his eyes.
I back up again and break free from the multi-cart pileup. Free now to steer clear of anymore lives I don’t want to destroy.
The gravitas of the situation enhanced by adult eyes, my peers with children younger than mine, make me want to park my cart and throw my hands up.
SMASH
This same boy as before, a kid with a mullet peering at me like I’m his elementary school bully. I smile a bit at him and he grits his teeth and drives forward at me again.
Bump this time, but pushes me into the wall.
“Ha. Alright, got me.” I say lightly.
He bumps me again. Then he follows me, chasing me like a sugar-crazed kid who didn’t take his morning medications.
I glance at the parents…no one seems to be watching him. I pull forward a bit, spinning the wheel to come at him with the little distance I have.
“You little brat” I think to myself, feeling the surge of energy through my hands and electrifying my left leg to slam down the little red button to charge the car forward.
“You think it’s funny you little….”
BUZZ! “Alright riders, please wait till your cart comes to a complete stop before exiting the vehicle.”
The overhead voice finishes and pan out to see my cart and the boys a few inches from the fronts of the carts meeting.
I come back to reality. The fog lifts. I am me again, a father, a loving…um at least understanding follower of Christ.
I….I sort of blanked on my identities and went to this realm of emotions.
I relied on my body to tell me what to do, rather than what I know to do. I felt annoyed and competitively wanted to smash this annoying bug of a boy into bumper cart oblivion.
Who was that guy? Where did he come from?
“I’ve been here the whole time.” My mind says to me.
Welp, guess I have some work left to do, and that doesn’t mean honing in on my bumper cart skills. But to humble my self that I might not be as good as I think I am.
To choose the light, you’ve got to know the darkness inside of you.
The parasitic flatworm Dicrocoelium dendriticum aka Liver fluke, aka “zombie ant fungus,” infects the brain of ants resulting in the ant crawling to the tallest point of a plant preparing to get eaten for the highest possibility of fertilization.
Imagine it.
The parasite drives the ant up the stem to be crushed in the grinding maxilla and mandible of livestock, ingesting the parasite to flourish in a new home. Then, if it gets too cold, if the ant isn’t consumed, it retreats to try again tomorrow.
Mindless-drones doing as the parasitic infection demands, with no other objective than to spread. Now, that is scary, good thing we don’t have such a thing in humans.
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
TikTok
CNN
MSNBC
FoxNews
NPR
CNBC
Us humans, we like to think we make good choices. We want to be good, we want to do what is best. No one goes forward with full intention of making the wrong choice. Unlike the ignorant ant, humans have intentionality and we loooove to use our smarts to justify our choices.
Maybe the ants think we are the crazy ones for being influenced by entertainment sources to tell us how to live. The fact that we allow the fictional narrative of social media to alter how we view ourselves might be reason enough for the ants to prefer their colony over a cell phone.
What if…just what if…the narrative you hold about yourself, the inner assessment of how well you’re doing in life and what you believe is important, was built on false teachings?
Though we aren’t being manipulated to crawl up any trees, sacrificing ourselves to the further pollination of disease, we are choosing to go to the top of whatever proverbial grass blade, (social outlet) there is and sacrifice our true selves to the influence of misinformation for capital gain or continued social acclimation.
Ask yourself, why do I do what I do and what really matters to me the most? Take a reflective look at your life and see the truth of where you have invested your time.
Our entire life is a receipt of where we spent our most precious gift. If you did what you thought you should do, or did something because you wanted to fit in, or did something because you felt some sort of emotional response that you needed to satisfy, then it’s not too late to make a change and start living as yourself and what matters.
Some brains are too far gone. The infection has spread and lingered for too long and delusion has sunk in. The once-malleable brain now plagued with a barrage of persuasion has the ability to rewrite history to support the slow crawl completely motivated by the influence of the parasitic ideas hellbent on the host’s destruction.
If life is spent on anything less than the most meaningful thing, it’s a waste.
Are you superstitious?
I am a whole being of many parts. A part of me likes the idea of magic and other-than worldly forces and that some action I do could result in an alteration of material in this world. However, as a Christian (worldview of God-created everything and through His word holds every fiber of being together), I do not rely wholly on science or mystical forces, including karma. Therefore, I am not superstitious nor am I totally rational (as this worldly existence means). My soul and therefore core being cannot believe in anything to alter outcomes that fall out of line with Gods plan coming to fruition.
Though God made man with free will He knows what the outcome is and our life both can be altered by our choices, but more so, all is in a state of already, but not yet.
Again, creatively, super fun to think that the world and humans in it can be completely independent and left to chance happenings or luck, but that removes God and therefore all that is good which, well, would be hell.
“You are pissing me off.”Jeremy says as he abruptly turns around.
“I don’t think you even care about me.” Betty starts to sob.
Jeremy, now feeling the sting of Betty’s once-again sobbing decides not to give in this time.
“You are so hard to talk to, you never get it.”
Betty looks up with crocodile tears in her eyes, one trickle’s down her face as though a cinematic conclusion is about to take place.
“You’re an A**hole.”
Breakdown
Here we go again, another disagreement between Betty and Jeremy. These two are always going at it.
It seems as though something was going on here that set off Betty and according to her final conclusion, Jeremy must just be being an A-hole again.
But then again, Jeremy says some pretty significant things too. Betty is actually “pissing him off.” That doesn’t feel good. Oh, and then to talk and not have your partner “get it.” Darn, sorry Jeremy.
Boy, what a conundrum here. What a pickle. I guess both have to work on why one is an A-hole and the other needs to listen and “get it” better.
Actually…
What was said here does not represent what is actually going on. You see, Jeremy here stated that he is “pissed” and he places the blame on to Betty, with the “You are” portion of the comment. Interesting really, how does one actually “piss off” anyone, but isn’t it our own choosing to engage that emotion, to express that frustration because “you” did it? Is Jeremy’s “pissed-ness” actually all of Betty’s fault, or does Jeremy have some work to do to identify a few things?
What does it mean to be “pissed off?” What does that expressional term feel like.
What exactly did Jeremy notice Betty do that led to this feeling and is it a justified response from him or is he sensitive to certain things?
When having a feeling and attributing blame to someone else, what can Jeremy do within when he feels this sort of way to better cope with the feeling he defines as “pissed off?”
Also, what does Jeremy want with the chosen response of saying to Betty, “You are pissing me off?” What is the objective here? Don’t focus on what is said, but why, in this moment, did Jeremy saying these things.
Look, these two have a difficult time communicating. And you can see why both Jeremy and Betty have a good amount of work to do at identifying what they want out of a conversation and how to better represent that want. Also, deeper within, the triggered response inside of each one, that they so quickly attribute to the other removes their part in things, which is an unhealthy road to go down. When you become a victim, everyone becomes your persecutor and lose control.
Familiar Pain
Patterns and habits are familiar to our brain and therefore the mind wants to stay in their already-established grooves. It is easier to stay in the familiar pain than it is to have to pull out of those grooves to do something different. Jeremy is pissed, clearly, but it isn’t all Betty that is the cause. Betty’s words, actions, early contexts with Jeremy all come to a head inside of Jeremy’s mind and he reacts with what appears to be trying to hurt Betty.
Yes, sometimes, as much as we all want to deny it, our actions are intended to hurt the other person, which is why we use such harsh and seemingly ineffective words. I say “seemingly ineffective” because we think we want to articulate something towards a conclusion (making Jeremy’s words ineffective), but in reality we are hurt, and then we want to hurt the other person. Therefore, in one way, our hurtful words are very effective towards hurting someone The problem is that we think ourselves to be good people and believe the words were ineffective towards a healthy conversation. Jeremy didn’t want resolve, he wanted to hurt. Remember, hurt people, hurt people. We all choose to hurt people each day when we ignore contest and fail to apply what we know rationally to triggered emotions.
Jeremy’s opening line is a result of a context within a situation with his partner which is from HIS own self to then determine to hurt Betty. The worst part, as is seen by not wanting to admit we go around hurting people, we aren’t even consciously aware we are hurting each other with our words. Our mind literally lies to us to protect us, justifying what we said, not with intent to hurt, but because we felt justified to say something.
More to the story here and many hours could be written about these lines alone. Not to mention getting into each person’s past of themselves and the ups and downs of the relationship it’s self.
However, from where I stand on this one, the only thing Jeremy and Betty can do is control and work on the deep reactionary pains from within themselves. These can be commonly referred to as “triggers.”
So, it’s not you, it’s me. Isn’t all that wrong here. It’s actually a pretty accurate statement. It is MY reaction to your action (and underlying preconceived hurts, pains, etc.) that caused me to say hurtful and unproductive things.
So, be more mindful Jeremy and Betty and don’t be so quick to respond. Sit in the emotion of the response. Allow your mind and body to experience the hurt of what is said to you. If you say something that hurt them, you are better to reflect and sit in that as well. Improvement in communication isn’t just saying words, it is doing work within each person’s self to be honest and articulate what you actually want to say and for what purpose.
Or…you can just continue to argue in the familiar way until eventually you are so bitter you lose all hope of any improvement.
You can’t control or alter your partner’s mindset with words. Changed actions reveal what you truly believe.
If you struggle with confidence, then listen up. Confidence is not found in “doing better” but found in acceptance.
Take a nervous mom. Now, nervous mom can’t watch child fail. Nervous mom runs in and helps. Nervous mom is nervous and so she doesn’t have the time or patience to hold their child accountable or encourage them to ask for things. Nervous mom just does things for the child because “it’s easier for her to do it herself.”
In short, nervous mom fails to provide what the child needs, which is the space for the child to figure themselves out. See, nervous mom has nervous thoughts and these thoughts overwhelm her. Nervous thoughts fuel nervousness.
So, to all the nervous moms, dads, future parents, children of nervous parents, we can combat this with….
Self-acceptance.
Even stepping outside of the strictly psychological and into the deeper foundations of what it means to be a thinking human, is to notice our souls encompass our bodies. Our bodies are organs and flesh, upheld and driven by a soul. To a nervous person, the soul can hardened over time and thus reliance on the body’s sensations takes over.
See, the flesh is weak, the soul and spirit are strong. The flesh tears, the organs fail, the brain contains ego that is scared of people and the challenges they propose to the sense of self the ego has formed. But the Soul, that is something else, something that sees the world through a God-dependent and therefore most full perspective.
Even if you don’t believe in God, but you struggle with confidence, you still benefit from pretending to believe. Yes, even acting as an all-sovereign being made you and everything around you puts things in a proper perspective. Get out of your own head for a while and choose to view yourself through a different lens.
Christians (those who claim to know God as God and therefore Christ as salvation for our eternal souls and ideal model of life) we should not be nervous.
Unless…
we don’t really believe what we say….
we want to stay in charge and rely on the failing body to choose for us by way of “feelings.”
we are warped in our thinking, thus say we have faith but act on reliance of other thing more.
No matter who you are, it is confidence in the whole self that has to occur for you to be you. Then you can go into any situation unworried because you have this core that will not be shaken. For non-believers, you can hold to a core sense of values to stay consistent in any situation. For Christians, your soul is dependent not on the body, but God and His Promises.
Remember: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Those sorts of promises.
Back to the space: Nervousness/anxiety/insecurity/lack of self confidence etc. do not allow room for someone, even yourself, to “figure it out.” You need the faith that what will be, will be. Who you are is who you are. If you don’t like who you are, that’s furthest from self acceptance. You need to understand that you can’t hate yourself or deny parts of yourself and progress into a peaceful and successful life.
So, parents, give the kid space to fail and figure some things out. Adults and children otherwise, give yourself the space to feel what you’re feeling and experience what it’s like to cope with that feeling.
Once you know that you CAN tolerate feelings and emotions that otherwise trouble you or cause you to overreact, you also know you don’t have to control or stop others from learning that they too can tolerate and even get more creative in their problem solving.
So, in conclusion and from where I stand, it is better to be given space to fail and then learn from or about that failure than it is to indulge the nervousness and what it tells you to do to be “Safe.”
If I were you and you were me, what would you see?
What would you experience if you were me writing this?
You can’t possibly know what I am going through. You can’t because I am me. I have lived as me my entire life. Being me entails having my personality, my perspective, my experiences and how people experience me and me them.
So, how can you possibly walk in my shoes if my entire life experience led me to seeing things the way I do and producing the reactions I have.
You can’t “get” someone. You can relate to them from your own life experience, but “getting it,” shouldn’t be the goal.
Here’s my sales pitch for peace:
Empathy is the bridge to forgiveness.
To be empathetic is the willingness to see the other person’s perspective. When you are hurt, scared, angry, sad, escalated in some way, the choice to empathize and relate to people seems impossible.
Why would we choose to distance or judge someone? Judgment, justice, disgust, fear, anger, all of the above.
I guess the real question is, why should we empathize with people who we deem to be “bad” or “wrong?”
For your own peace.
Empathy and forgiveness leads to a peace for the one who practices it. If you want peace, in your relationships, at work, watching the news, dealing with difficult customers, then you need to allow yourself to relate to the person you are dealing with.
Typical argument against empathy:
“But what if the person is a sociopath and doesn’t care about people, why should I relate to them?”
Answer: One of the criteria for anti-social personality disorder aka sociopath is lack of empathy. So, if you choose to categorize people into a box that is “unrelatable,” then you just did what they do.
If you want to be right, enact justice, judge and distance from someone, remember they are people too.
The way humans are designed-they have parents, and those parents had parents, and so on. All the ancestry that came before us led to the “us” here today and leading to the “them” that is standing before you now. Both nature and nurture play into who we are today and why we chose what we chose. Not to mention, the choices available to as at the location and time in history we were born.
Judge if you dare
So, if you want to judge and enact judgment on people because of your god-like view of what should be, remember: people only know what they know and don’t know what they don’t. People learn by way of association and do what they do based on what was experienced, internalized, and believed to be true.
People do the best they can with what they’ve got. People don’t do your best or a general best, but their own best. Even one who murders, chose to do so based on what they thought was the best choice. There isn’t a person who has walked this earth who hasn’t done the best they could with what they’ve got. Also, with the exception of Jesus, there isn’t a person who hasn’t done something they later revisit and think things could have been done differently today.
If you can allow yourself to see that you’ve once misjudged, acted out of anger, chose based on limited information, then you can understand that someone else may be doing the same thing. Sure, they may have chosen differently than you would have, but their available choices, their normalized decisions, observed behaviors from family and friends, and many many other factors in their experience have led to them choosing to act as they did.
You get angry and you yell.
Someone else gets angry and they drink.
Another person gets angry and fights.
All are angry and neither can judge the other from their limited perspective.
Finding yourself relating to others, and allowing yourself to be in their shoes, is much more than, “getting it.” Empathy will provide the ideal life of peace you want. If you want the peace that is.
If you want to judge, then so be it, but you’re doing exactly what they are doing. The exact same thing you are judging is the same thing you can’t forgive or accept about yourself.
When you get to a point of pain, let’s say being overwhelmed, how’d you get here?
Often it’s a series of decisions influenced by perspectives, life events, beliefs about oneself, and a number of other contexts leading to the same result repeatedly.
When stress is experienced, or rather you feel what you identify as stress as a result of some external stimuli, what do you do with it?
Nobody wants to admit this but you might be choosing to hold on to stress.
Truthfully, do you find yourself coming up with excuses as to why the stress needs to be there, why you just CAN’T let it go?
Story Time:
Alright, so there I was, another overbooked day of people to see. I get a message about a referral for a new person. My immediate thought says that I should take the referral. I pause a bit, thinking about my schedule and realizing I have no slots left.
I say, “yes” to the referral under the justification that I will figure it out later.
I get stressed about scheduling this person immediately. I put off the decision, “I will reach out later to schedule.” I waited. The next day, I needed to call this person. I am thinking to myself about what to say, fearing that what they want I can’t offer.
“Luke, why did you do this to yourself?”I say to myself.
I start to spiral and think of every decision I make and how I am such a loser for not being able to be better.
I regurgetate this feeling throughout the day and feed on it. I lose sleep over it. I go to the gym and feel guilt for being so selfish, for not being better.
I don’t want to tell my wife because I know she’s going to say that she told me so, to not take on so many people.
I fester on this for days.
I call the person, finally, and they admit that they weren’t looking for anyone as a therapist, but someone had suggested it; however, they didn’t have it in their schedule just yet.
The call ended. Crisis averted, right?
No, I then say “why didn’t she want to see me, am I not good enough?”
I start to think about how poor of a therapist I am and how I should never see another human being again. I fester on this for a few more hours. It turns into a slight lull. I tell myself that I have to carry on with life functions because I have guilt over that too.
Stress was my fuel here. I felt stress and held on to it, unable to give it up. I justified why this stress existed and I justified why I couldn’t let it go. I took on something that caused the stress in the first place, which I have done repeatedly.
Why can’t I just accept that I overthink and try to overplease people, that I struggle with insecurity and therefore revert into self-defeated thinking and just let it be? Why do I have to pressure myself into trying to be better, as though I am capable of doing so? Why don’t I just let the thoughts go, let the stress pass, while I hold on to my values and be the person I want to be? Not the ideal me, or alternative me, but actual me, me with anxiety. What stops me from accepting this person, love this person, be kind to this person?
When I make a mistake and revert to over busying myself, again, instead of getting high on my own stressful spiral of thoughts and then the thoughts of judgement towards myself, I can say, “yeah, I do that sometimes.” It is here, acceptance, that I can then work to live according towards what I care about, the wellbeing of someone else.
From this place of acceptance, I can set boundaries and end up being honest and assertive and saying “no.” As we all should sometimes. Being honest is simply living in reality. I could have said “no” the first offering, or called and said that I have no availability, a number of things. But to do that, I need to sit with my first thoughts (people pleasing and stress addiction)and let the emotion pass (let it go) to then make a rational decision.
So, I needed to check my addiction to stress and ask myself if I really am willing to let go of the stress.
From where I stand, “letting go” is really not as simple as we all thought. In reality, many of us want to hold on and feel that stress. We might be habituated to stress, addicted to it. Stress becomes baseline, a reason to complain, a distraction, justifies victimhood, a number of reasons stress exists and is scary to let go of.
Be honest with yourself and work at identifying if you truly want to let go of the pain and be free from it. Maybe you are choosing to hold on to stress to justify being a miserable person.
Walking into the gym at 4:30 PM. Horrible. There’s no one person or reason for this horribleness, it’s just an accumulative jumble of overwhelming stimuli.
The guy on the treadmill wearing a weighted vest, why does that annoy me?
The girl with the tripod videoing herself doing squats. Is she really going to rest her equipment on the free bench next to her?
The group of 3-4 high school/college boys eating scoops of pre-workout. Low key bros, please don’t spill that stuff on the floor.
The old guy hogging the leg extension machine, sitting with his towel around his neck, staring off into space. Look, I am not saying he’s got all the time in the world, but he’s putting up a strong argument for it.
The “rapper” who is reciting the lyrics to his favorite song.
“You a clone, you a Meseek You a house N………., I’m a Roadrunner, meep-meep Think I work at Best Buy with the squad how I be geeked”
Also, he’s white.
These people shouldn’t even be allowed in my head, but I see them, feel them, (smell them) and all of them together just stresses me out. Do I want to walk with a weighted vest on? No. Do I want to film myself lifting? No. Do I want the leg-extension machine? Yeah, but I can work around it.
Kids, group-lifts, and eating supps.- I literally sold supplements for years. Rapper guy? I’ll just leave him alone, society will take care of him. So, why do I care?
Ego.
OK, short answer. But it’s true.
But why does my ego need to judge others?
Because I am deeply insecure.
OK, so then, why can’t I just be better and stop the judgement?
Because the judgement is intended to get my attention, to categorize and then distance or draw close to traits I find more or less favorable.
But, why am I drawn to some people and avoid others?
Values, genetical influence, upbringing and modeled behaviors, among a few things.
But in reality, the why the judgement/thoughts exist isn’t important. In the current moment, I am experiencing and noticing thoughts. Simple as that.
If I didn’t know any better, I would believe that these thoughts were me and I would let them hijack me. I mean, they came from my head, so they must be true, right?
Nah. Thoughts are just thoughts. You can recognize them and let them pass. You don’t have to do anything with the thoughts other than stop yourself from trying to fix, alter, or argue them. Let them exist.
If you have a friend who gives bad advice, but he’s consistently trying to help you out with his short-sided view, is it better to argue him, or let him share and you decide not to take the advice?
You can choose to indulge thoughts if you want. And the thoughts you have in life will always be very compelling. Why? Because your mind is trying to get you to act in some way, and it uses thoughts to influence you to do so.
What if I mean-mugged the guy on the treadmill, just to let him know I didn’t approve. What if I chose to tell him how stupid he looks. What if I thought about him long after I left the gym and then decided the entire gym is stupid and people are stupid. Is that really better than just letting the thought exist when I first see him and continuing to redirect my attention to the task at hand?
From where I stand, it takes less energy to let go of something, than to hold on to it.
Thoughts aren’t what define you, your actions are. You can think one thing and act another. So, the person you are is determined by your actions and these are under your control.
From Where I Stand 