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.
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.
When I was 19 I got my first tattoo. I was told that it meant “forgive” in, “Chinese.” I apologize to any pacific islander by overly assuming that all symbol language is simply, Chinese.
At 23, I took 18 credit hours, including both a microbiology course and a biochem class (both had labs).
At 32 I tried to mix greek yogurt and hot coffee for a protein coffee drink (We were out of protein powder).
At 37 I ran outside for two hours when it was -10 degrees, plus the windchill factor it was more like -17.
Let’s just say that I have made some questionable choices in my life, that at the time (and is publicaly stated), were “bad”.
I never intended to make a “bad” choice when I made the choice however. At the moment I tried to make my coffee drink I thought of yogurt being a dairy product. We put dairy in our coffees all the time. I thought, “well, based on experience, this should work.” When the sour yogurt and the hot bitter coffee combined, the cottage-cheese formed substance partially cooked and I ended up with a cheesy-sorta-coagulated crust atop the still hot and still bitter coffee. Again, no step leading up to this mess was necessarily “bad” but was the best I had at the time.
That’s the kicker though isn’t it? We all make choices in the moment with the information we have at the time. Anyone can look back on any point in life and judge from the now-perspective and information and say that a choice was bad.
Nothing is “bad” to our mind at the time, but simply the best we had.
Sure, there is always a context in every decision. For example, the tattoo was during a time when I had lost contact with a good friend. I decided it was not only cool to get my first tattoo, but noble I would put “forgive” on my back. Also, to put forgive in a symbol of another culture just seemed so open-minded. I really thought this was the absolute best idea. I really put my best foot forward and still, 20-years later have this obscure tattoo which I still haven’t looked up to what it really means.
What the tattoo, cottage cheese coffee, the almost-frost-bitten run taught me was invaluable wisdom. I have the experience, not just the knowledge or concept, the actual experience to say, “you should probably Google search that before you do it.”
But, more importantly, I have empathy when someone makes a mistake or wrongs me because of these and other experiences.
If you’ve ever gotten upset and did anything irrational, then you can relate to the next guy who wrongs you. If you have ever wanted something and didn’t have the money and considered the thought to just take it, you can connect with a robber in jail or the next Billionaire who is arrested for corrupt practices.
From where I stand, forgiveness should be as common in life as our own experience has taught us. No, I have never been high on meth, up for seven days, and then thought I could build a time machine. However, I have had times where I was up all night and the next day thought that I could sleep at work with just one-eye closed and then switch eyes to sneak in some naps. Neither of our choices make logical sense, if not scientific impossibilities, so why should I, rationally speaking of course, judge someone else, or dissaociate from them because of something they did that I can relate to.
To judge is to distance yourself from associating with someone else. When you let your judgement down and sit with the fact that you can relate, if you choose to, then you can find forgiveness. Don’t forgive someone to be the better person, the bigger man, the humble one. Forgive someone because you know that you are forgiven for your wrongs, and that is what we can do for others, if we choose to.
How do you know when it’s appropriate to be understanding of someone’s bad behaviors? When is it necessary to take a stand against it?
How much are we supposed to give when it comes to catering to someone else worst behaviors? For example, if someone has unhealthy boundaries, and they are always in your business, how much do you endure? At what point do you reinforce boundaries? If someone is an overly critical person, how much should you listen? When is it time to share with them how it affects you?
I often hear in couple’s therapy sessions about how the couple believes they bond by justifying their partner’s behaviors. “You have to give,” is the common phrase. In reality, when we live according to the limits of someone’s traumas, triggers, or their inability to regulate emotions, we aren’t growing, we are becoming stunted. Out of this, “over-empathizing” and being passive, resentment forms.
You cannot indulge an unhealthy behavior in someone else enough to get rid of it.
You cannot justify an angry spouse by saying “well, their mom was mean to them.” This is not enough to finally get them to be kinder.
You cannot justify an abusive friend by saying “well, they didn’t really mean it.” This is not enough to get them to work on themselves.
Sure, grace is one of the most important elements of any relationship. Giving is required from time to time. And if you are willing to give, then let it go, don’t hold it against the person. However, if you are continuously treated poorly, at some point the relationship goes to unhealthy very quickly.
Relationships serve a purpose. It involves growing together with someone. It doesn’t mean you just understand them. It means you participate in growing with them. Love is a verb, it requires action. They should also be growing with you.
A question you can ask yourself in a relationship, marriage, friendship even, “do I care for this person’s good?” If the honest answer is that you just want them to make you happy, then you may be at fault too. Their actions are not the only cause. You have to want for the other person’s good, and then be that good for them in their life.
Being Good?
As a therapist, I don’t change anybody’s lives that don’t want to truly change themselves. I don’t help people. I don’t fix or alter anything more than a gas station attendant that smiles when a customer comes in. As humans, we all reinforce and reject behaviors of those around us. It’s our job in a community to be honest. We should give to others what is for their good. Share with them what we notice. This can at least start their process of acceptance. If no one ever tells you a jerk, then the first person that does so will be rejected. But if the last 10 people would have said something, then that 11th could have turned to tide.
We cannot be the “good” people that fix others or have all the advice. However, we can be good for others by listening and practicing honesty. Out of love, we give what we believe to be good for the person when we see a need.
I’m not saying any of us will get this right, or that we should expect our relationships to magically improve. We shouldn’t be outcome independent. We should be good for others, just to be good for others.
You know who was the absolute best for others, even when He told them things they didn’t want to hear? Jesus Christ. He was fully man and fully God. He was the smartest man who ever walked the earth. He literally changed the course of history with his life. Then, he changed the course of eternity with his death and resurrection. Jesus was the absolute best for everyone who had the opportunity to meet him.
Being “good” is not the natural tendency of humans. We are selfish. We learn to be good. Many people aren’t taught “good” as being beneficial in their life. So, if we assume “good” to be natural and ingrained in all of us, we should consider the context of human behavior. We should remember how our environment shapes us.
God made us in His image. We have fallen from this ideal dependence on God. Now, we attempt to live as our own Gods.
Living a life of love requires faith. We must trust that what we are doing is for the good of someone else. It is not always understood by us. Also, we should never expect a reward for doing as we ought to do.
From Where I Stand 