Feelings! Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Feelings! How we run from painful or uncomfortable feelings. (part 1 of 2)

By Scott Hendrickson, LCPC

Emotions or feelings are incredibly difficult to tolerate for many of us.  In fact we all have many strategies to avoid feeling our feelings; at least the ones we are aware of.  We avoid feeling anxious, hurt, angry, sad, shame, abandoned and more. In my experience, we spend a terrific amount of energy running from our feelings while we spend virtually an insignificant amount of time building up a tolerance to various feelings.

Feelings are meant to be
an indicator to know what is happening in us and around us. When you feel pain, it probably indicates something is wrong.  When you feel anxiety it might also indicate a threat (unless you suffer from an anxiety disorder).  When you feel like crying it might indicate many things—loss, sadness or even happiness or relief.  Emotional words are also descriptors. They help you and your relationships understand what is happening in you. If you have a well developed vocabulary of emotional descriptors, it can help you connect more with your important relationships.

If you can come to believe that emotions are not a threat, you can come to cope with them more effectively.  An example is the feelings of anxiety.  Anxious feelings are very powerful because they include both physical and cognitive symptoms. Anxiety comes with a racing heart and even racing thoughts.  A sense of doom seems to settle in you as your hands and face perspire and your thoughts lock into worst case scenarios.  If you are panicking, you want to find the nearest exit and bolt.  Anxiety indicators might suggest a threat and therefore a need to either remove yourself from a situation or to stand up and fight for yourself.  If you suffer from an anxiety disorder, these anxious feelings might not always mean a real threat.  Your body has been fooled so you react as if it is a real threat.  If you suffer from over anxiousness or panic it would be helpful for you to improve your tolerance for these feelings rather than move to that exit.

Remember going to the lake and walking into the cold water? As soon as you begin to walk into a colder feeling lake you begin to doubt the feasibility of swimming.  You say to yourself, this is too cold and maybe I don’t want to swim right now.  If you keep walking, the water rises to your waist and a debate intensifies in your head.  Should I jump in or should I stay right here where it is more tolerable?  The very cold FEELING causes you to strongly consider exiting the lake, laying out a towel on the beach and opting for skin cancer (or just a nice tan).  Here is the thing, in your mind, perhaps the deeper recesses of your mind, you know that if you just jump in, dunk your head and stay in the water completely, you will get used to the cold. In fact, it won’t even feel cold at all after awhile.  And when this happens, if you decided to stay with the swimming, you develop a tolerance for the water temperature AND you might even come to enjoy your swim.

So anxiety or fear(a close relative of anxiety) is only one example of difficult feelings.  Sadness after a difficult loss, hurt from a painful event (like a divorce, job loss or betrayal), disappointment or even anger can all be so painful that you find ways to avoid feeling them.  Remember your feelings are indicators that suggest a need for your attention to something or some situation in your life or past life.  If you ignore them, they tend to keep you more closely tied to that painful or uncomfortable event.  If you had an affair, your hurt spouse will keep coming back to question you and remind you of your sin if you refuse to talk it through is an example.  When you sense the feeling is intensifying and you feel the need to distract yourself I would encourage you to surround yourself with healthy, supportive people who can help you stay with it for moments at a time.  You don’t have to jump into the deep end of the lake today. Instead you can walk into ankle high water and stay just long enough for you to feel slightly more comfortable with the feeling. Tomorrow or the next day stay a little longer and repeat until the feelings don’t overwhelm you any more or the anxiety doesn’t produce more anxiety.  The longer you can stay while keeping yourself calm, the greater tolerance you will have.  Remember that difficult feelings are uncomfortable but they won’t kill you.  You might lose sleep some days but you can recover your rest in time.  

Warning: I strongly advise you to monitor your thoughts while waiting in your uncomfortable or painful feelings.  Pull them back if they become suicidal or creating worst case scenarios or escalate your anger.  The apostle Paul wrote  “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”  Yes, that is right.  More often than not we have to recognize the distortions or wackiness of our thoughts.  Unchecked they will be the fuel to your emotional fire.  Share with a trusted friend or advisor to help you check your thoughts if necessary. Believe them when they tell you those thoughts are not your friend and therefore not to be trusted.

I said all of the above to help you with part two of this article.  Come back later and I will talk about the many ways we run from our feelings which in turn actually keeps us stuck in the pain related to those feelings.