There was a brief period in my life where, because of a panic attack, I had to slide out of a tomb-like MRI machine and reschedule my appointment.
It was like tapping out of a headlock perpetrated by an angry hospital bill.
I was anxiety personified. Tension like I was a living plank, hands that didn't need to worry about dryness, and a perpetually falling sky above me.
I was much dumber as a whole back then, but what I lacked most was the wisdom to deal with stressors in a way that resolved them. In the moment.
I now kind of think of emotions as a form of food, and that they can be digested instead of giving you the simulated heart attack of anxiety.
Anxiety still rears its head in my life, but what I've learned in the time since those expensive MRI bills might help some of you, as well.
Let's go through the three parts to this:
Pre-Emptive Suffering: How To Practice Feeling Bad
Instead of making our aim the avoidance of all things unpleasant, I like to remember what Ajahn Chah once said in his talk 'Sense Contact -- The Fount of Wisdom':
"Where suffering lies is right where non-suffering will arise; it ceases at the place where it arises. You should settle the issue right there. One who runs away from suffering out of fear is the most foolish person of all. They will simply increase their stupidity endlessly."
Basically: go through the suffering to overcome it.
I know, that it's easier to say it than to do it. But doing it is possible.
Here's two ways to practice suffering:
1) Creating Your Own Tension
One thing that I try to do to get a handle on my reactions to emotions before they reach a crisis point is create the reaction myself.
Whether it's anxiety, or anger: try to tense your body and face up as if it's actually happening.
Yes, you might not want to turn on your angry or anxious face amongst a bunch of coworkers, but training yourself to feel what those emotions are like, on your terms, can give you more power over them.
It's like the middle-of-the-ocean military exercise for your emotions.
By knowing what it feels like, getting used to how it feels, and realizing that all of that tension won't kill you: the fight or flight moments you fall into in the course of living may trigger enough memory that you'll understand that you're OK in the moment.
Here's another take on the same thing, from Buddhist monk, Ajahn Amaro.
2) Digesting An Emotion
For this, wait until you come across some kind of difficult emotion in the course of your day. Its cause can be anything.
Once you have an event and the associated emotion/feeling, try to run through these sort of meditative steps:
- First, accept it without trying to change what you're feeling
- Identify the emotion (anger, anxiety, depression, etc.)
- Identify where that emotion is being represented in your body (shoulders, neck, leg, etc.)
- Ask yourself what shape it is in that part of your body (oval, jagged, circular, etc.)
- Ask yourself how big it is (the size of a coin, the size of a loaf of bread, the size of a lamp shade - you want to be as specific as you can be in the moment)
- Ask yourself what color it is (orange, blue, green, etc.)
- Ask yourself on a scale of 1 - 10, where that emotion sits
- If an emotion presents itself as a scene, or an image, allow yourself to experience that (Ex: you identify restlessness and it presents itself as a car on a racetrack driving in circles)
- Wait 60 seconds and ask yourself the same questions
The Point: The reason why you’re doing this is to show yourself that when you’re present with an emotion or a feeling, it’s impossible for it to stay as one thing. But when we say we ‘still’ have a headache that’s a 6 out of 10, or that we’re ‘still’ depressed and that depression is the same shape, we’re living in the story instead of being present with it.
And the being present for these feelings and emotions is how we can get them to change, or go away. And when we live in the story, we’re trapped in the story, resigned to feeling the same intensity of the same things, over and over.
(Additional techniques if necessary)
- Ask yourself what its texture is (rough, soft, sharp, etc.)
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- Ask yourself what the sound of it would be (like a jackhammer hitting concrete, like the sound of something grinding, like something chattering, etc.)
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- Identify how you experienced the negative emotion or feelings
- Try to recreate that experience exactly how you thought you experienced it the first time (mentally, physically)
- Just trying to recreate it may make it go away
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- When needing to feel happy, try to feel as sad as you’ve ever felt
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- If someone is being an asshole to you, try to observe it all and see how many versions of them being an asshole you can experience in the present moment
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- Write a letter to/talk to a chair representing someone you need to resolve things with, telling everything you need to tell them
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All of these previous tasks can be seen as a sort of chewing the emotion.
You're being mindful of it, and present with it.
You're experiencing it with all of your senses, which will help you (believe it, or not) process what you're feeling.
If you're familiar with DBT, this may not be a foreign task for you, but it does have the potential to work.
The Lesson Is: You Can't Solve Your Emotions By Running From Them
Our strongest emotions take hold of us because they're not known.
We don't experience them. We try to dissociate. We live in the past or the future.
And as a former therapist once said: ‘the point of being in this world is to be present for the experience, whatever it is’.
When you’re present for these experiences, you're forcing yourself to build the muscles required to not let them overwhelm you in the moment.
When you’re present for something, you digest it, but if you’re living in the past or the future, it’s like chewing on a piece of fat.
Like anything, it requires practice to build the skills to be present.
But by actually experiencing what we're feeling, we can see that they're impermanent experiences. And we can sometimes speed up their impermanence by perceiving them with all of the senses we possess.
It's not the slowest process, but it's also not a quick fix.
It's a set of problem solving tools to solve a problem you're going to have as long as you live: feeling things.