Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

I think recognizing why we feel a certain way is important but a little different than what the article is discussing at face value. A lot of what the article discussed seemed to describe people feeling added emotional stress because of a reluctance to believe that the negative emotions afflicting them were okay (for lack of a better term). It's like the difference between struggling to swim out of a powerful current versus simply letting it carry you and waiting for the lifeguard because you know you're already caught. Granted, you should probably signal the lifeguard but that breaks the metaphor.

This is a great insight (at least for me) and has shed light on a problem I've been grappling with for a long time. Thank you.

I think the same goes for worrying too much about and trying to assert too much control over one's impulsive behavior. Like trying to eliminate it completely. It may paradoxically bring more of it.

I don't know if this claim is true or false but I'm pretty sure that doing a study on this kind of thing is an extremely fraught enterprise. Edit: more so than even simpler psychology studies, many of which are coming back with problems.

How does one determine that someone is really "feeling bad about feeling bad" or whether they're satisfying some expectation of the experimenter or doing something else? And moreover, cause and effect can be slippery, maybe those with more extreme problems tend to be caused to do the thing the experimenter thinks is a mistake rather what they do having an effect.

Something I wish my parents had told me when I was growing up:

You, the thing listening to this advice, is just a small part of a greater whole, much of which you (the thing listening to this advice) are not consciously aware of. This is because you were built by your genes to be good mainly at one thing: reproducing. That's all your genes care about. They don't care about your happiness or achievements or having a fulfilled life. In fact, they don't even really "care" about reproducing, except the same way that water cares about flowing downhill.

Your negative emotions are real. The pain you feel is real. But it's not you. It's something that is being done to you. In that regard it is exactly the same as physical pain, which is also not part of you, but rather something done to you. The fact that you're depressed is no more a character flaw than the fact that it hurts when you skin your knee.