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Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

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Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#31

Post by asddddd »

thinkfurther wrote: post #14

> We found that people who habitually accept their negative emotions experience fewer negative emotions and > those who generally allow such bleak feelings as sadness, disappointment and resentment to run their course reported fewer mood disorder symptoms than those who critique them or push them away, even after six months Yet the comments so far are mostly about "controlling your thoughts", rather than accepting ne…

I'd say that the "control" part here would be teaching yourself to stop denying that you're thinking/feeling something. A bear 5 ft away isn't going to be "controlled" by you closing your eyes and plugging your ears.

How can you change something if you're still denying it?

Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#32

Post by mirimir »

Been there, done that :( For me, it's been a negative spiral that ends with behavioral paralysis.

Over the years, I've managed to train myself to be amused by feeling bad. Because it's so pointless and silly. And so I smile, feel happy, and consider what needs done. Sometimes what needs done is sleeping for 15 hours. But that's very different from refusing to get out of bed.

Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#33

Post by thinbeige »

colordrops wrote: post #25
thinbeige wrote: post #21

Maybe this sounds too simple and not academic: The more I am busy (with meaningful work) the less time I have time to feel bad about feeling bad or just thinking about this. This doesn't mean one should escape into random work but that there maight be a slight correlation.

I've found that when I'm in a better mood I find myself more busy with meaningful work, so the correlation may go the other way.

IDK and in my case the cause effect direction is the other way.

Imagine you get busy because of external deadlines you cannot influence and you need get things done and don't have time to think a second about anything unrelated.

Even if you are in a bad mood and don't want to work you MUST because of the deadlines. Once you are working towards the deadlines, all bad feelings are gone.

Not sure how it works the way around, I am happy, now I make myself busy with random taks?

Edit: Still thinking about your opinion and now I might agree. If you feel good you might have the willpower to start new meaningful things which make you busy again.

Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#34

Post by lr4444lr »

nyrulez wrote: post #19

This article is going to make you feel bad about "feeling bad about feeling bad"...don't go there. You've been warned.

I was going to make this meta-text joke if no one else had beaten me to it. Bravo, sir. But do you feel bad about giving people that ominous warning?

Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#35

Post by minikites »

aphextron wrote: post #16

I've come to accept this with regards to sexist/racist thoughts. Once you realize that it is a normal, ingrained biological urge to have these thoughts as a result of human evolution and cultural conditioning, it frees you to stop "feeling bad" about having those thoughts and trying to block them out, so that you can objectively assess the flawed assumptions behind them and reason yourself past them without the need…

When you hear something new, your first reaction is what you've been taught. Your reaction to that reaction is what you have learned.

Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#37

Post by nyrulez »

lr4444lr wrote: post #34
nyrulez wrote: post #19

This article is going to make you feel bad about "feeling bad about feeling bad"...don't go there. You've been warned.

I was going to make this meta-text joke if no one else had beaten me to it. Bravo, sir. But do you feel bad about giving people that ominous warning?

I feel pretty good about it actually...the stack is looking good at the top at least, even if it's shitty all the way down.

Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#38

Post by nyrulez »

jrs95 wrote: post #27
nyrulez wrote: post #19

This article is going to make you feel bad about "feeling bad about feeling bad"...don't go there. You've been warned.

Too late...I don't even know what level I'm in anymore. Hopefully this will stop before I experience a depression stack overflow.

What we really need is an article on how to increase our emotional stack depth so that this recursive badness doesn't matter at all.

Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#39

Post by pdpi »

averagewall wrote: post #9

I wonder if causality is backwards. Perhaps if your negative emotions are really causing problems, you're more likely to actively to to stop them by telling yourself not to feel them.

It's both — it's a feedback loop. Here's a typical couple of days when you're dealing with uncontrolled anxiety:

You feel like shit, that makes you unproductive and slow and dull. End of the day, you didn't get anything done because you stare at your text editor and your brain just refuses to engage in anything but panicking over... something. You get home, Now you still fill like shit the same as before, but also feel like shit over the fact that you didn't get anything done today and and you need to make up for it tomorrow. But then you don't get any proper sleep and you still have to catch and on lost time and you're in for a pretty bad day, but you shouldn't think like that, why are you wallowing in self pity, just get over yourself and get stuff done. But that doesn't really work, oh shit oh shit oh shit thingsarespiralingoutofcontrolwhatdoIdo?

You fall into that trap and now you're proper screwed. Anxiety is causing problems, problems are causing anxiety. The alternative is to learn to cut the second order effect short, which stops the loop. Yes, you had a bad day, and yes, your project is delayed because of it. What's done is done, and you can't fix it, so just accept it. Let people know you're behind schedule, replan if necessary, and move on.

In many ways, breaking that cycle is an exercise in allowing yourself self-compassion without indulging in self-pity.

Re: Feeling bad about feeling bad can make you feel worse

#40

Post by throwawaywonk »

joe_the_user wrote: post #28

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…

We should probably get rid of all of the social sciences just to be on the safe side then. I mean, really, how can we know anything about anything really?
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