Jotting out a quick one after coming across something this morning.
Nothing happens that isn’t useful. We feel things because it is useful to feel them.
I’m utterly convinced of that even in the low places where I’d really rather not be.
I’ve also been more focused on sort of a condescending attitude towards these negative periods –
“Oh, there’s something that needs my attention. It thinks it knows what’s best for me, even if it’s completely crossed with my greater goals, but investigation will reveal the wound that’s driving my behavior and how I’m feeling right now so it can be resolved.”
As I’m typing that, I do still really stand behind it.
In inner child work there is true attention paid where we curiously seek information from our past selves in a real way (some may be more comfortable thinking of it as psychic, but anybody can do this – take from that what you will) and slowly guide the rest of our inner conflict into real, felt understanding.
But let’s also add some nuance. Some thinking into the wisdom of the actions we’re driven to by our feelings in flesh and blood, not just psychic moorings.
Emotions solve problems.
Chesterton’s Fence comes to mind – the idea that when you come across a fence in a field, you’re not allowed to remove it until you can explain why it’s there in the first place.
Humans deem things unnecessary all of the time – spleens, kidneys, tonsils, uteruses, feelings – rather than elevating them to at least the solid foundations of “we don’t know all of the reasons why and never will”. There is always going to be a mystery to existence, and I think we need it that way.
At the neuroscience symposium the other weekend I wondered what it would be like to ask the crowd of researchers what drove them so deeply into the need to know “why” and “how” in a way that is understood only to the Western mind, as countless explanations have already been offered by traditions with thousands of years of history and a willingness to believe in metaphor and that the things that exist beyond our noses might also be real. I don’t think I would have found fault in all of them, but at least some of them would have been driven by wounding to their obsession.
Here’s some of the positives contained in negative emotion:
Anger – activation, gets you moving, fires you up to break free of things that truly aren’t working for you. Increases space to help you reach escape velocity between you and things you are tempted to go back to. The desire to physically express outwardly could be an invitation to increase your strength and use your body and come to a more complete understanding of your abilities while increasing them.
Depression – the need to slow down and process things. A physiological way to force you to do that but also just a normal part of the process of life. When someone only lifts weights they tend to get injured past a certain point without rest. You have a stimulus and then the need to absorb the stimulus into the system. Stimuli can pile up until a big processing is needed. All of the pieces of the pie depression includes – self-isolation, sluggishness, sleep, quiet, etc – help enable these processes.
What else do people dislike to feel?
Anxiety can fall into some of the same categories of definition as both of these, but I also offer this post from my friends at Physiology First, who are on an absolute laser-guided mission to educate the youth of today about their bodies and the physiological foundation of their mental health.
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Maggie is whining to go out and I need to get ready for work, so I’ll end my editing and writing here. Enjoy the chew on these ideas.
[Feature Image by Alexandra Haynak from Pixabay.]