Tag: Counseling for Depression
Interview Conducted with Dr. Matthieu Villatte!
Perhaps we are making Philippine history here!
Here’s a video of my interview with Matthieu Villatte, PhD who is an Assistant Professor at Bastyr University in Seattle, WA in the United States.
He obtained his doctoral degree in psychology in France, where he was trained as a clinical psychologist. He moved to the US in 2010 to complete a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Nevada, Reno under the mentorship of Steven Hayes, PhD.
Matthieu Villatte is the author of numerous books and chapters on mindfulness, acceptance, experiential therapies, and contextual behavioral science, such as the first manual published in French on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Mastering the Clinical Conversation: Language as Intervention, co-authored by Jennifer Villatte and Steven Hayes.
In the video, we talked about how the principles of behavioral therapy apply to everyday lives of people, the OFW or migrant worker phenomenon prevailing in the Philippines, as well as the pandemic!
Facing the New Year with Awareness, Courage, and Love
by Nathan Chua
The title of this post is not an original, at least the part that counts most. Many times in my graduate studies, I had wondered what, bottomline, counseling was about. I mean, what is it basically that we are trying to accomplish? At some point in my graduate studies, I thought it was forgiveness. It turns out that I will find an answer to this in my readings of Kevin Polk and his co-authors. It’s about helping clients to become more aware, to act courageously, and to do so lovingly.
Let’s take them one at a time.
Awareness:
Much of what we regret doing stems from acting in ways that are automatic. How often have we seen people commit homicides in this country, only to see them realize that they had lost control over their actions for a split second? There was even a case of a police officer who had a sterling record of service, who now has an indelible audiovisual account of him shooting a hapless middle-aged woman dead. His promising career that took him years to build was upended by a brief moment of rage.
Awareness is a word that I often heard around the graduate classes I attended. In ACT or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, the word that is more often used to describe awareness is noticing. For me, the gerund form makes it an active pursuit that we can do from moment to moment. If we learn to practice noticing, then there’s a chance for a split second that the police officer I earlier mentioned would be able to choose more effective actions in that moment of rage. It could have averted the loss of two lives. One ended by a shot in the head, while the other was left to languish in prison.
Courage:
One thing ACT has taught me is that noticing is not just noticing or being aware of the difficult thoughts and feelings that we have. It also involves noticing the rest of us. By that I mean, we also notice other facets of the context that can move us in the direction of what is important to us in each moment. Being a complete human being with all its history and complexity involves noticing that part of us that can move towards important ends.
Over involvement in avoiding and controlling difficult inner experiences can lead us to tiring out of life and learning hopelessness is just around the corner anytime. The peculiar thing about us is that we are capable of doing things that we don’t normally expect from ourselves when the stakes are high enough to respond in ways that go beyond our own urges to be self-protective. We seem to be capable of running towards difficult inner experiences rather than run away when it matters. That shy, unassuming classmate of yours can all of a sudden show up in the news being called a hero for saving a complete stranger from a burning car. As Dr. Steven Hayes, the instigator of ACT, loves to say, “That’s just the kind of monkey we are.” So we are capable of doing courageous, selfless acts. It’s just built in. It can resurface in our consciousness if we become more noticing.
Love:
And as we do those courageous acts, we are also capable of seeing the world from other people’s perspectives. We are capable of empathy and acts of kindness in the face of challenging circumstances. You, my readers, do it every day! We can do inconvenient acts for the sake of someone we care for. We come to the side of those who mourn. We help out without anyone knowing. We care for our kids even if it means sacrificing our own convenience.
That in a nutshell can sum up what we do in counseling. Making us the whole human beings that we were meant to be based on how we were wired. It’s not easy being human because we have a very handy tool that can also cause us much suffering. The mind is there to do its job. Objectively noticing that it is neither a boss nor an enemy makes a big difference. We just need to learn to notice it doing its thing, face our fears and do things that matter anyway, and then do it with love and care for ourselves and others as well. In other words, we are all capable of awareness, courage, and love, but sometimes we are not aware, or aware that we are not aware sometimes. And this my friends, takes practice!
Have a more noticing new year to come and thank you for coming to this place for the past 2021.
Listen to this post on Spotify! Click here!
Don’t judge yourself…but how?
by Nathan Chua
Don’t judge yourself!
Well, how’s that done? Unfortunately, once we decide to not judge ourselves for judging ourselves, then what are we doing? We are judging ourselves for judging ourselves. It is not just that we judge, but we judge the judging. So we are judging “judging!”
Let’s do this well-loved exercise to discover how our minds work. If I tell you that you are a pretty okay person, notice what your mind does to that thought. If I tell you that you are the nicest, most wonderful person on the planet that ever lived, notice what your mind does with that thought. Finally, if I tell you, you are the worst and least kind person on the planet, notice what your mind does with that. If you notice, your mind will come up with different thoughts with every comment. It’s like it is arguing with itself and it will not stop!
In its earlier days, ACT was called comprehensive distancing. This means that in ACT, we are not so much interested in the content of our thoughts as the function of our thoughts. In order to do that, we need to separate ourselves from our thoughts. The first step is to notice our thoughts as just thoughts. They don’t have to be gotten rid of or believed or followed.
The key to more psychological freedom is to notice how the mind works. By freedom I don’t mean that we will eventually be free of our thoughts, but rather that we will become more capable of saying no to the dictates of our thoughts. Some of those dictates lead to compliance, while some lead to resistance and judging! In other words, noticing how our minds work helps us to become more capable of making effective choices for a better life.
Now let’s get back to the judging. The mind is an excellent judging machine. It has to because otherwise we would not be as successful a species as we would like. Why is this so? Judging has its uses. In order to survive longer, our minds have to judge the surroundings and look out for threats. Therefore, to know which ones are a threat and which ones are not, our minds would have to judge!
As Dr. Russ Harris illustrates, back when we were cave dwellers, we needed our minds to judge the presence of a threat to our survival. Our minds are there as survival tools that get us through inclement weather, save us from predatory animals, or whatever threats there may be. Unfortunately, that same function of the mind is not limited to external threats only. The human mind translates all signals of threat as one. Regardless of whether it is a physical external threat or an internal one, the signals evoke the same urges to respond in a certain way. The fear of an approaching bear is construed as the same fear when we have thoughts of a bear.
The subject of the work of an ACT therapist is to help the client notice that these mental processes are just that, mental. The noticing is followed by an open stance or a willingness to have such difficult experiences in the service of doing what is important to the client.
So there you are! If there was anything that you and I know about ACT as an approach to therapy, this skill of noticing thoughts as thoughts and judgments as judgments is key! Now how about judging the “judging?” Notice the judging and remember that this is just another function of the mind. There is nothing inherently wrong with judging “judging,” for that is what the mind does. What we can practice is to notice the judging as what it is, not what it says it is.
Our minds are like an overzealous friend who wants to be helpful. It is not our enemy. Think of it as your child just wanting you to be a comfortable and safe parent. Therein lies one of the keys to being mindful and living the mindful life. These parts of you are not your enemies but your friends or your children. Love them for what they are, not as what they say they are, and we’ll soon be on our way to a more loving and more compassionate existence.
Why some remain skeptical about counseling
by Nathan Chua
With the way many mainstream and social media entities have dealt with the topic of mental health, it may be surprising for some to know that therapy and counseling has yet to completely shake off the social stigma attached to seeking help for mental health problems. Although the pandemic could have reduced some of the skepticism, there are still many who are adamant about their views. I know some of you reading this will think, “Uh oh, here we go again, another article in defense of seeking professional help.” Quite the contrary though, and sorry to disappoint you, but this post is more about taking a long hard look at what the profession has done to produce such skepticism. Maybe it’s time to look inside our practices and see what our role is in contributing to this lack of confidence.
In his book, “The Anatomy of an Epidemic,” author and journalist, Robert Whitaker talks about how drugs have been abused to treat otherwise well-functioning individuals who suffered serious albeit temporary mental problems. As I have written before in a previous blog post, this is what Dr. Steven Hayes often refers to as the “DSMization” or biomedicalization of mental health care. Dr. Hayes even encourages dropping the term, “mental health,” for something that is more attuned to what the current science is showing. He suggests the use of mental resilience or mental skills instead. In sum, the current approach of classifying people into categories and subcategories of disease has done more harm than good. It has led to the abuse of medications that more often produce unnecessary and rather serious side effects. I have written about this in a past blog post, so let’s turn now to the crux of what I want to share in this one.
The second point which I want to emphasize for this post is what I heard Dr. Hayes said about our work in the helping profession that uses talking (or language) as a primary medium of change. At the time I heard it, I couldn’t understand what he meant when he said that in our field of work, experience predicts confidence not competence. I even took the time to post my difficulty understanding Dr. Hayes’ words in one of the social media groups I have belonged to since attending some workshops in the past. I didn’t really find any of the comments to my posted question to hit the nail on the head. Finally and luckily, I came across a podcast where Dr. Hayes himself explained what he meant.
It’s pretty much like learning how to shoot the ball in the game of basketball. Looking at how your shot went gives you the feedback you need to see how you can improve your shooting skills, or which shooting form works. Yes, feedback! Now can you imagine if you were shooting with a blindfold all along!
In my first nine years of practice, I had followed what was mostly being taught in mainstream psychology here in the Philippines. Of course, my clients eventually get better! But better at what? Well, mainly they had become better at reducing some of that anxiety, depression, etc. The rule of thumb can be summed up this way, you are here for counseling because you need help in removing some of that difficult feeling inside in order for you to do whatever it is you want moving forward.
At times then I was wondering, do my clients really get better because of my work, or are they just recovering on their own over time? The other side of it is, why are my clients coming back for sessions every time there is a new challenge in front of them? Furthermore, with the approaches I had tried, I had to read up on so many books and enroll in so many training modules in order to address the myriad of cases presented to me! I thought this feels quite like an impossible task! Is there anyone who can master all of these protocols for every mental health concern? Is that even human?
And of course I was getting good feedback, because clients do learn that these difficult emotions do have a shelf life! And I had become their shoulder to cry on when things get rough once again! So who’s the expert here?
Even while I was in business, I was always looking for better stuff. I remember in my 40s, I found myself hitting a ceiling with finding answers through my spiritual journey. And as I pursued further studies in counseling, I hit another ceiling! It felt like whatever I was doing, I could not attest to myself that these same methods I use with my clients do lead me to get past my own limitations!
Now I am not saying here that I have reached some kind of perfection in terms of the way I deal with my personal struggles. In fact, I am still learning up until this writing. But in Contextual Behavioral Science (in general and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy in particular), I think I have found a place where there is a way past that final ceiling. And guess what? If there was something available out there that proves to me that I can find a science that can even be better than what is available in contextual behavioral science, I will take it! Because what matters to me in my work is what actually works! That is why I am now an ACT therapist and a functional contextualist! I think it is by far the most scientifically sound approach and the one that will gradually take me through that hardest of all ceilings! This is the fire that burns in me and the reason why I am passionate about sharing this with you!
When we grieve…
by Nathan Chua
Nothing can be more heartrending than to see someone in my office having to deal with the loss of a dear one. Not only is there pain in seeing the empty spaces at home, but also the empty hours that go by without a familiar companion. Some even have to deal with the images of seeing the loved one’s struggle for that one last breath.
How does one cope with such a cruel reality that life introduces us to, the moment we lose that childhood innocence? What does grieving involve? How do we move on when all we have are memories of something that will never happen again? Why is it so hard to find relief?
Some of the unnecessary suffering we experience in the course of grieving involves our own struggle against the feelings that come with a loss. When we suppress our feelings that come with such an evocative event, we end up with an unwinnable struggle. A common misconception is that grief is a feeling that we should try to get over with. We feel especially unfit when we are not able to do so just at the time when others around us have. Attached to this idea is the effort to appear unperturbed by the pain we carry. Grief is not a feeling but a process that involves different feelings. There will be guilt, hurt, sadness, anger, and many more that come along with the process.
A common experience is the advice that we get from well-meaning people around us who try hard to cheer us up. Our minds will quickly relate this to some kind of internal defect having been left behind by the group that has moved on with their feelings. We reject parts of us that tell us that we have lost someone we cared for. You and I are not robots or computers that can be programmed to shut down certain thoughts and feelings with the flick of a switch. This is what I often end up observing in my clients. It is quite understandable since there is so much pressure to conform with the expectations; especially of those they hold in high regard.
If we run away from our difficult feelings then we don’t really learn much about who we are or what we hold to be important in our relationships. Grieving now turns into a struggle with our own thoughts, feelings, and memories. We overlook the reason behind our pain. That reason is important because we cared enough to hurt over what we have lost. Dr. Steven Hayes had this to say, “The things that bring us pain, also enrich our lives. When we cry at the loss of a friend, we’re enriching our lives, we’re not diminishing our lives.”
One of the processes that can help us get through with more resilience, purpose, and meaning in the midst of such a crushing event is to remember why this person meant so much to us. Maybe they were kind and loving. Maybe they never had a bad thing to say about others. Maybe they were thoughtful and caring, gentle and soft-spoken. Whatever it is that they left in your memory only tells you one thing. That those same qualities of being they lived, are pretty much the same in you. Live it! Bring their lives into yours and experience for yourself what some experts call a place in time, “where the magic happens.”
Living with Purpose and Intent
by Nathan Chua
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever,”
Mahatma Gandhi
Have you come to a point in your life when you feel like as it says in the Bible, chasing after the wind? Have you ever felt like every day has become a pointless pursuit of comfort and tranquility? Has your life turned into an endless problem to solve? You go from fixing one problem after another. When’s the next challenge going to come? Will I be able to surmount the bigger ones down the line?
If you have, don’t worry, you’re not alone. I came from the same quagmire. Early in my career, I started believing that life was about fulfilling a role of being around to be the problem solver. Furthermore, I had learned from my history that the secret to the good life is the comfortable life. One in which I can be the great problem solver, conquering one obstacle at a time until there remain only the easier ones. I dreamt of eventually coasting along as I moved into old age.
I lived that way for the first 20 years of my working life. People around me would notice how I looked then. I often carried a tired and angry expression on my face; always on alert for the next challenge that comes my way. I was the hero who was always ready to come to the rescue.
To borrow a metaphor I saw in a YouTube video, you can view a rabbit running across from a window, but you wouldn’t know if that rabbit was going for a carrot or running away from a predator. I was like that rabbit that people saw from a window. One couldn’t tell if I was in business because I simply enjoyed doing it or if I was doing it to avoid the shame that comes if I had failed in business. For those who are new here, I spent the first 20 years of my career as a businessman. A failure in business meant I had failed my family.
You would probably understand why I often looked tired and angry. Tired because life has become a struggle and angry because I didn’t see any end in sight. Life was sending me challenge after challenge to surmount. Like the rabbit running away from a predator that eventually tires out, I was exhausted escaping from the jaws of my shaming, “Whatever happens, don’t be a failure,” thoughts.
One day I woke up and started noticing the hamster wheel I was on. It was as if I was living backwards. Like some of what I learned in psychodynamic therapy, I lived hoping to come back to the safety of my mother’s womb, wishing to get back to that fetal position of a tranquil life.
That tranquil life turns out to be a mirage. No matter how much we try to avoid it, life has its challenges and running away from the feelings and thoughts that these challenges come with, is like becoming a rabbit that spends most of its time fleeing a predator, although in my case the predator is my own worst fears.
You and I can pivot towards a life in pursuit of what truly matters to us. Rabbits run away from life-threatening circumstances. We humans though can run away from our thoughts and not just actual threats to our safety. It only takes the rabbit to notice when the noise behind the bushes was just a gust of wind to make it go and pursue food or a mate. Although it is difficult, we can start to make changes in our life directions by noticing if we are spending much of our energies running away from our unpleasant internal experiences, or if we are pursuing the qualities of being and living that matter to us.
The happy rabbit is the one that pursues nourishment and the possibility of a mate. Take it from there, are you willing to start pursuing the rich and meaningful life, even if it means that your fearful inner experiences will become more evident as you go. Maybe that’s what Gandhi meant in his words. His life was mostly about pursuing something that was good and noble, rather than about running away from the dangers his mind reminded him of. He pursued the irrational move to expose himself to the dangers of a life spent for the welfare of others, and paid the ultimate price. Nonetheless, he lived, not the tranquil life, but the meaningful one. He is the quintessential rabbit moving in the direction of what he wanted to do with his time…every single minute.
Are you a walking diagnosis?
by Nathan Chua
In my more than a decade’s work, one of the most common questions I get from people inquiring about mental health services is, “Can you give me a diagnosis?” These come in many forms. Some call already with a prior diagnosis from another practitioner, “I had been diagnosed as a borderline personality, is there anything different about the way you treat people like me?” Even as I had training from that very same school of thought, I had always had my reservations about the practice of diagnosing. I had been diagnosed once, and I know how it feels and I know that it really wasn’t helpful. It is as if knowing what people have can make them somehow more aware of their tendencies and therefore allow them to be more cognizant of their actions.
Does knowing one’s diagnosis really help? Let’s take a look at what a diagnosis really comes up to, by taking this to an absurd level of analogy. If one were diagnosed to be bipolar, would they go around eating in restaurants and meeting people and saying, “Hi, I am Nathan. I am a bipolar disordered person!” Would they introduce themselves in every situation the same way? Like would that be how you would tell someone about yourself in a group class? From this, we can notice that we all act differently depending on the situations that we are in. We act differently when we are at work and when we are at home. We act differently when we are stressed and when we are relaxed.
Based on my experience, I have seen how this happens to people who had been dealt with a veritable life sentence of being attached to a label. At times, even worse, pinned with an inaccurate one at that.
As human beings we have evolved into a group of cells and individuals that thrive and survive through cooperation. One of the scariest parts of being human is to become isolated from a group. Being creatures who survive in communities, we have yearnings to belong. In the wild, the isolated human’s fate is most probably becoming a dead human sooner than later.
Belonging is important to us. There was even a famous study in the past that showed how much humans require nurturing and caring. Babies cannot survive just being fed through a bottle. They need touching and the physical and mental stimulation that comes from a caregiver.
However in the age of social media and the rest of the modern accoutrements we enjoy, the mind has hijacked this inner yearning to belong. Our problem-solving minds are excellent in categorizing people. The way to this felt sense of belonging has turned into being special instead of being one with others who share the same doubts, fears, and inner perturbations. You and I can see this in how special people want to project themselves in their social media accounts. The way to belong is to become special! Do you notice the oxymoron here?
The other way the mind hijacks this yearning to belong is the complete opposite of the abovementioned example. Our thoughts turn us into especially vulnerable individuals that need special attention. I have bipolar disorder so you better be extra kind and loving around me.
Like traits, all these diagnoses serve more to put us in boxes of categories. Experts have seen how countries that had adapted this system of classification (or what we call our DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorder) get worse results. What we used to think were just the shy nerdy types in school have now turned into walking diagnoses that need special attention and worse, medication. We had forgotten an era when that shy, quiet girl in class can turn into the next world class stage performer.
So let’s get back to how I started this blog post. What do I say when asked about whether or not I can give a diagnosis? I just tell them that I don’t.
Why People Relapse
by Nathan Chua
Seeing a client again after a while evokes mixed feelings for me. Part of me says, I am happy to meet an old friend again and someone with whom I had deep, important, and meaningful conversations. But another part of me tells me that I might have not done the best job that was possible within the means that I knew. The pendulum swings to the negative even more, if I hear a loved one of a former client inform me of a relapse. What is wrong with my approach? Why do people (myself included) relapse?
I have two things that can explain this. One is, it is quite normal for us to have relapses. In fact, before 2019, I often tell my clients that they are welcome to come back on an as-needed basis rather than our usual weekly or bi-weekly meetings. Now that they have improved in handling their difficult emotions, I fully expect them to have relapses every now and then. I am relieved though that even as some clients do come back for the sporadic follow-up sessions, they do manage to rekindle some of what they had learned from our previous work more quickly than they would otherwise.
The second reason I believe relapses happen, is the focus on symptom-alleviation in the approaches that I had available to me. In 2019, I learned about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or ACT. Since then I have begun to understand that not all of these relapses are to be counted off as expected realities.
Helping clients manage their symptoms has its weak points because recovery is based largely on their level of distress. In this case, the client’s attention is focused on whether the depression, anxiety, etc, are still around or not! It’s like regularly watching your back to see if the symptoms have gone or are kept to a minimum.
The reality though is life can often hand us challenges that can go beyond what we believe is our capacity to manage these symptoms. The randomness of life can give us something that can overwhelm our capacities to suppress these painful feelings. Running away or keeping these feelings underwater like a giant beach ball has its limits.
I love the way Dr. Russ Harris uses the metaphor of the two donkeys to illustrate this. Let’s say we have two options to make two donkeys move in a certain direction. One donkey was made to move with the experience and the threat of being hit by a stick, while the other was prodded by a carrot in front of it. Which donkey do we think will last longer? I presume most of us would say that it would be the second donkey with the carrot. Secondly, which donkey do we think would be happier as it moves in the direction we want? It’s quite a natural choice for us to say that it will still be the second one.
I used to call myself eclectic in my approach simply because I had to use different techniques and frameworks to address different problems. However, there is one underlying presumption in these approaches that I had adopted for the first 10 years of my work, that counseling was all about alleviating symptoms or suffering, so people can go on living their “normal” lives.
Under these approaches though, clients would tend to measure their progress by the absence or suppression of their symptoms. For example, if my depression or anxiety is kept to a minimum tolerable level, only then can I move on with the tasks of living. The end result becomes achieving a life absent those overwhelming feelings again. Clients end up thinking that feeling good is what makes them “normal.” This is what in behavioral terms is called living life under aversive control. It is just like the donkey that is motivated by the avoidance of the stick.
In ACT, an alternative way of motivating people to live the kind of lives they want for themselves. I learned what it means to be the donkey motivated by the carrot ahead of it. Wouldn’t life be so much more fun if we had the carrot that we follow until the very last breath we take? In behavioral terms, this is life lived under appetitive control. It is not looking behind our shoulders every now and then, and reminding ourselves that we have BPD or OCD or MDD, etc. that is just waiting for us with open mouths to swallow us again.
This is about looking at ourselves as a whole human being and not just parts of ourselves. We are whole. We are not broken. These painful experiences, emotions, thoughts, and physical sensations are part of our makeup as human beings. We are not machines to be taken apart and having to remove parts of ourselves that we think are causing the depression, the anxiety, or the obsessive thoughts, or whatnot.
Being human means we chase after our carrots in life with the pain that comes along in that chase. That’s when we know that we exist with a purpose. Maybe with this in mind, a relapse only signals a need for a refresher on what is important to my clients, and not just being reminded of the ways to run away from pain. What a difference ACT in 2019 made to my practice!
Are some emotions toxic?
by Nathan Chua
How was your day? Toxic! How often have you and I heard this from a partner, friend, co-worker, or even ourselves? It may be unsaid, but in our subconscious, that normally means we had a day with really “bad” emotions. The mantra seems to be, we have to be feeling good at least most of our day to make it a day worth our while. The toxic day becomes nothing more than one that’s wasted, forgotten, and thrown into the garbage bin, a part of the many insignificant moments of our personal history.
This is often thrown around in media and online circles as positive thinking. The undisclosed rule here is, we need to have positive feelings in order to move forward with whatever it is we want to do with our relationships, careers, etc. We flip it around and we come up with the opposite rule, negative feelings equals a negative life or a life that is spent dwelling in negative thoughts. Simply stated, negative feelings mean you can’t do much that’s productive. These unwanted feelings cause us to do bad stuff or become unproductive.
Much of this comes from what we learn as kids from our parents. The ultimate babysitter rule is don’t be angry cause anger causes you to act badly towards your siblings. What’s so bad about learning that, you might ask? One way to answer this is with a question. Why do you think there are some men out there who believe that anger causes them to lose control of their actions? It’s because these men were trained to think that the emotion of anger is the invisible thing that causes them to become violent. But nobody ever got into trouble with anger. It is what we do with our anger that does that.
Another problem that this rule about avoiding negative feelings can create, is that we can believe that we should remain positive even in situations that would normally cause us to feel sad or anxious. This way we become insensitive to context. We pretty much saw this in certain events when the Covid 19 pandemic struck. Some people remained optimistic that the virus was going to just go away and threw caution to the wind. Positive thinking in this context works rather poorly in saving lives.
Emotions are there to give us messages that there may be something here that is important to us. In what ways, you may ask.
Here are some ways our negative emotions can be helpful to our well-being:
- When our kid crosses the street: Without the fear that our child could get badly hurt in a car accident, we would not grab the child out of danger when they attempt to put one foot out on the street. The so-called “negative” emotion can be just the thing to keep us breathing.
- When we visit the grieving: Without sadness, we will not be able to be present with the people who had suffered a loss. I mean, wouldn’t you think the grieving would feel more comforted when they know that they are not alone in their sadness, guilt, fear, and whatnot?
- When we date: Without having a clear sense of our feelings while we are on a date, we could end up with multiple relationships that are abusive. For instance, if you do not sense that this person makes you feel unimportant because they only want to talk about themselves, then you might be in for a rude awakening some day. You miss an opportunity to say no to your date and find another one who may make you have a sense that your evening, your ideas, and your feelings matter as much to them as they do to you.
- When we want to discover who we want to be: The most difficult feelings we have usually tell us about what truly matters to us. If we care about friendships, then we would naturally feel anxiety when we are in a situation where friendships can be made. If we care about being accepted, then the possibility of rejection is something that would mortify us. Behind the anxiety and the fear of rejection we often miss the idea that being sociable and being accepting matter to us dearly. If they didn’t matter, they wouldn’t hurt! Are being sociable and accepting qualities we would want to run away from? If we do (primarily because we don’t want the pain that comes with these qualities of being), we lose chances of discovering who we want to be. And time can go by really fast without us noticing that we have been so busy pursuing relief from the pain but not really being the sociable and accepting person we want to be.
As you see, we have feelings for good reasons. That’s just how we were built in order for us to survive and succeed in cooperative groups; for we did evolve successfully in groups. We are not the solitary type of species.
Furthermore, not wanting to feel bad means we can’t be happy either! How does this happen? Think about that trip you made to Boracay. If you are the type who does not want to feel disappointed, then you would not want to feel too bad when your vacation ends. We end up living a flat life with very little adventure since full-on enjoyment reminds us of full-on disappointment. To paraphrase a renowned psychologist, your mind is like your hand, it cannot choose what it can feel. Your hand will feel both the rough and the smooth surfaces. We can’t tell our hands to only feel the good stuff.
On a final note, I want you to notice the difference between making a presentation with the goal of getting it over and done with, and how you’d feel if you made the presentation regardless of how hard it was emotionally, simply because it was important for you to do it for an audience that you cared about. The former will probably be more about a sense of relief, while the latter would most likely give you an experience of accomplishment and satisfaction. Now, which side would you like to be on?
Remember, both situations have anxiety in common. One though wants to run away from it, while the other knows anxiety is just part of the deal of pursuing meaningful ends. Neither of them want anxiety, but one of them accepts it for a cause greater than what they feel. So the question you would want to ask yourself is, “Would you be willing to have something you don’t like, to gain something that you do want?” In other words, would you prefer living a life pursuing relief or a life pursuing satisfaction, meaning, and purpose, because as I often like to remind you, my audience, we all have One Life Only!