Feeling Awful

There is a difference between pretending to feel good and genuinely feeling okay about not feeling good.

You can wake up with anxiety, heaviness, or another awful feeling and decide that shouldn’t be happening. You can hide it, justify it, fight it, or rush to fix it.

Or you can recognize that this is part of your human experience today. You can allow the feeling without making it mean you are broken.

That is a skill I want you to practice: getting better at feeling awful.

A good life doesn’t require you to feel good every day

I was talking with a friend about how well my business and life were going externally. At the same time, I was having a difficult emotional experience.

People often assume those two things should match. If the circumstances are wonderful, the feelings should be wonderful.

But our feelings come from our thoughts. External success doesn’t remove anxiety or the negative half of being human.

For me, feeling awful can be a heavy, deflating sensation in my stomach. When life looks good on the outside, it can be tempting to think I have no justification for that feeling.

Then I might go hunting for an external reason. I look for something wrong in the world or my life so the feeling makes sense. That search can create even more negative emotion.

You don’t have to justify feeling bad. You can simply notice that you do.

Stop being upset about being upset

The first step is not adding another layer of upset to the emotion you already have.

Give the feeling a nod. Recognize that this is what is here today. It doesn’t mean you are unworthy, that something is wrong with you, or that you need to have a tantrum about yourself.

It also doesn’t automatically mean you stop taking action or going through your day.

You can notice the feeling with compassion and understanding without immediately trying to fix it. Thought work doesn’t require you to swap every negative thought as quickly as possible.

When you understand that thoughts cause feelings, you can allow yourself to process the feeling rather than rush away from it.

Allowing isn’t reacting, avoiding, or buffering

The next step is to recognize what you do with the emotion.

Allowing it is different from using it to justify giving up, avoiding your life, or buffering. You can have compassion for yourself while still deciding how you want to act.

You are learning to be in your current emotional state instead of bypassing it.

Think about having the flu. You assess what you can do and what your body needs. You may need to rest. You don’t need to make being sick another reason to attack yourself for being human.

Emotional discomfort can be approached with that same willingness to pay attention. What am I experiencing? How is it affecting me? What do I need as I move through this?

Sometimes feeling bad for a long time genuinely calls for coaching or outside expert help. At other times, you are experiencing the ebb and flow of being alive. Learning to allow emotion helps you understand that experience instead of immediately rejecting it.

Describe what the emotion feels like

Rather than trying to destroy the feeling, invite yourself to observe it.

Where do you feel it in your body? Is it heavy? Is there tension? What is the worst part of the experience?

Stay with those questions. Notice whether the discomfort is the sensation itself, the thoughts running through your mind, or the tension you add by resisting it.

Describing the emotion requires you to become the watcher of yourself. You are experiencing the feeling and observing yourself experiencing it.

That subtle shift gives you another perspective. You aren’t simply buried in the emotion. You can see yourself having it, with compassion and curiosity.

As you practice moving between experiencing and observing, you can stay with the feeling longer. You begin to recognize that you can process it without escaping.

Don’t spread the feeling through your whole life

One difficult moment can become a story about everything.

You step on the scale and have negative thoughts about the number. Then you look at your relationship, the children, the house, and your business through that same emotional state. Suddenly everything seems wrong.

You have compounded the drama. Now observing one feeling is harder because you have gathered reasons to feel awful about every part of your life.

Notice that tendency. If you wake up anxious, you don’t have to search the news or your relationships for more reasons to justify the anxiety.

Stay with describing the emotion. Let yourself understand what you are feeling before you start gathering thoughts from everywhere.

The thought behind it may not initially seem important, or you may not yet be conscious of it. You can make room to notice without turning the rest of your life into evidence that everything is bad.

What is it like to feel okay about feeling bad?

You already know something about accepting discomfort.

After a hard workout, you may be sore. You understand the soreness and allow it. On a roller coaster, you expect fear. Being willing to feel it changes your experience of it.

Being afraid of getting afraid would create a very different ride.

You can apply that willingness to your emotional life. You can recognize that you don’t feel happy, successful, or beautiful in this moment and still be okay with being here.

You don’t need the world to become different before you start that work. Begin from the inside out. Breathe into the feeling, notice it, and let it be part of the reality of this moment.

Confidence includes knowing you can feel awful

When you are afraid of feeling bad, you organize your life around avoiding anything you think might cause that feeling.

When you know how to allow and process it, more of your life becomes available. You can move toward experiences without needing a guarantee that you will feel good.

You may still wake up feeling awful. But you don’t have to panic about it. You can recognize what is here, observe it, and practice being with it.

Feeling awful doesn’t require feeling awful about feeling awful.

You can have compassion for the experience and confidence in your ability to move through it. Let yourself be human today, without adding a fight against being human.