WHO DO WE KEEP TRYING TO FIX OUR FEELINGS?

Someone feels anxious and immediately tries to calm themselves down

Someone feels lonely and reaches for their phone

Someone feels inadequate and starts working harder

And someone who’s spent years in therapy notices an uncomfortable feeling and immediately starts trying to work out where it came from

We’ve become remarkably good at finding things to do with our feelings

Regulate them. Process them. Understand them. Heal them

But I’ve become increasingly curious about something

When did we decide that feeling uncomfortable meant something needed to be done?

I spent years believing that the answer to my suffering was to understand it, work through it and eventually get rid of it

And I became very good at explaining myself

Yet much of the suffering continued

What I’ve come to question is the assumption that sits underneath so much of what we do

That certain feelings are problems

That we shouldn’t be experiencing them

That there’s a better version of ourselves somewhere on the other side of all this work

Of course, sometimes we need support. Sometimes feelings are overwhelming, and finding ways to manage them can be essential

But I wonder how often the struggle begins with the feeling itself, and how often it begins with what we believe the feeling means

Because if every uncomfortable experience becomes something we need to fix, when do we ever discover what happens when we stop trying?

People Not Pathology | Infinite Recovery Project