What's Wrong With Me?

A client may come into my office, share that they are feeling stressed, sad, angry, or another painful emotion, and conclude that there is something wrong with them. It's a natural conclusion to make, given the stigma that has permeated Western society about mental health and painful emotions. We're told either directly by others or indirectly through the media, that to be normal is to be happy. I want to clarify why I think this conclusion is not only unhelpful, but wholly inaccurate.

Let me first address the myth that to be normal is to be happy. Happiness is an emotion, in much the same way anger and sadness are emotions. The importance of this fact is that all emotions are temporary. To expect oneself to feel consistently happy is about as realistic as expecting oneself to look like those photoshopped models in magazines. It's a lost battle and any attempts to try tend to only cause pain and disappointment. Dr. Russ Harris does a great job explaining this further here.

This doesn't mean we can't influence our lives to help create more happiness within it - we certainly can. Intentionally incorporating positive experiences, healthy relationships, and helpful perspectives helps us feel happier more often. More deeply than this even, we can evoke a sense of contentedness and joy with our overall lives. Within this contendeness and joy, we'll still feel the full range of daily emotions (happiness, sadness, and everything in between) but we'll feel rooted in a sense of well-being that's built on components like purpose, gratitude and values.

Regardless of how we arrange our lives, every person feels painful emotions sometimes. It's a natural part of living to have painful moments and the feelings that come with them serve a purpose! Feelings are signals designed to tell us something about our situation or how we're thinking about it. These feelings are natural and healthy to experience when they show up and can be particularly informative indicators about how we view or experience a situation.

When a person is experiencing limited happiness and pervasively feels sad, anxious, angry, or another painful emotion, this does not mean there is something wrong with them. It means something has or is happening to them. It means a situation in their past or present is triggering these emotions. Sometimes the trigger may be obvious - the death of a loved one or getting fired from work - but sometimes the triggers are more subtle. Subtle triggers may look like small stressors that accumulate over time, or our negative interpretation of events that may be inaccurate, or a lack of sleep or nutrition, or past feelings we didn't let ourselves feel, or past events that defined how we learned to view ourselves, others, or the world. All these things can trigger emotions that seem to come out of nowhere and make us feel like there's something wrong with us.

As Dr. Russ Harris described in his video (see above), the conclusion that certain emotions mean something is wrong with us can trigger other painful feelings such as shame or guilt. Feelings about feelings are called secondary emotions and they tend to be perpetuated by how we think about our initial feelings. These secondary feelings just add on to the emotional load and can turn things from painful to overwhelming. If we can adjust how we think about these initial painful feelings, the secondary ones won't hit so hard. For more information on how to do this, read my past post on self-validation. We can then couple this with practicing acceptance of our initial emotions.

So, let's flip the script. Let's change the question from "what's wrong with me" to "what happened to me?" It is from this place of exploration and making sense of our past/present and our own thinking patterns that we can learn to accept our feelings, hear what they have to tell us, and begin effectively addressing the situation triggering them. From this place of healing, over time our daily emotions will naturally respond and shift in turn.

I want to acknowledge that feeling these kinds of feelings can be extremely challenging and to learn how to experience them is not something a lot of us are taught how to do. If you are one of the many many people who don't permit yourself to feel painful emotions, or your feelings are persistently painful and negatively impacting daily functioning, then I would encourage you to seek professional help. Especially after a trumatic event, the support from professionals is essential to ensure any feelings that arise are felt in a healthy and controlled way.

Therapy can be a great way to gain insight into what may be impacting your emotional state and facilitate changes in how to think, cope and behave. It's also important to remember that emotions are created from our physical brain and bodies, so when painful emotions are persistent enough to warrant a mental health disorder diagnosis, there can also be physical changes to our brain that may benefit from chemical support through medication to help get things back on track. It's also a good idea to consult with a family doctor to ensure another physical issue isn't impacting your emotional state in these cases.

Remember, seeking these services does not mean something is wrong with you. It means something is or has happened to you that your brain and body are responding to. By recognizing this and seeking support when you need it, you're now bravely finding ways to manage those emotional triggers differently.