I Have Felt Bad for a Long Time--Should I be Worried?
Welcome to Day 4 of the feelings theme in Spiral 3.
A few years ago, during a therapy session, a client threw herself down on the couch and asked—I have felt bad for a long time--should I be worried?
There are 3 main cultural myths around feelings:
I should feel happy all of the time.
If a tragedy happens in my life, I can feel bad for a little bit, but I should regroup quickly so as not to bring other people down with me.
Feeling bad for no reason isn't ok.
As I talked about in the Foundations week of Self Loyalty School, people with HFA received varying degrees of these myths growing up that were then hard-wired into our brains. But as you have learned in Self Loyalty School—feeling bad for no reason is understandable because we are human, and humans feel a variety of feelings all the time. They aren't bad or good; they are just feelings.
But we still live in the world, so it can be hard to feel sad, angry, or ashamed.
So to answer the question at hand, I have felt bad for a long time--should I be worried?
The general rule is you should seek help from a therapist when you can't access happiness. If ALL you feel is sad, angry, or ashamed for weeks on end, then you should reach out to a therapist in your area.
And if you are asking yourself, how long is a long time? That answer is individualized; the client who asked this question had been feeling sad for a couple of weeks—which feels like forever!! But given the grief she was dealing with, a couple of weeks wasn't very long at all.
I remember three months after my Dad died, my Monger was shaming me for still feeling sad—I know now that it took over a year before I didn't feel sad much of the time. And while I was sad for what felt like the majority of my waking hours, I did experience moments of happiness. And after talking to my client, she had those moments as well.
This question I have felt bad for a long time--should I be worried? It is challenging because there isn't a black-or-white answer. It is subtle, nuanced, and personal. Because those of us with HFA have such a fraught relationship with feelings, we tend to shame anything that isn't happy, making acknowledging feelings challenging. When we don't acknowledge our feelings, they can send us down a rabbit hole of anxiety, which makes us feel worse and worry that something is wrong with us. But the truth is nothing is WRONG with us. We are just struggling with feeling unhappy and acknowledging the messy feelings.
I have shared before my family's large gathering at my Mom's house every summer. For years after they left, I would fall into a funk that would last a couple of weeks. After being extroverted for days, when they left, my introverted self was exhausted. Their leaving signified summer's end, and I felt sad that the excitement of summer was over. My Monger made frequent appearances saying, "You are so whiny. Time moves on; quit complaining and moping around." As a result of beating myself up for feeling sad, I lost patience with my co-workers and would snap at Doug. When I finally realized their departure WAS sad and DID signify the end of summer, which was also sad. I noticed the pain and was loyal to it, and it dissipated much faster.
And there have been times in my life when I just can't shake the sadness. No matter how much I acknowledge it and am loyal to it, the sadness, shame, and anger permeate everything in my life—it is during these times I have reached out to a therapist and have taken anti-anxiety meds. There is no shame in asking for help from a therapist; sometimes, it is needed. Reach out to psychologytoday.com if you need a resource for finding a therapist.
And if you have ANY thoughts, questions, or ah-ha’s about the content—send me an email at questions@selfloyaltyschool.com or fill out the Q&A form. Ask Nancy Jane, and I will answer them in the next Q&A session. Q&A sessions will be recorded and appear on the Ask Nancy Jane podcast feed and in the member area on the last Tuesday of every month.