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When We Feel Bad For Feeling Bad
How meta-emotions can amplify our suffering
Until I was about 20 years old, I had the unique feeling that suffering was twice as bad as it normally would be. I not only felt bad, but I felt bad for feeling bad. I thought I was supposed to be happy all the time, because that was the message I had internalized through societal messaging, Disney movies, Hallmark cards, and just not being told that suffering was normal. I thought feelings of unhappiness and pain were unnatural and wrong and did everything possible to suppress them.
I distinctly recall various phases during my freshman year of college where I resorted to drastic means of making sure I never felt unhappy. No, I did not constantly party and drown myself in alcohol. I instead tried my best to drink gallons and gallons of water and filled my water bottle about 15 times a day. I would drink water until I almost felt lightheaded or sick, and sometimes it would make me feel a lot better and cognitively “there,” like I could conquer the world and I would never run into any problems with not comprehending an academic task, not having trouble in social situations, and, above all, never feeling sad or unhappy. To an extent, it worked to clear my head, but naturally, too much water wasn’t the most healthy thing — I would go to track and cross country practice as an athlete and just not be able to run my normal pace at all, and be beset by lightheadedness and hyponatremia.
It would take me much more self-awareness and realizing that, well, everyone feels unhappy and suffers. The problem wasn’t the feeling, but the expectation. I bought into the narrative that you’re supposed to be happy all the time and I didn’t have any other framework or expectation. I would, like any teenager living in America, tell myself that other people had it worse, that I had nothing to complain about, that my parents had it worse when they grew up, that at least I never struggled with hunger.
I knew real life was more complicated than being happy all the time, but I still chased the feeling. I thought there was something wrong with me when I didn’t feel happy and didn’t perform up to par. I thought there was something wrong with me, that I wasn’t normal like other people just because I felt like I had mood swings and feelings of sadness…
