We are living in overstimulating times. With distractions literally at our fingertips, we are rapidly transforming into a culture of successive generations who can’t sit with hard feelings.
As we become increasingly dependent on, and quite literally attached to our smartphones, we no longer savor those little gems or moments of time when we might otherwise choose to be present with ourselves. Remember when sitting in the doctor’s waiting room, riding the subway, or standing in the grocery store checkout line meant a few minutes with our thoughts and perhaps our feelings? While a few decades ago we might briefly, or perhaps meaningfully, check in with ourselves, today we are checking in with our emails, texts, news, and social media instead.
Is this really that big of a deal, you might ask? Well, if we can’t sit with ourselves in moments of relative calm or quiet, how can we expect to sit with ourselves during hard life stuff? When distracting ourselves is so ever-present and thus avoiding challenging emotions is so easily accomplished, staying present with hard feelings doesn’t stand a chance.
As a naturopathic physician, I am particularly interested in this phenomenon — how our fast-paced, goal-oriented society is churning out overstimulated and emotionally avoidant generations. And while my words and insights may come across as judgmental or harsh, to the contrary, I have enormous empathy and compassion for this modern-day predicament we find ourselves in. Our lives are complicated and overwhelming. We are under an enormous amount of day-to-day stress. And because much of the time we are juggling deadlines, demands, and responsibilities, it seems understandable, and even appropriate, that we want an escape from our exhausting realities.
The pace at which our screens move is alarming; as social media reels, breaking news updates, and never-ending notifications pop up, beep, and buzz, our attention ping pongs from one eye-catching video to another enticing post. A mere swipe of a screen can bring endless opportunities for online shopping, playing games, responding to emails and texts, streaming shows and movies, and so much more. We are a captive audience to overstimulation.
A Culture That Frowns On Being Too Emotional
However, the ease at which we avoid hard emotions is not solely a factor of our dependence on rapid-fire digital stimulation. There’s more to it, and it speaks to all the messages that have made their way into our collective consciousness about feeling, or rather not feeling. For generations we have lived in a society that, evidenced by the words it uses, at best dismisses and at worst rejects the idea of sitting with hard feelings.
Consider some of the phrases we use when advising our children (or friends and family) to manage their challenging emotions: “Get over it,” “Grow thicker skin,” “Boys don’t cry,” and “Don’t wear your emotions on your sleeve.” All of these phrases implicitly suggest that we should push through, swallow, or just get over our emotions. Because our culture frowns on being too emotional, we have learned to “pull ourselves together,” “put on a brave face,” and “grin and bear it.”
Remember when sitting in the doctor’s waiting room, riding the subway, or standing in the grocery store checkout line meant a few minutes with our thoughts and perhaps our feelings?
Emotions are considered primal and irrational when compared to the more esteemed intellectual and cognitive parts of us; when we have been overtaken by emotion, we are no longer considered levelheaded or “of a sound mind.” We keep our emotions in check, as pursuits of our intellect are celebrated and prioritized. As we spend our days doing and striving and achieving, the over-arching message is there are more important things to do than to feel our inconvenient and bothersome emotions.
If we think it’s fair to say that avoiding feelings is a new health crisis, then what do we do about it?
Two Simple Shifts
How do we learn to do the opposite of what we have become so accustomed to – how do we put down our phones and feel the feelings that are brewing inside of us? From a mind-body perspective, it’s important to understand that by simply acknowledging and bringing awareness to our overstimulated and emotionally avoidant dilemma, we open the door to doing things differently.
Simply being conscious of the fact that we are intentionally choosing to avoid a nagging or pesky feeling, we give mindfulness a chance to emerge and blossom.
And when we say, “I am going to sit with this hard feeling for a few minutes,” we are embracing the present moment. And this is big stuff.
So, what does that look like in practice? Two simple shifts can help us trade mindlessness for presence:
1. Simple Awareness. Mindfulness is simply an opening to begin to notice ourselves, without judgment, and to create space for living in the present moment. When we begin to intentionally sit with our ourselves — our breath, our thoughts, our body’s sensations, and yes, our hard feelings — we are awakening to our present moment.
2. Pause. The next time you get an urge to grab your phone, a pint of ice cream, or maybe a beer, simply pause. During that pause, feel your body and stay with yourself (whatever that means to you!) Maybe a feeling is brewing? Can you stay with the feeling for a few moments before moving on? That’s all.
If we can revisit and possibly recreate what it was like to stand in the grocery store checkout line without staring down at a small beeping, flashing, and buzzing screen, we create the possibility of experiencing a moment. Perhaps an anxious, overwhelming, or frustrating moment. Maybe a quiet, pensive, or lovely moment. Possibly a boring, tired, or uneventful moment. But a moment, nonetheless.
Dr. Jenn Rapkin is a naturopathic physician, bodyworker, former dancer, and Frequent Feeler with more than 25 years of experience in mind-body and body-centered therapies. Her new book The Feeling Muscle: How Felt Emotion Can Help You Sit with and Outlast Hard Feelings chronicles her personal and professional transformation from physician to a shepherd of feelings.
Find holistic Naturopathic Physicians in the Spirit of Change online Alternative Health Directory.
RELATED ARTICLES:
8 Grounding Techniques For When You’re Feeling Overwhelmed
Rise Of The Sensitives
Recent Comments