Your Bad Feeling Means Only One Simple Thing

Isn’t it annoying when an article or a video has a title like “Your Bad Feeling Means Only One Simple Thing” and you hastily scroll or scan or skip to learn what that one simple thing is? But instead, the author wants to tell you about the history of feelings, famous feelings, a bunch of arbitrary anecdotes about feelings before getting to the point?

Like online recipes. Snore. I do not need to know about all of the recipe attempts before this one, views on stovetop vs oven, and other popular uses for eggplant. Just give me the darn recipe.

(I realise I’m accidentally doing the thing that annoys me when I wanted to do the opposite, and tell you straight away what the one simple thing your bad feelings means is)

The one simple thing that your bad feelings mean is that your thinking can’t be trusted right now.

Er, is that it? How is that helpful?

Our thoughts are strange things. Some are nice. Some are terrifying. Some we don't notice at all. But some thoughts are so shitty that we run feverishly toward ways to numb out and make the thoughts go away*.

{*numbing out and making thoughts go away? I only tried to do this myself for twenty-something years, mostly exploring a trifecta of drugs, alcohol and disordered eating. I don't recommend it. Zero stars}

Given that the nature of our thoughts is arbitrary, impersonal, fleeting, unreliable, and often ludicrous... having a way to discern which can be trusted and which cannot would be quite useful, wouldn't it?

If we had a thought-lie-detector, so to speak?

A quality control mechanism for all the crap that goes through our minds?

Enter feelings.

Yay for rubbish feelings

Feelings are an instant feedback system on the quality of our thinking. What if that feeling of panic, dread, anxiety, overwhelm or swirling existential doom feels so terrible because it's waking us up, getting our attention, alerting us, to the untrustworthiness of our thinking?

Like the smell of sour milk alerting us to it’s quality. It smells bad. The milk is sour. Don’t drink it.
The bitter taste of a berry. The berry is poisonous. Don't eat it.
You feel bad. Your thoughts are sour. Don’t hungrily consume them, thinking they are 'true'.

Considering our crappy feelings as a reliable, built-in feedback system for the trustworthiness of our thoughts can help a ton when navigating life. Knowing when we aren't 'thinking straight' or that we are not 'in our right mind' means we're more likely to give ourselves a chance to cool off before we respond. Respond to a person, a question, a work thing, the local government planning to raze another wetland for a housing development...urgh.

That feeling of anxiety, stress, sadness, overwhelm, insecurity, doubt and all the others...they're your friend. They're gently reminding you* not to take your current thinking seriously.

{*Bad feelings gently reminding you not to take your current thinking seriously? Uh, 'gently' might not be accurate. Those feelings can seem anything but gentle when we're swirling in them}

A bad feeling does not need to be fixed, just understood

We have come to mistakenly believe that our feelings are some sort of prognostic indicator for the state of our lives. If we feel bad, that means something is wrong and needs to be fixed.

We think we'll need to change jobs, partners, bank balance, or appearance to fix the feeling and feel better.

And maybe you do. But not now. Not from this seat of a shitty-feeling. If you need to do something, you'll know once your mind settles again. Which it will. But for the time being, while you are feeling crappy, back away.

This is an incredible piece of kit, this notification system. It's perfectly designed. Your feeling will alert you, in real time, to step away from what you think. Disregard. Dismiss. Put down.

Ok but how does this helps with the really big problems, like, y'know....the incessant destruction of our planet?

We are living in times of unprecedented social, environmental and political breakdown. It's rough out there and no amount of understanding the nature of thoughts and feelings, and recognising our gifts as humans can (or should, in my own view) detract from the difficulties faced by most of us.

There are many interlocking challenges in our world. Certainly.

And...

And our power of thought means we will perceive and experience these challenges from infinite angles.

On one day we might feel utterly overcome by grief and despair. Another day we may feel somewhat hopeful and energised to take part in what is ours to do. Another day, we may feel incapacitated by blind fury at the forces that got us to here. And on another day we may feel astonished by the depth of love we feel for a person, forest, pet or sunrise.

(Um, I regularly feel all of the above and more in just one morning)

What we think and feel about our personal and collective challenges will always be in motion.

Always changing and transforming.

Even when an the experience of an anxiety attack feels like it will last forever, it won't. I absolutely promise.

Your feelings are on hand to guide you. The particularly prickly and rubbish ones - the ones we normally get tangled in like anxiety, overwhelm, panic and dread - are worth noting as your reminder to let your mind settle. They are worth seeing as your alert that you're thinking cannot be trusted.

That does not mean we should reframe our thoughts to 'think positively', or dismiss thoughts about the realities of our challenges that we don't like or want to avoid (although you can if you want I suppose - you can think anything you like, actually. Quite the power).
It means that decisions, choices and actions from a calmer place are often more sustainable, nourishing and helpful.

It's ok to feel shitty. It's healthy and normal to feel bad in a world which has lost the plot. But you don't have to live in that place. Your feeling is letting you know when your thinking is at its worst.

It will clear and things will look different. We go forth from a place of clarity.

Nature has our back - trust her

Nature has us covered in so many ways. The, er, nature of nature is resilience, adaptability, transformation, cooperation, strength, balance, cycles and so on. We are nature, so these features, functions and traits are innate in us, too.

Look to the innate mechanisms we already have like feeling the heaviness of fatigue when we need to sleep, the discomfort of hunger when we need to eat or the jolt of pain when we need to stop touching that hot or sharp thing....

It makes sense to me that Nature would help us out when it comes to our thoughts. Having a feedback system like a crappy feeling to let us know we might be better of not trusting our current thinking is one of the many gifts we get as humans on this blue-green jewel in space.

Try it out, friend.