Taking Back Her Brain from the Feel Good Always Myth

This thought error leads us to indulging in false pleasures, taking action to feel better, to get out of the feeling which is only temporary. We stop going towards our dreams or our goals because it doesn’t always feel good, so if it doesn’t always feel good I am doing something wrong, which leads to us not taking the action that needs to be taken to reach our goal.

When this feel good myth appears in our family dynamics, our work environment, our friendships or relationships, and we feel entitled to always feeling good and then we feel an uncomfortable emotion of: shame, rejection, judgment, failure then we think something has gone wrong, something isn't’ working or the relationship isn’t working, and we may start avoiding the people, blaming them, reacting to them. Instead of asking ourselves why are these feelings a problem? Instead of realizing that life is 50/50. 50% comfortable emotions and 50% uncomfortable emotions, and really seeing what is happening, we become reactive and impulsive, because our brain so badly wants to get out of these uncomfortable feelings.

• We stop showing up the way we want to

• We blame others for how we are feeling

• We avoid our feelings so we don’t learn to feel all of the feelings

• We don’t get to live the entire human experience

• We don’t self reflect

Those of us with anxious attachment have a hard time processing when things quote go wrong or don’t feel secure. Our nervous response system really triggers and our amygdala gets activated and our prefrontal cortex goes offline, and it's so important that we notice this about ourselves. So that we can jump in, especially when things pop up in relationships that we perceive as problematic. Learning to know that it’s okay not to always feel “excited and immense happiness inside a relationship” and feeling sadness or uncomfortable feeling is part of the process.

This thought error is also seen when we are are trying to reach a new goal, or develop a new habit or routine, then something makes us feel not happy, not motivated,we didn’t follow the plan or our schedule, we got off track so this must mean “I don’t really want it” “I am not supposed to do it, maybe it's just not for me”

We give up when we feel an uncomfortable emotion of: shame, rejection, judgment, failure, then we think something has gone wrong, or the goal/ routine isn’t working.

Instead of asking ourselves why are these feelings a problem? Why is it a problem that our brain is not motivated? Instead of learning that feeling unmotivated isn’t a problem and its only our brain's way of conserving energy, and increasing pleasure. Why is it a problem that we don’t want to do something new? What if us not wanting to do it was part of the process but didn’t mean that we didn’t have to do the thing that is new, hard and challenging and makes us feel all the feelings that we never want to feel?

Instead realizing that life is 50/50. 50% comfortable emotions and 50% uncomfortable emotions.

• We learn how to show up the way we want to

• We stop blaming others, or blaming our circumstances

• We understand how learning to feel all of our feelings actually gets us closer to our goal AND is part of the process

• We learn not to resist reality, we learn not to buffer and numb which then allows us to feel the uncomfortable emotions BUT also allows us to feel the depth of comfortable emotions allowing us to live the entire human experience

• We become self reflect and push ourselves to feel these emotions AND take action anyways because we planned ahead of time that we were going to.

Thoughts that my be helpful:

We can feel UNCOMFORTABLE emotions AND STILL take the action we decided to take.