This one simple trick will fix all your crazy

[Zenmei]

Here's an article about a Berkeley study showing that accepting our negative emotions instead of repressing or denying them has positive mental health benefits. I didn't read the actual study, so I have no idea if it's worth paying attention to, but I've found this to be true in practice over the last year or so.

http://news.berkeley.edu/2017/08/10/emotionalacceptance/

Grasshoppers, Zenmei (sat/lah)

[Eishuu]

Thanks for sharing Zenmei. I read the article. It makes sense....I have found with practising Zazen that not only pleasant emotions but my less pleasant emotions seem to be more vivid and work themselves out... probably as there's less inner judgement going on to get them all messy and tangled up. I remember when I started sitting daily, one day I found myself experiencing a lot of joy and just laughing and laughing until it passed. I felt a bit bonkers but at the same time I don't think I'd ever experienced joy quite that freely before - without the grasping onto it it was much more intense.

I trained in Gestalt therapy, which is influenced by Zen, and there is a big emphasis on both experiencing the full range emotions that make us human and the fact that this emotion is not just in the brain but also a physical embodied experience...when we repress feelings muscles tighten, areas of us go numb and it gets held in the body. So if we can be in the present and fully feel our emotions and process them both psychologically and physically then we can move on, have new experiences. Obviously it's a bit more complicated that this in practice. It took me years to feel comfortable even acknowledging and experiencing my own anger let alone being able to process it. I think that the particular family we grow up in as well as the culture can have a huge impact on what emotions are considered acceptable and which are not.

I think it's sometimes important to work on this stuff in a safe environment with a mental health professional otherwise it could just be completely overwhelming...it's not just of case of everybody feel their feelings all the time. Sometimes repression is a temporarily necessary. I think it's slow and gradual work and will vary for each individual as to what is appropriate.

Just my take on it.

Gassho
Lucy
ST

[Jakuden]

This seems very true! I have been trying to use the phrase "it's OK that it's not OK" with my younger daughter when I hear her berate herself for getting anxious or upset about something. I can see that my kids are somehow getting a message, whether it is from us, or culture in general, that experiencing negative emotions is not allowed and that somehow they should be happy all the time. Thanks for the lesson, Zenmei.

Gassho,
Jakuden
SatToday/LAH

[Zenmei]

I think it's sometimes important to work on this stuff in a safe environment with a mental health professional otherwise it could just be completely overwhelming...it's not just of case of everybody feel their feelings all the time. Sometimes repression is a temporarily necessary. I think it's slow and gradual work and will vary for each individual as to what is appropriate.

Absolutely! I did (and still do) a lot of this stuff in the context of addiction recovery. Some things have taken months of work on the cushion and off to chip away at. I don't consider taking things at an appropriate pace to be "repression", I tend to use that term to refer only to the unhealthy aversion and avoidance of thoughts and feelings.
Feelings can be really complex, sometimes it takes a long time to let yourself experience them fully. And cases of trauma are a whole different story, that absolutely requires medical treatment.

Gassho, Zenmei (sat/lah)

[Mp]

Thank you Zenmai ... accepting and reacting are two different things. In Zen, it teaches us that regardless of who we are, we all suffering or can be impacted by these conditions such as sadness, fear, frustration, etc.

Sitting with life just as it is does give us a better opportunity to move past them, to see these conditions just as they are in the wholeness. But I do also agree with Lucy that there maybe times when we can't do it on our own and need the help of a professional. That being said, whether we do it on our own or seek the help of those professionals the action of acceptance within ourselves is the same.

Gassho
Shingen

SatToday/LAH

[Zenmei]

This seems very true! I have been trying to use the phrase "it's OK that it's not OK" with my younger daughter when I hear her berate herself for getting anxious or upset about something. I can see that my kids are somehow getting a message, whether it is from us, or culture in general, that experiencing negative emotions is not allowed and that somehow they should be happy all the time. Thanks for the lesson, Zenmei.

Gassho,
Jakuden
SatToday/LAH

Funny, I said almost the exact same phrase to my wife last week

We do get that message from culture, but it's deeper than that. It goes all the way back to single celled organisms reacting to negative stimuli. We naturally respond to pain with aversion. It was useful, avoiding physical pain kept us alive for billions of years. Once you throw thoughts and feelings into the mix, those natural reactions are less useful. They lead to feedback loops where we feel bad, and then beat ourselves up for feeling bad, then we make ourselves feel bad about beating ourselves up...
Craving for pleasure and aversion to pain are our evolutionary karma. Good thing somebody figured out how to deal with it.

Gassho, Zenmei (sat/lah)

[Jundo]

The results suggest that people who commonly resist acknowledging their darkest emotions, or judge them harshly, can end up feeling more psychologically stressed.

By contrast, those who generally allow such bleak feelings as sadness, disappointment and resentment to run their course reported fewer mood disorder symptoms than those who critique them or push them away, even after six months.

“It turns out that how we approach our own negative emotional reactions is really important for our overall well-being,” said study lead author Brett Ford, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. “People who accept these emotions without judging or trying to change them are able to cope with their stress more successfully.”

Thank you Zenmei. This is basically consistent with what I preach around here.

Feeling sad, fearful, angry in appropriate circumstances is natural, and feeling sad or angry about feeling sad or angry only makes things worse. It pours gasoline on the fire. If I lose a loved one, I wish to feel grief. If I am being chased by a tiger, I want to feel fear.

That being said, our way helps us see through emotions as mind theatre so that, for example, we are less likely to be prisoners of our emotions who feel sadness and fear in excess or inappropriate circumstances. We do not wish to be chained or to wallow in excess emotions, such as being fearful all the time even when there are no tigers or other threats, or to let our harmful emotions boil in excess. (But even then, someone suffering from something like clinical depression or PTSD should accept and allow even that until they can receive an effective medical or psychological treatment that can lift the illness, and even if no treatment. When suffering panic disorder just allow the panic as what is, even if never cured.)

Anger is something of a special case: It is natural to feel some moderate anger sometimes, and we should not hate ourselves as people (or Buddhist people) if sometimes we do. However, we should avoid to allow the anger to run rampant, and (as Shingen noted) we should avoid to act upon the anger in our words and acts, especially avoiding violence.

In this Practice, we also encounter a realm in which there is no loss, no frustration, such that there is no loved one to die, nothing to be a disappointment. It is true (trust me ). We find this on the cushion in its radical acceptance and Wholeness. However, then we return to a world of sometime sadness, loss, frustration and all the rest in daily life. We can find that the first realm perfumes and illuminates this frustrating daily life even off the cushion. But, even so, we will sometimes feel sad, afraid and all the rest. (I sometimes describe the experience as being afraid yet not afraid at once, sad yet nothing to be sad about at once).

But no problem! Don't be sad and feel self-loathing about sometimes being humanly sad etc. We are human, not stone.

Gassho, J

SatTodayLAH

[Zenmei]

Sitting with life just as it is does give us a better opportunity to move past them, to see these conditions just as they are in the wholeness. But I do also agree with Lucy that there maybe times when we can't do it on our own and need the help of a professional. That being said, whether we do it on our own or seek the help of those professionals the action of acceptance within ourselves is the same.

I don't mean to imply that any part of this practice is a substitute for medical care! Absolutely, go see a therapist. Don't hesitate.

Gassho, Zenmei (sat/lah)

[Mp]

I don't mean to imply that any part of this practice is a substitute for medical care! Absolutely, go see a therapist. Don't hesitate.

Gassho, Zenmei (sat/lah)

I know you don't!

Gassho
Shingen

SatToday/LAH

[Rich]

I don't believe in repression. Accepting all that arises is liberating.

SAT today

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

[Joyo]

Thank you, Zenmai. This is a really informative article.

We live in a culture where we were taught to repress our emotions. It is a perfectly acceptable way of parenting your kids, to punish them anytime they have a negative emotion. I'm sure many of us can relate. Things are changing, thanks to advances in understanding human development.

I still recall when my first son was born. We were still in the hospital and he was ragging and screaming due to being hungry. I was a new mom and beside myself, wanting to help my baby. The nurses' responses were "oh he's **just** mad" as if that's an acceptable way to "read" a newborn's emotions and automatically dismiss them. This is the culture many of us have grown up in! I hope the next generation will look back on this and shake their heads, thanks to new information and culturally acceptable ways of learning how to handle our emotions instead of suppressing them.

btw, that ragging son of mine is now almost 12 and has more than made up for his hungry time in the hospital lol!!

Gassho,
Joyo
sat today/lah

[JimH]

I think that one of the worst things that American society has done to it's male population in the past has been to promote the "macho" image: men don't cry, don't show emotions, and just *deal* with things. "Be a MAN", we're told. "Boys don't cry". So what happens when you feel intense sadness or loss? When you are emotionally hurt to the core? Depressed? Anxious? The answer is, according to this thought, push it down deep inside and "man up". Emotionally, though, that's just setting up for an explosion in the future....or a lifetime of frustration.

I would think that the true weakness is in not being able to face your emotions. Feel sad, feel angry, feel frustrated....and let yourself be okay with that. Express the emotion, but then let it go. The key is not to get hung up on it. It works like that for positive emotions, too: feel happy, feel joyous, feel excited....revel in the moment and let yourself be okay with that....but realize that the moments are not meant to stay. Don't get hung up on them or try to "store" positive moments, either.

"Let it show, then let it go".

My 2 cents...your mileage may vary!

Gassho--

--JimH (SatToday!)