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“I can’t feel my sadness — the last time I did that, I cried for days.”

That’s what I remember hearing from one client who I saw very briefly, probably 10 years ago by now.  At the time, her objection kind of stumped me.  I wasn’t quite sure what to tell her about how much of that days-long period that she cried was something she could decrease or just something needed to go through.

I think of another who often raises a suspicious eyebrow at me and says “you’re telling me to feel the feels again, aren’t you?” and every time I have to concede that she’s called me out again, no matter how subtly I try to smuggle back in the idea that her worry might be a symptom of unreleased emotion in the body.

In response to my suggestion that there’s some pain or wound they’re turning away from, many clients have said something like, “But I do feel my pain… I feel it all the time… I think I should be feeling less of it, not more of it.”

And there are those who feel one or two emotions acutely and often, but not other important emotions, because growing up, their mind learned to wrap more “forbidden” kinds of pain inside one familiar package, like anger or fear — their own familiar “devil they know”.

And then there are others who tell me that they don’t feel much of anything — that their emotions are fleeting and elusive, and they’re beginning to wonder if they repress feeling in a way that hurts them over time.  

In their own ways, all of these clients have been implicitly asking a question that I want to answer throughout the next several videos.  It’s a question I’ve heard asked either directly or indirectly from almost every client, in fact, in 18 years of practice.

I love it when they ask me directly: how long are these feelings going to last?

I love it because it shows that they’re building a resolve to open to and stay with their feelings, or perhaps they’re very close to an accurate and brave self-diagnosis of experiential avoidance.  Close to a growing intuition that facing something challenging may be healthy over the long run.  That surface-level explanations and quick-fix tinkerings won’t fundamentally make them feel more peaceful inside or accepting of themselves.

But most of the time, the question is implied, or asked indirectly.  It’s usually present as early as the first session when they share their reason for seeing me, which is often some version of, “I feel a lot of this and not much of that and something about that feels problematic”.  If anxiety is the presenting problem, there’s a good chance that much of it is actually blocked raw fear that festers into an overactive mind which then cranks out scary thoughts.  And depression could be seen as numbed away sadness and grief that doesn’t flow and makes the person energetically stagnant and prone to negativity, cynicism, and pessimism.

I think the question, “how long should hard emotions last?” is central to mental health, inevitable change, and living a good life.  

What follows in this video series is my fairly thorough — but by no means complete — answer to that question.

Friendly fire

There’s a Buddhist parable called the two arrows.  It separates two different sources of challenging emotions.  

The first arrow we’re struck with represents the inevitable hardship and pain of life, and the second arrow is the optional, self-inflicted suffering that we add onto ourselves, in response to the first arrow. 

There are many types of second arrows, and what they all have in common is that we shoot them to help ourselves not feel.  

Here’s how it works.  

Something happens in our life that was outside of our control, something that we didn’t foresee because we’re not omniscient or perfect — we make mistakes and we have limited vision.  That event and the pain it causes us is the first arrow.

First arrows can be thin and lightweight:  You learn about a gathering that you weren’t invited to.  A close friend says something hurtful and doesn’t apologize.  The person you’re dating takes two days to respond to your long, caring text.

Or, they can be big and heavy: A parent’s memory starts to erode.  You get laid off.  Your relationship suddenly goes from so-so to untenable.  A serious health concern arises.  A friend dies.

Whether big or small, what makes an arrow a first arrow is that life shot it at us — we didn’t shoot it at ourselves.  Life entails unavoidable misfortunes, whether it’s an existential first arrow that hits us all, like aging, facing hard tradeoffs, or the inevitability of change and loss, or it’s something more specific to our own life like our particular childhood trauma or a divorce or the premature death of a loved one.

Those upsetting events or situations make us feel something, and we call that something an emotion.

You might say, “but I could have avoided the first arrow if I’d only…”  

But stop right there.  That’s only true in hindsight, which they say is 20/20 for good reason. What I’d suggest is that you actually couldn’t have avoided the specific undesirable thing that happened, because the choices you made that led up to it were the best you knew how to make at the time. It’s only afterward that your mind conjures up a story — a different scenario in which you had knowledge or options or abilities that you didn’t in fact have.  But that counterfactual your mind simulates only exists in imagination — it isn’t real — and so it gives you the illusion that you could have avoided the first arrow.

The second arrow, is one of our various responses to the emotions we’re now feeling from the first arrow.  Second arrows are optional, and avoidable.  Second arrow responses can be cognitive, somatic, behavioral, or relational.  We tell ourselves “it’s not that big of a deal,” or “I shouldn’t be this upset,” or “other people have it worse,” or “I’m just being dramatic.”  Or we mindlessly indulge in emotionally numbing and distracting addictions that come as substances or activities.  We might just simply and reflexively tighten and clench our bodies and our emotional “heart centers” to block the feeling, like wincing before an impact to minimize its effects.  Or, we might shoot relationship second arrows like criticizing, placating, or avoiding important issues.  What all these second-arrow reactions share is a subconscious attempt to interrupt and ward off the first-arrow emotions.

Liberation vs pain reduction

Responding to emotions isn’t a bad thing — in fact it’s often necessary and healthy — if those thoughts and actions are helpful. It only becomes a “second arrow” rather than a wise response when our motivation is to avoid emotion rather than metabolize emotion.  Other labels I like for the right orientation to emotion include “holding it”, “being with it”, “turning toward it”, “opening to it”, and “surrendering to it”.  You may like those terms or others.  Whatever label we use, the best options for responding to challenging first arrows come to us in due time, as we move through the pain, rather than defending against it.  We’ll find the thoughts and actions that help us flourish along a path that’s harder at the beginning.  That path requires keeping our emotional heart open to the feeling as it passes through us.  The only way to feel the first arrow is by not shooting a second one.  That choice to not shoot another arrow is where our agency lies when it comes to the question of how long hard emotions should last.

The word “liberation” is often used to point at enlightenment.  Liberation isn’t freedom from pain though — that kind of liberation does not exist.  It’s the liberation to choose a path that serves us best despite the inevitable pain that being alive entails, because the pain no longer shackles and restricts us.

I don’t think it’s as obvious as it might sound that a “higher” path of liberation involves less pain over the long run, than a lower path of experiential avoidance.  In the short run, it’s certainly true that there’s more pain on the path of liberation, because good outcomes in life typically take more effort and involve more discomfort than bad ones.  Quality in anything — including a life — generally lies beyond obstacles, which require work.  The path of least resistance is the path of low reward.  Constructing a good life is a thousandfold more difficult than building nothing or being destructive.

I do think that over the long run, the short term pain of liberation by facing our wounds from first arrows is surpassed by, or at least cancelled out by, the suffering of restriction and experiential avoidance from shooting ourselves with second arrows.  

But which path involves less pain is, I think, not that high quality of a question.  Once your focus in life moves from avoiding pain to maximizing your aliveness and your freedom, then does it even matter which path involves more pain?  

What matters to me is that the two paths lead to two very different lives, and only one of them — accepting my emotional experience — will allow me to choose the life I want to live, rather than accept a smaller life in order to eliminate the parts of it that don’t feel good.

Continued in part 2…