Almost everyone has struggled with difficult emotions. It’s challenging when we feel overwhelmed by feelings that we cannot control. At times like this mindfulness practice may seem impossible!
To work with difficult emotions skillfully, we need to look at what makes certain emotions seem difficult.
Emotions are quite natural. Just observe very young children–they have no trouble at all with emotions: they feel and express them quite naturally.
The difficulty lies in our resistance to certain emotions. I identify three main (and not mutually exclusive) causes of this resistance. First, some emotions are inherently unpleasant. For example, fear, anger, jealousy and grief are all accompanied by painful sensations in the body. But painful sensations are not inherently bad– and rarely are they unbearable. What makes them seem unbearable is the belief that “It shouldn’t be this way!” We often see pain itself as something that’s wrong or bad; we see it as “the enemy” and we then seek to annihilate it.
It’s not wrong to alleviate pain–if it’s possible. But all too often our attempts to eradicate pain simply suppresses, deflects or displaces it such that it returns again—and often with greater intensity.
If we discover that we cannot escape some type of pain, then we may go the route of cynicism or depression–or we may realize that pain (as well as pleasure) is an inevitable part of being human. This realization will not always diminish our pain, but it may very well eradicate the suffering. Pain is natural; suffering is not.
Another reason we resist some emotions is that emotions are not rational—they don’t follow the logic of the thinking mind. We may believe that emotions must have some external cause or need to be justified or explained. We may tell ourselves that we shouldn’t feel a certain way because we see no reason for it; then we squelch our feelings and push them underground.
Emotions do not need to be justified. Like the weather, they are the result of causes and conditions. Generally, emotions do not need to be acted out, nor do we need a story to justify them; they simply need to be experienced.
The Zen master’s son died and the master was weeping profusely. His students approached him with many questions about his tears.
“Roshi, did you not teach us that all life is impermanent? Did you not teach us that death is inevitable for everyone?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Then why are you crying?”
“I am crying because I am sad.”
Perhaps the primary reason we resist some emotions lies in our conditioning. We may have been taught by family, peers and culture that certain emotions are not okay. This “teaching” comes primarily through the role modeling of parents and authority figures. It also comes from the messages we received whenever we expressed certain emotions. “Big boys don’t cry.” “Nice girls don’t get angry.” We developed patterns of resisting our emotions and eventually we didn’t even realize that we were doing it.
These suppressed emotions are likely to be acted out unconsciously or they are stored in the body and can manifest as a variety of physical ailments. Emotions need to be recognized and experienced in a way that is not harmful to our self or to others. Working skillfully with our emotions is a very important part of any spiritual practice.
Robert Brumet leads the Unity Sangha in the Kansas City area and offers meditation retreats throughout North America. Robert and Joe McCormack will be leading a non-residential householder retreat for Mid America Dharma in Kansas City October 21-27, 2019.