Sitting With Yourself Lovingly In Discomfort
Today I felt exhausted on a whole new level and with it came feelings of overwhelm, sadness, frustration. Having a very small baby who refused to sleep is hard, and what I needed most was to acknowledge it was hard, to feel the difficult emotions and to self-soothe.
Positive psychology shouldn’t be confused with toxic positivity. Positive psychology is a scientific study of ways to work with our strengths and promote positive wellbeing with tools you can use when you feel good or when you feel low, where as toxic positivity is an artificial level of positive feelings 100% of the time. It tells people to stop feeling negative and avoids feelings of sadness or depression, as well as people expressing those emotions.
A concerning development is where toxic positivity meets the law of attraction. Combined they invalidate emotions and use positivity as a device to attract desires and make people afraid to feel anything other than happy all the time. This is a dangerous road that can easily lead to burnout, deteriorated relationships and lower perceived self-worth.
Feelings of sadness, fear and anxiety aren’t an enemy to be avoided, how you feel is perfectly valid, allow yourself to respond to those feelings in a healthy way that helps you move forward, even if that means taking a break.
One of the best ways to support yourself when you are going through some difficult feelings, is to give yourself some self-compassion and allow yourself to really feel the emotions that arise, however challenging they may be. By doing this you can comfort and reassure yourself the way you would want to be comforted by a close friend, instead of trying to avoid the feeling or making things worse by shaming yourself for not feeling positive.
You could also try some self-soothing practices, which is in a nut shell, being kind to yourself when you are going through difficult emotions. Watch these videos to better understand the concept of self-soothing, how to use your senses to self sooth and how you can make your own self-soothe box.
