Latest / feel your feelings with Ethan Jewell / your negative emotions are temporary, i promise
Transcript
- 0:00So there I was laying on my bathroom floor, thinking to
- 0:04myself, this is it, I am going to feel like this forever.
- 0:10I am going to feel sad, depressed, angry upset
- 0:15unsatisfied unmotivated for the rest of my life.
- 0:20And in that moment, I really think that I hit rock bottom.
- 0:25Hey there and welcome back to feel your feelings with me,
- 0:28Ethan Jewel. This is a new podcast.
- 0:31I just started all about mental health, and mental health
- 0:34awareness. I am not a doctor.
- 0:36I'm not a psychologist or a psychiatrist.
- 0:39I'm just a poet who has felt some very big feelings and heard
- 0:42a lot of stories about struggles with mental health.
- 0:45And this is just a place for me to talk about that to share my
- 0:49experiences and stories with you.
- 0:52So, on that note, let's feel some feelings now.
- 0:57I started this episode off very dramatic.
- 1:00Because the feelings that I want to talk about today are just
- 1:03that dramatic. I was talking about being at
- 1:06this Rock Bottom where I was convinced that I was going to
- 1:10feel a certain way for the rest of my life and that is something
- 1:15that my brain very, very commonly does when I'm feeling a
- 1:18certain emotion sadness, anger, lack of motivation, whatever it
- 1:23might be. I tend to convince myself that
- 1:26I'm going to feel like that forever.
- 1:28I'm pretty confident that if you You are a human who feels
- 1:31things. You have also felt this way.
- 1:33It is super, super common for our brain.
- 1:36To catastrophize whenever we are in an intense moment of feeling.
- 1:41Now, mental illness and intense negative emotions can already be
- 1:46dangerous on their own and can lead to spur-of-the-moment
- 1:50action or negative thinking patterns.
- 1:54However, if we convince ourselves that those feelings or
- 1:59the feelings Bird on by that mental illness will last
- 2:02forever, that is when it can become deadly.
- 2:07I mean, if somebody is convinced that they are going to feel
- 2:10depressed or sad or angry for the rest of their life, what is
- 2:16the point of continuing down that path?
- 2:19That is a negative pattern that many people find themselves
- 2:23engaging in. So, why do we engage in these
- 2:26negative thinking patterns? Obviously it is Extremely
- 2:30detrimental for us to become convinced that our negative
- 2:33feelings will last longer than they actually do.
- 2:37While the answer to this question is both simple and very
- 2:42complicated. So I'm going to try to break it
- 2:45down the way that I best understand it.
- 2:47Instead of diving into a whole bunch of medical terms.
- 2:50There are two main reasons that we engage in these negative
- 2:54internal dialogues. And they are very closely
- 2:57linked. You see when we are intensely
- 2:59feeling and Motion, the neural Pathways that lead to that
- 3:03emotion light up and that is all our brain can focus on.
- 3:06That is why you feel an emotion, so intensely in the moment,
- 3:11that's why? When you're crying all it feels
- 3:13like you can feel is sadness when you're laughing.
- 3:15All it feels like you can feel is Joy because those neural
- 3:19pathways are absolutely lighting up, so it becomes your biggest
- 3:23Focus. So that's the first thing that
- 3:24happens when we're feeling an intense emotion, the second
- 3:28thing that happens is We begin to craft a story as to why we're
- 3:33feeling a certain way. How long we're going to feel a
- 3:36certain way what the outcome of feeling this way could be and
- 3:40when you're already in a negative State of Mind, the
- 3:43effects of this can be detrimental.
- 3:47This story will not be positive. This is when we convince
- 3:51ourselves that we are going to continue to feel this way.
- 3:55We begin this inner monologue that this sadness is going to
- 3:59last forever. Her.
- 4:00And all of this negativity that has spurred on by, those neural
- 4:04Pathways being lit up. Like, I talked about earlier,
- 4:07this was quite simply our natural First Response and many
- 4:10people don't even try to fight this.
- 4:12This is just all that, we know this might sound really, really
- 4:16familiar, and be describing how you feel whenever you're sad.
- 4:19And if you find yourself engaging in this, there is
- 4:23actually Some solid solutions that we can engage in in order
- 4:27to hopefully deal with this. Problem and have a little bit
- 4:31more control on our emotions. And not fall into this Doom and
- 4:35Gloom Snowball Effect. That is convincing ourselves.
- 4:39Our emotions will last forever. No, emotion is permanent.
- 4:44That is a simple fact of life, emotions, come and go.
- 4:49However, while I was reading about this topic, I learned just
- 4:54how quickly emotions can come and go.
- 4:57I found a memoir by neuroscientist.
- 4:59Jill, bolte Taylor, it's called My stroke of insight.
- 5:04And in this Memoir, she notes that the physiological lifespan
- 5:08of an emotion in the body and brain is 90 seconds.
- 5:14That's right, an emotion lasts for 1 minute and 30 seconds
- 5:20within your brain and your body. That means that the sensations
- 5:25adrenaline heat in the face. Tightness in the throat rapid
- 5:28heartbeat, etc, etc. Arise Peak and dissipate on
- 5:32their own, within 90 seconds, if left untouched.
- 5:36So let me ask you this. When was the last time that you
- 5:41had a negative emotion, pop-up that only lasted 90 seconds.
- 5:46I'll wait, I mean, I know I certainly can't think of a
- 5:51single time that I have had a negative emotion, only lasts 90
- 5:55seconds and the reason for this is just as I've stated before we
- 6:00repeat this internal dialogue of negativity, spurred by her own
- 6:06neural Pathways in our own natural negative thought
- 6:09patterns that allow this emotion to last far longer than it needs
- 6:15to You might have heard, the phrase pain is inevitable,
- 6:19suffering is optional and I think that applies here
- 6:22perfectly the pain of a negative emotion is inevitable.
- 6:26However, how long we suffer from it is optional.
- 6:30So how can we limit the amount of suffering that we have to go
- 6:34through? Unfortunately, this is a lot
- 6:37easier said than done. It is not an easy task to
- 6:41unlearn these behaviors and instead just become Observers
- 6:46servers of our emotions. But luckily, the biggest and
- 6:49first step is simply being aware of this pattern.
- 6:52The best way to break a negative pattern is to be aware of it.
- 6:56So now that you are aware of the human mind and its tendency to
- 7:02make us suffer longer than we need to the next time you have
- 7:05an emotion, pop-up, you can at least attempt one, emotion, at a
- 7:10time, to observe it to understand it to feel those.
- 7:16Physiological effects. Come up to feel the redness in
- 7:19the face, the heart beat increase the tightness in the
- 7:23throat. And instead of telling a story
- 7:26and thinking, why am I feeling this way?
- 7:28How long is it going to last instead?
- 7:31Just let it run. Its course, take some deep deep
- 7:34breaths and allow yourself to feel this emotion.
- 7:39Now, please remember, I am not a doctor.
- 7:42I am not a psychologist. I'm not a professional in this
- 7:45field. I am simply talking from
- 7:47personal experience and from my personal experience, life is a
- 7:53whole lot easier. If you allow these emotions to
- 7:56come and go, if you allow them to run their course through your
- 8:00body, without questioning them, without creating these negative
- 8:04stories, these internalized patterns, and instead just
- 8:08accept them at face value and allow them to come and go.
- 8:12No, emotion is permanent no state.
- 8:16Mind is permanent and remember a permanent solution to a
- 8:21temporary problem is, never the answer.
- 8:26That is where I'm going to leave off today's episode.
- 8:29I hope you learned a little something.
- 8:31I hope you actually go out into the world and try to apply this
- 8:34awareness to your own life because it has done amazing,
- 8:38amazing things for me and my mental health.
- 8:42Thank you so much for tuning in my name is Ethan Jewel.
- 8:45Please feel free to send me a message on my Instagram at
- 8:48Jewel, boy underscore and tell me what you think about today's
- 8:52episode. Tell me what you think about the
- 8:5490 second rule because that absolutely blew my mind.
- 8:59Thank you for being here with me.
- 9:01And as always, thank you for feeling your feelings.
- 9:05I'll see you next time.