Latest / feel your feelings with Ethan Jewell / how to feel your bad feelings

Transcript

how to feel your bad feelings · feel your feelings with Ethan Jewell

• 0:01
  Hey there and welcome to episode 1 of Feel Your Feelings with me,
• 0:06
  Ethan Jewell. This is a new podcast I'm
• 0:09
  starting where I just sit down and talk about my feelings.
• 0:13
  I'm not a professional, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a
• 0:16
  psychiatrist, a psychologist, but I am a poet who writes about
• 0:21
  mental health, is very passionate about mental health
• 0:25
  and has felt a lot of things. So if you're expecting something
• 0:29
  super scripted and professional, you're not going to find it
• 0:32
  here. This is just going to be me
• 0:34
  sitting in front of my microphone talking about
• 0:37
  feelings. So thank you so much for joining
• 0:40
  me today and let's feel some feelings.
• 0:48
  You know, one thing I've always disliked about conversations is
• 0:52
  superficial questions where I feel like I have to kind of hide
• 0:56
  the real answer. For example, even things as
• 0:59
  basic, just as like a how are you?
• 1:01
  It's like, man, you don't want to really know how I am.
• 1:05
  You know, it's just it's superficial and there's nothing
• 1:07
  wrong with that. But I realize a lot of times
• 1:10
  when I'm talking with somebody and they ask me how I am, I
• 1:13
  would really rather kind of hide the real answer and just throw
• 1:16
  out something casual, you know, just go good, how are you?
• 1:19
  Even if I'm not good, I could be having the worst day of my life
• 1:22
  and if somebody asked me how I was, I'm going to tell them good
• 1:25
  just 'cause I won't feel like getting into it.
• 1:28
  I would rather hide what I'm feeling and not really face it.
• 1:32
  And I was thinking about this the other day and then I
• 1:34
  realized a habit that I know I have, and I feel like you're
• 1:38
  going to feel kind of called out because you probably have it
• 1:40
  too, is not only hiding those feelings in conversation with
• 1:44
  other people, but also hiding them from myself.
• 1:49
  I mean, I know when I ask myself how I am, very often I will
• 1:53
  ignore the real answer. It is much easier to just ignore
• 1:56
  those feelings, pretend like they're not there, and just keep
• 1:59
  pushing through my day. I mean, just this past week or
• 2:03
  so, I actually started like, feeling my feelings again.
• 2:07
  Oh, it's just something I kind of have to remind myself to do
• 2:10
  in a way. And suddenly, I mean, I was just
• 2:12
  overwhelmed by a whole bunch of big emotions because I'd been
• 2:15
  ignoring them and neglecting them for so long.
• 2:18
  And it just kind of spilled over into this big, you know, almost
• 2:23
  sort of breakdown. And this made me realize that I
• 2:26
  am not as mindful of my feelings as I wish that I was.
• 2:30
  I don't observe or process them very often.
• 2:34
  Instead, I choose to kind of just numb it out and pretend
• 2:37
  that bad feelings don't exist. And that's kind of what I want
• 2:42
  to talk about today because I think that's something that a
• 2:44
  lot of us are guilty of, whether we realize it or not.
• 2:48
  I mean, it kind of seems like a no brainer to just feel what you
• 2:51
  feel. I mean, of course it's healthy.
• 2:53
  You know, mental health awareness has been on the rise
• 2:55
  lately. So we've all heard that a
• 2:56
  million times, you know, and yet we still find ourselves
• 3:00
  neglecting these emotions. So, so why, why do we do this?
• 3:04
  It's so counterintuitive. And I think the the main reason
• 3:07
  we do it is very simple. It's the fact that it feels
• 3:11
  better to pretend the bad emotions don't exist.
• 3:14
  You know, humans are creatures of pleasure.
• 3:16
  We love to seek out pleasure and good feelings everywhere we go.
• 3:21
  So of course, if something feels bad, we're kind of going to
• 3:24
  naturally avoid it. That's why so far through this
• 3:28
  episode, I've been preaching the idea of being a mindful
• 3:32
  observer. And that's kind of the key term
• 3:34
  that I want to focus on today. It's really, really easy to numb
• 3:39
  out all the bad feelings and pretend that they don't exist,
• 3:43
  neglect them. But I was actually, I was
• 3:45
  reading a Psychology Today article last week while I was
• 3:48
  kind of preparing to start this podcast.
• 3:51
  And I read this sentence that kind of stuck with me.
• 3:54
  It said when you numb sadness, you also numb happiness.
• 3:59
  And I was thinking, no, I like that.
• 4:00
  That can't be the case. But I read a little bit deeper.
• 4:03
  You know, humans are very complex beings.
• 4:05
  And it almost became obvious after doing this reading.
• 4:09
  I mean, of course we can't just numb one emotion and expect none
• 4:12
  of our other emotions to be affected.
• 4:15
  It's almost a no brainer. But I never even thought about
• 4:17
  that. So whenever you numb out that
• 4:19
  sadness, you are numbing all of your emotional receptors and
• 4:23
  eventually you, you won't feel anymore.
• 4:27
  So if you've noticed a numb feeling lately, if you've just
• 4:30
  kind of been going through the motions, this could be why.
• 4:34
  And the true detriment of this is that we lose our range of
• 4:38
  emotions. We just become robots.
• 4:41
  Just going through day-to-day life, not feeling, not
• 4:45
  experiencing this creates a a very cloudy perspective on life.
• 4:51
  So what can we do to fix this? Because obviously it's it's a
• 4:55
  problem. I found it as a problem with
• 4:57
  myself even recently, just living this numbed out life.
• 5:01
  And it doesn't feel good. It feels awful.
• 5:04
  It makes me feel unmotivated, makes me feel depressed.
• 5:08
  It just makes me feel bad. So what can we do?
• 5:12
  Well, there's something very simple, two things that I've
• 5:16
  been really implementing into my life.
• 5:18
  And these aren't just mumbo jumbo, oh, you know, this and
• 5:22
  that and you know, think more about your emotions and all
• 5:26
  that. Kind of know like this is this
• 5:27
  is real stuff. Well, the first one is a
• 5:29
  perspective switch, but the second one is a real solution
• 5:32
  that you can do starting today and I would highly recommend it.
• 5:35
  So the first one that's a little bit less based in reality is
• 5:39
  switching your perspective. You know, we think of these bad
• 5:44
  emotions as something to be avoided, but recently I've been
• 5:47
  thinking of them as a beautiful part of the human experience.
• 5:51
  I mean, the fact that I can feel these bad emotions tells me that
• 5:54
  I am a deep feeling person and that is beautiful.
• 5:58
  You know, I can feel the bad. That means that I felt the good
• 6:02
  too. And I'm able to differentiate
• 6:04
  those two feelings. That is beautiful.
• 6:06
  This range of emotions is an amazing thing.
• 6:09
  And how how blessed am I to be able to feel this?
• 6:12
  So the first thing is to kind of switch your perspective and
• 6:15
  instead of trying to avoid bad feelings just 'cause they feel
• 6:18
  bad, accept them as a part of the human experience and a
• 6:22
  gentle reminder that you are human and you are allowed to
• 6:28
  feel deeply. But of course, just awareness
• 6:31
  isn't going to solve this problem.
• 6:33
  So what's some real tangible habits that you can build to
• 6:37
  help not just numb out your emotions and, and to actually
• 6:40
  feel? Well, something that my
• 6:42
  therapist taught me and I've been implementing this into my
• 6:45
  life over the past few months. And let me tell you, it has done
• 6:48
  big, big things for me. So please at least just give
• 6:51
  this one try. It's very simple.
• 6:53
  You go into a dark quiet room and you simply, you sit and you
• 6:59
  allow any feeling and any thought to come and go.
• 7:03
  Now this will take some practice.
• 7:05
  The first few times I did it, I found myself trying to force
• 7:08
  feelings, force thoughts, all that.
• 7:10
  But no, you have to focus on your breath and let any feelings
• 7:15
  come and go. And this teaches you to feel.
• 7:19
  This teaches you what feeling feels like and it also teaches
• 7:23
  you that emotions come and go. And this is something that I
• 7:29
  highly, highly recommend. It has really, really switched
• 7:33
  the the way that I feel. It is switched how much I feel,
• 7:36
  how deeply I feel. This is something very, very
• 7:39
  important that I would recommend to literally anybody.
• 7:42
  And you can start it today. I mean, as soon as you're done
• 7:45
  with this podcast, go and do it, man.
• 7:47
  On the topic of, you know, it teaches you that feelings come
• 7:49
  and go. That's something that I would
• 7:51
  love to go out off on a tangent on.
• 7:53
  However, I'm going to go ahead and end this episode here.
• 7:56
  My goal is to keep these really, really short.
• 7:58
  Just a really quick part of your day to make you a little bit
• 8:01
  more mindful of what you're feeling to hopefully teach you
• 8:05
  something or maybe to just, you know, listen and relax to.
• 8:09
  So I'll get more into the temporariness of feelings.
• 8:12
  Next time, please feel free to reach out to me on Instagram at
• 8:16
  Jewel Boy under score with any thoughts or or input on this
• 8:21
  podcast. Podcasting is totally new to me.
• 8:24
  It's super, super uncomfortable to sit here and talk to myself.
• 8:29
  This is a totally new realm. I can promise you there will
• 8:32
  only be improvement from here on out from this episode.
• 8:36
  This is kind of my my testing episode.
• 8:40
  So thank you for tuning in, listening to me ramble.
• 8:44
  I can't wait to do it a whole lot more.
• 8:46
  And yeah, thanks for being here with me and for feeling your
• 8:50
  feelings. I'll see you next time.