"Why am I still so upset about this?"
"This shouldn't bother me."
"I know I'm overreacting."
"Why can't I just let it go?"
"What's wrong with me?"
For many people, thoughts like these show up almost as quickly as the emotion itself.
You feel anxious, sad, guilty, hurt, frustrated, or disappointed. Then, almost immediately, your attention shifts. Instead of simply noticing the feeling, you begin wondering what it says about you. Why am I reacting like this? Why can't I handle this better? Why is this affecting me so much?
You might feel guilty after saying no to someone and wonder whether you're selfish. You feel anxious before an important meeting and question why you can't be more confident. You feel sad weeks after a loss and think you should be doing better by now. You feel frustrated by something that happened and immediately tell yourself you're being too sensitive.
Gradually, you're no longer carrying only the emotion itself. You're also carrying everything you believe that emotion says about you.
At that point, anxiety may no longer feel like just anxiety. It becomes evidence that you're weak. Guilt becomes evidence that you're a bad person. Sadness becomes evidence that you should have moved on. Frustration becomes evidence that you're not coping well enough.
The feeling itself hasn't necessarily changed. What has changed is the meaning you've attached to it.
There's a good reason this happens. Emotions grab our attention. They signal that something matters. They're meant to help us notice what's happening inside us and around us. But they don't always tell us the whole story, and they don't always tell us something is wrong with us.
When we start judging ourselves for having an emotion, our attention often shifts away from understanding it. Instead of asking, What is this feeling trying to tell me? we begin asking, What's wrong with me for feeling this way?
That question can quietly keep us stuck.
The emotion may still be there, but now it's accompanied by self-criticism, shame, or the belief that we should be different than we are. Instead of making room for the feeling, we begin fighting with ourselves for having it.
Ironically, the emotion often isn't what people describe as being most exhausting. It's the constant pressure to stop feeling it, explain it away, or become someone who wouldn't have felt it in the first place.
Emotions don't need to become evidence about who you are. They can simply be emotions.
As that relationship with your emotions begins to shift, there is often a little more room for curiosity and a little less room for self-judgment. The feeling may still be uncomfortable, but it no longer has to carry the weight of defining you.
