Is everything I feel relevant? The subtle but crucial difference

Do you know this feeling – you wake up in the morning, and while you’re still in that twilight state, the familiar worries, big and small, slowly but surely flow into your consciousness?

Yet yesterday evening everything had been so beautiful, and you had gone to bed with a feeling of elation, determined to approach the new day “positively”!

So now, on top of the already unpleasant feeling, comes the annoyance with yourself for having “tipped over” again.

Do you notice something?

At least I notice a clear tendency, almost cruel in its exclusiveness, to always want to strive for absolute happiness – or even feel obligated to do so.

If you’re not happy, something’s wrong with you.

I have several very different questions about this:

• Isn’t it okay, given everything that’s constantly happening in the world, to sometimes not be manically happy – even if you’re among the fortunate ones who don’t live under immediate threat?
• What if your happiness looks completely different from what is commonly defined as such? Quieter, more relaxed, with more room for various sensations?
• What if you can easily let go of that heaviness that does not belong to you?

Everyone will think differently about my first question – but surely everyone will admit that paradise doesn’t reign on earth. Why else would religions, spirituality, philosophy etc. exist? They ultimately serve to cope with “this life,” to understand its meaning, to either explain the unpleasant, the suffering, view it from a different angle, or reduce it. The central question for me is: How do I deal with the fact that suffering exists? I strive to live as honestly as possible and to open up space for happiness in my encounters with others, as best I can.

This brings me to my second question: What is happiness for you personally, in your sphere of influence? Where do you find yourself in this particular situation?

My happiness consists of being able to perceive and feel things, but then also being able to switch back into that spaciousness that allows me to continue breathing and see other possibilities. This also includes phases where I consciously surrender to melancholy, sadness, grief. Times I allow myself when I don’t have to sugarcoat or reinterpret anything, when I let my feelings and sometimes tears flow freely. Interestingly, these phases pass all the more quickly the kinder I am with myself and allow everything – often it’s a matter of just a few minutes.

Only dwelling in foreign suffering that one cannot alleviate drags one down in the long run and doesn’t help anyone.

But how do I recognize when I’m dealing with my own feelings?

As a rule of thumb, I can say: If familiar thought loops attach themselves to the feelings, or entire thought constructs unfold in no time, the longer I try to “get rid of” the feeling, it’s rather an energy from outside: I perceive it and try to make sense of it, to justify it by walking down familiar mental pathways.

An example from this morning: “The week begins. Oh no, I still haven’t found a new additional job. I’m a loser, an outcast, a parasite, I’m going to waste my parents’ money too, I’ve always been a failure…” Viewed soberly, I could refute every single “point,” but that’s precisely the crux – that in such moments one doesn’t think “soberly.” Instead, the brain “thinks” all fitting associations from one’s own experience toward the perceived energy. Following the motto: “I feel …, this must come from the fact that I did or didn’t do …, am or am not … etc.” At the end of such thought chains, I feel even worse and see no way out. This is the clearest sign that it’s an energy from outside that I cannot change because it’s not mine.

In summary – feelings from which long thought chains unfold that lead to hopelessness are usually not mine.

But how do my own feelings differ?

Here’s an example from my not-so-distant past: In the last two years, since I became the last remaining person from my family, without having founded one of my own, especially during travels I was overcome by the realization that I currently have no one in the world waiting for my updates. While I had previously sometimes experienced this “having to report” as an unpleasant burden, the new “freedom” was initially anything but pleasant. It was a feeling of aloneness that went so deep that my head couldn’t even engage, and as soon as I (finally!) stopped suppressing it, it broke through and discharged itself, in this case in healing tears.

Or a situation annoys me that I initially try to talk myself into liking. However, if I give free rein to the anger by, for example, consciously grumbling to myself and also physically releasing the tension, clarity suddenly emerges. And afterward I might even start singing.

The difference between foreign suffering that we perceive and unsuccessfully try to resolve — our head runs hot but comes to no conclusion – and our own feelings that discharge when we give them space, has been a vital realization for me.

How are you doing?

Do you struggle with “troublesome feelings”?

What if we can handle everything if we just approach it consciously?

I wish you a wonderful, diverse, and conscious day!