All The Feels: Can we experience our emotions—not as good or bad—but as information to guide us?
September 7, 2021
Glennon Doyle:
Hey, everybody. It’s Glennon. Thanks for meeting me back here. Today, on We Can Do Hard Things, we decided to talk about how to survive hard feelings. Okay, and we planned this a while back. Mainly because the world is such a constant and utter avalanche of heartbreak and anger and so is life. And so are our relationships and we just thought that we would talk about how to make it through. How to experience hard feelings without being consumed by them. And so that’s what we’re going to do today. But I want to tell you that right now, I kind of can’t believe… I actually asked if we could cancel this one and not record this one today because I am about to take my son to college, couple of days out actually. And I thought I would crush this part of life because I really like change, but I’m… Whatever’s the opposite of crushing, I am being crushed under. I am actually being crushed under this experience and as a survival mechanism, I have decided to stop feeling anything. Okay. So that’s what I’m doing.
I am, I just bought I think a five-pound tub of Red Vines and I am red vining and reading my way through the pain. Reading is another way I escape. So ironically, we are here to discuss having our hard feelings and feeling them during a time where I have Elsa-ed my way out of feelings. I am concealing, not feeling. I am not letting it go. But I will tell you, I will tell you… No, I am just, I am living every single day. And to be fair this time I’ve lived my entire life. Okay. I can see to the rest of the world that they look at me and they think I am a normal human being having a normal human experience. But I am telling you that all I do all day is I just stand on this little edge of a canyon.
I am standing on the edge of a canyon and it’s right to my left you all. It’s right there. Okay. And the canyon is just this pit of despair and fear. It’s a canyon of madness. Okay. It is. It’s a canyon of effing madness and I am one centimeter. I am just right there. When I think… No, no, no. I’m not going to think about it. When I consider thinking about thinking about the experience of my child, leaving for college. When I consider thinking about the state of the world, when I consider… I could go right in any second. So I just, right now I am staying frozen on the edge of the canyon and I know it’s right there but I’m just trying not to go in. And by the way, that canyon, when I say it’s madness, it’s not crazy. Okay, it’s real.
The canyon is what’s actually happening. The canyon is the reality of the world and the reality of being human, right? Which the truth of life is that we are loving these people so much and we are going to have to slowly separate from them. Okay, that is the canyon of madness and despair and fear that is real.
Abby Wambach:
Honey, but you’re doing the very best that you can. Look like, I see it every single day and I am tiptoeing around this person-
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. You are.
Abby Wambach:
This person you say is my wife. I’m equal parts worried, but also I feel like you’re just doing the very best you can and you’re doing beautiful job.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you.
Abby Wambach:
You really are. I know it’s hard.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Thank you. Well, and I know… Okay, my whole life, I have been feeling hard, big feelings. Feeling things deeply, super sensitive person and that is what my early addiction was about. I think that we start to… Sensitive people who are feeling hard and big feelings, we don’t know why one day we end up alcoholics or drug addicts or whatever but it started usually as just a way to turn down the volume. We’re sensing too much, we’re feeling too much, what we’re told is too much by our culture. And so we find ways to turn it down.
And so, I remember, and I know I’ve told this story before, but you’re just all going to hear it again because it’s my most important story and I tell it to myself maybe every third day. But when I first started getting sober, when I was 25, I think. The first day I got sober was the day that I found out I was pregnant with my son, who is now going off to college. If you want to think more about pit of despair. I’ve never even humaned without being this child’s person. Okay, so fine. That’s fine. It’s fine, life. That’s fine.
Abby Wambach:
You got yourself, baby. You got it. You can do it.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay. So when I got sober, after 15 years of depending on alcohol and food and drugs and everything to numb myself. You know, early sobriety is really tricky because most of us, when we’ve been addicted for a while we just, all of our people convince us that sobriety is going to be this like promised land that’s Nirvana. They so badly want us to get sober because rightfully so, we’re ruining everyone’s lives, right? And so we trick ourselves into thinking, oh, it’s just the booze and the drugs and the food and the whatever that’s my problem. And if I just quit that I will feel better.
So, what happens, I should say what happened to me is that I decided to quit. So that I could become this little being some mother. And I felt worse than I ever remembered feeling in my entire freaking life. Early sobriety was a freaking nightmare was just this like exposed nerve. I just, all I did everyday was remember why I started drinking in the first place. I wasn’t like, oh my God, I’m sober, yeah. I was like, oh yeah, that’s right life is terrible. Being human is terrible. The drinking, all of that was like a coping mechanism for this. And now I don’t even have it and that is terrifying because when you get sober, you realize, oh wait, wait, wait. If the drinking and the food and all of that wasn’t the problem then does that mean I am the problem.
Amanda Doyle:
Mm-hmm. Because it’s terrible-er because now you don’t even have the excuse for life being terrible that you’re crazy drunk.
GD:
Exactly.
AD:
So that now you’re like I got my alibi for why my life sucks is no longer with me. I just have a life that sucks.
GD:
But sister, that’s exactly it. That’s like how it felt, which is terrifying. It is the most claustrophobic feeling because it’s like, oh, there’s nothing else. I can’t quit being me, right? So I went to, I remember going to like my sixth meeting, recovery meeting and I had not said anything yet, but I finally stood up and said, “Okay, my name is Glennon and I’m in recovering everything and yada, yada… And I am terrified because I’m miserable, more miserable than I’ve ever been. And I just walk around all day, wondering what the secret to life is that everyone else seems to have but I don’t have. Because being human looks like it’s so easy for everyone else and it feels so hard for me. And I’m terrified all the time. Thank you very much” and I sat down.
Okay, so this woman comes up to me at the end of the meeting. And I remember her as like, she had to be 80 years old. She was probably 27. We lived pretty hard as addicts. I have no idea, but she seemed so wise and like angelic, she sits down next to me. She puts her hand on my knee. She says, “Honey, can I just want to tell you something that somebody told me in early sobriety, and that is this.” She said, the reason why you’re miserable right now is not because you’re doing life wrong is because you’re finally doing life right. Okay because you’re finally showing up for life and for being human, without any bullshit, without any armor, without any… You’re just finally feeling it all. And that is hard and that is why so few people do it. But if there’s any secret to life, it’s that being human is not about feeling happy. It’s about feeling everything. All of these feelings, they are actually all for feeling. All feelings are for feeling even the uncomfortable ones, even the hard ones.”
And that, as you know, both of you, that sounds so simple. I am telling you for me, that was a freaking revolutionary idea. That I didn’t know you were supposed to feel all your feelings. I didn’t know that anger and envy and heartbreak and rage and doubt were for feeling. I live in a culture that told me happiness and joy and success and pride. And these are all for feeling, the rest of those feelings are for hiding and for being ashamed of, and those are failure. So this concept that, oh wait, that’s just like a consumer culture lie.
AD:
Yeah. I mean, it’s all culturally constructed. Like it’s funny because now there’s this TED Talk, this woman Watt Smith, she’s a historian. She does like the history of emotions. And she said, now we have this idea that we’re supposed to be happy all the time because happier people make better parents and they make better workers and they make healthier people. But in the 16th century, it was the opposite that they believe that sadness did all of that. So it made you a better worker. It made you a better parent because, and they actually had self-help books then that taught you to cultivate sadness.
GD:
Oh my God, I missed my time.
AD:
You did. You’re woman born too late. So they believed that if you were an expert in sadness, it made you more resilient when inevitably all the things went wrong, that went wrong in life. So those were the people who were seen as more like emotionally mature, if they were just sad all the time.
And also, here’s the other thing we view this hierarchy of emotion, but that when you look at like what are the core emotions that people have, it varies. Like sometimes some scientists think it’s like six or eight or whatever. But by of the six core emotions, five of them are what we would call “negative” emotions, like anger and fear. And there’s only one of our core emotions that we make like our DNA is made up of, only one of them is what we would call a “positive” emotion.
GD:
No way, which one is it?
AD:
So they are, I got to find them. They are anger, disgust, surprise, fear, sadness, and happiness.
GD:
Oh my God. That’s-
AD:
So those are like evolutionary and only one of them is happy.
AW:
Wow.
GD:
That’s so interesting.
AW:
Isn’t that the beauty of sobriety for us, it’s like… I feel like when I was drinking, I was just like, well, I’ll deal with that tomorrow. Like of everything. So it’s not just feelings. It was like to do stuff and get my shit together, get my whole life together.
GD:
Yes.
AW:
So yes, like this whole episode is going to be around feelings. But like, if you are actually capable of feeling your feelings, your life will be better because everything else then starts to come together. Then you actually can get your shit together. And by the way, I’m like five years out. And I’m like, just starting to get it all together, like just right about now. So if you’re early in your sobriety, give yourself some time.
GD:
It’s like defrosting. You have to like… It hurts so bad at first. Feeling when you have decided or you’ve been convinced not to, it just stings like crazy for a while. All you can do is survive it, you definitely can’t get your shit together during that time.
AD:
So what’s interesting you say sting because… It’s interesting, you say sting because it’s like, it’s literally emotions are…they evolved as self-preservation. They are, it’s like fear and anger. It’s coded into our DNA. It was made in us so we could sense threats around us, so we could read our environment, so we could decide whether we had capacity to handle any situation. And it’s actually, when you reframe it like that, it’s a positive thing because all of these emotions are giving us information we need to be prepared to positively handle the situation. It’s so amazing because it’s … there are several parts of it including what happens to our actual bodies when we feel emotion, but I feel like when you said about sobriety in Untamed, how it isn’t the pain that takes us out of the game, it’s the shame about the pain.
GD:
Mm-hmm.
AD:
I feel like that whole way of thinking about it works with emotions because literally scientifically it isn’t our emotions that are the problem. It is how we feel about our emotions and how we process them because of how we feel about them, that leads to poor emotional health. You can have the same amount of anger and sadness and fear in two different sets of people and if they have different beliefs, different feelings about their feelings, then they have different health consequences.
GD:
Wow.
AW:
My God, it’s so amazing.
GD:
Let’s talk about … in Untamed, this is how I used to feel about how feelings can give us information. After I changed my perspective on feelings in terms of, I will no longer ignore, numb, hide, shame, deflect my uncomfortable feelings, just to be a more effective smiley woman, okay? I’ll just go ahead and feel everything, if that makes me a little less pleasant and inefficient, fine. I’m going to practice that. Because that was my only choice. I didn’t have my numbing thing anymore. I didn’t have booze so I had to just accept that this is who I was and I was going to have these feelings.
I started to understand that actually, my uncomfortable feelings were much more instructive to me and helpful to me than even the comfortable ones. That the whole world was telling me, you’re not depressed or not sad, or you’re not angry because those are normal feelings. You’re just sad and angry because you don’t have these countertops. And if you just had these countertops, you’d be happy as this woman in this commercial. And if you just had these jeans, if you just had this diet, if you just had this blah blah blah. And then actually that was a trick to make me easy button my way out of my feeling that also benefited everyone who was selling me shit, because really that’s an amazing way to run an economy because women who feel less then we all will buy more.
But then you just keep buying and you just keep buying because you can never get enough of what you never really needed in the first place. So it’s a brilliant way to run an economy because you know, joy and happiness, if you’re promised are in those products, then it’s just always right out of reach. So you spend your whole life on a hamster wheel.
So, when I tried to practice not doing that, which by the way I still do it in a million ways, I started to realize that these uncomfortable feelings, if I could sit with them for a while and interrogate them, instead of following my bliss all the time, if I could actually follow my anger, follow my envy, follow my fear, that that would kind of reveal to me something about me.
AD:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
GD:
And I hated it, I hated every minute of it. As a recovering everything my go-to is escape, escape, escape. So it’s like a freaking hard practice to not escape. Sit, not escape, sit, sit in the fire, sit in the fire, let it teach you. So, I described it in Untamed as like, because I’m obsessed with metaphors, it was almost like every uncomfortable feeling was a knock or a ring of my doorbell. Now anyone who knows me knows that, that to me, a doorbell ringing is the most aggressive, terrifying, heartbreaking, alarming, terror alert red situation.
AW:
Watch out people, don’t do it.
GD:
Every time the doorbells I’m like, are you, is that someone for real? Is that seriously happening? Like people just go to your house … anyway. But sometimes I think it’s a package, so I’m kind of excited.
AD:
Right.
GD:
So, I just have to wait it out, make sure the person leaves and then I can see if it’s a package. And the exciting thing about these uncomfortable feelings to me is that they’re terrifying and horrific just like the doorbell ringing, but there is a delivery to me about me. So, what I mean by that is when I feel angry about something, if I can sit with it long enough, instead of what you said, sister shaming … that I’m putting the layer of shame on top. If we can refuse that shame for our anger and just remind ourselves that this is a normal human emotion that’s trying to reveal something to me about me then it can kind of tell you. A boundary maybe you have, it’s being crossed.
AW:
That’s right.
GD:
Something in the world that is pissing you off, not because there’s something wrong you, but because there’s something wrong. That you could be part of changing. Something in your family that is pissing you off, maybe it’s not something that’s wrong with you. Maybe it’s something wrong that you could … Sister what do you think? Because I know we have different theories about this.
AD:
Well, I think first of all, your idea of why we avoid it, why we avoid the feeling and some of it is shame, I think it’s true, but I think you have to look at the actual physical thing … there’s a reason why we avoid it that’s actually physical too. That’s because if you’re … these core emotions, they’re not just a feeling, that they’re happening to and in your body, and this is relevant because that’s how you manage it has to do with the physiological effects it has on you.
So, if you have one of these core, basic emotions that were originally critical to our survival, they first happen in the subcortical area of the brain. It’s the amygdala. So that is where you first experience, fear, anger, all of those things. And it activates an automatic response of a lot of your biological systems. So it’s increased blood flow, heart rate, all of that stuff, including a cortisol dump in your body, which is your stress hormone. So that’s relevant because that’s an automatic physical reaction that you’re having in this moment.
GD:
That’s how I feel when the doorbell rings.
AD:
Yes, it is. It is. That’s exactly right. So we have that. We think that we’re crazy because we have what seems to be an out of proportion response to what’s happening. So we think that there’s something wrong with us because of that, when really it’s just biological. How many times do you hear women say, I should be grateful, but … I should be happy, but … it’s like we view having one of these, meaning it’s at the exclusion of another. And I just feel like it’s helpful to think of it in another way. It’s not like you’re 50% grateful and 50% angry. You can be a hundred percent grateful and a hundred percent angry.
GD:
Yeah. We take out the but–
AD:
At the same time-
GD:
I like the and.
AD:
Yes.
AD:
I’m grateful and I wish this. I’m grateful and I want this, instead of the but.
AD:
Right. So, for me, I think that anger is an interesting one because it really is shown to motivate people to change things. And that’s correct. But I think a lot of these emotions we have are kind of safety one, even if it shows up in a quote unquote “negative” way for us. And so for me, anger … we’ve talked about this a little bit, it’s kind of my default one and it masks, what are other uncomfortable emotions for me like fear.
I’m not as comfortable presenting in a fearful way. I’m more comfortable presenting in an angry way. So I think it’s not always like lean into it, it’s more I think the process, and what the research shows, is that the best thing you can possibly do is kind of have a neutral, non-judgmental, acceptance. That you are learning that you are like a machine, that when encountered with things, given your context and your history, when you experience, when something passes through you and you’re like, “Oh, I’m angry. Oh, I’m joyful. Oh, I’m afraid.” That having a neutral perception of all of those allows you to see how it plays out in your life. Allows you to analyze the situation more, because … and let more information in because when you name it like that, you can actually process what’s happening to you. It’s literally just the naming of it, will help you to put the brake on that so you can get into the different space of your head to understand it. And I think that that’s the difference between a response and a reaction.
You know, a lot of us are like my go-to move, I’m pissed, here’s what I do, a cold death stare. You’re getting what … as if it’s axiomatic that that would be your … that your reaction needs to come out as a result of your emotion. But when you get out of it, when you can identify it and say like, “This is happening right now”, then you can start to see, for example in my pattern, I can start to see, “Oh, that is your reaction. That is based on a perceived threat that you see. What is the perceived threat you can see, and how is that related to all the experiences you’ve had in your life that you are getting information?” I am receiving information as incredibly accurate. But it may not, and that is true. And also there is potentially a whole set of information that is also true, that is not passing through my system, that will help me make an appropriate reaction to it.
GD:
It’s because also you and I, how shall we say, I think people who have grown up in a family or culture where there’s a lot of eggshells, walking on eggshells, we perceive a lot of things as a threat.
AD:
Mm-hmm.
GD:
So, our anger or our whatever is activating to a point where if we followed every single anger sign, we would destroy all of our relationships in our lives.
AD:
Right.
GD:
So I actually had to learn a strategy that a friend taught me long ago called “save as drafts”. Which I’ve now used as a metaphor in many different parts of my life. But when anger visits me, when I feel anger, my go-to is to do something about it. To use that information as a sign that something needs to be changed, or I need to express myself, or as you would say, I need to react, okay. So I’m allowed to do that. I’m allowed to write all of my feelings to said institution to said person to said, whatever.
All I have to do is “save as drafts” for 24 hours. Because what I’ve learned is, while uncomfortable feelings are informational and instructive, they are not always good directionally. They’re not always good in the moment to tell you what to do as an action.
AD:
Mm-hmm.
GD:
They are un-trustable in that way.
AD:
Right.
GD:
But if I can wait long enough, there’s always a nugget that when I … it’s like sometimes the difference between war and peace is like 15 seconds, if I can wait long enough for wisdom to catch up with the feeling, then the response will not just be a reaction.
AW:
Yeah. Take a breath. I think that when we ever get into our arguments, we actually don’t even like argue, argue like anger, but I feel like there’s anger present.
GD:
Yes.
AW:
And I think that we’re able to deal with it responsibly because I just get still and I get quiet and I’m like, “Oh, there you are, I’m upset.” And I might play defense for a second, but I think getting still and quiet is a really good way to become the observer, to be able to witness some of these feelings coming up.
GD:
Yeah, absolutely.
AD:
And it’s just really interesting because it’s all that we’ve… emotions are in us, there’s no avoiding it. But it’s just information about ourselves. It reminds me of the five fights, that episode that you two did about, really when you’re talking about what you fight about it’s both of them are these perceived threats to either to your relationship or to your individuality, that becomes like the nugget of what you’re fighting about. And it seems like learning how we go through the world. And how we can go through the world in a way that we want to, really depends on just analyzing, observing ourselves in these situations and what’s coming up for us.
It’s so interesting because when you said about this like toxic happiness, this blew my mind because the idea of like the most positive thing you can do is just remain kind of value neutral about emotions, is that people who have that, who just kind of like don’t feel like feelings are good or bad, they have better…they not only have better mental health outcomes, but they actually do better on like timed tests. Which means that when you’re not judging your emotions, you’re not only feeling better, but you’re also able to function better. You’re able to actually process information better. And this part blew my mind, which is that people who view happiness as very valuable versus people who are kind of non-judgmental about their emotions, the people who place high value on being happy are actually less happy.
GD:
That feels exactly right to me.
AW:
That’s true.
AD:
Isn’t it amazing. Because they’re just constantly struggling, struggling to meet their own expectations. And they’re always feeling disappointed.
GD:
It’s like this idea of our culture has taught us the goal is happiness. You are supposed to feel happy, that’s the golden ring, as opposed to you are supposed to feel everything. So all you have to worry about is, are you alive today? Meaning are you allowing the experience of being human to flow through you. And are you resisting our culture’s demand that you be pleasing and accommodating and smiling constantly?
AD:
And are you open to more information? You can’t just feel the things and react based on your physiological reaction,
GD:
Right, right.
AD:
If you are able to…the best thing, even with kids and adults, is this like concept of being able to reappraise. Like you have your reaction, you have your physical dump, and then you’re able to say, is it possible that there is more information available that would open up to a different emotion right now.
GD:
Okay, I want to get into examples of this.
AD:
Yeah. Okay.
GD:
So, let’s make this real, all right. What would your go-to be and what would be a healthier way to walk through it? Give me an example.
AD:
So, okay. Let’s say that my husband doesn’t respond to like an important request that I have about the kids. I feel like it’s really important that something for them depends on this and we’ve got to get this done, et cetera. And if he doesn’t respond to that, then I will immediately go straight to anger, like straight to anger, which will actually be anger and fear. But I will be…it will be anger. And I will have my emotional response, then I will feel like I have all my information. I am alone in this. It’s up to me to figure it out. My kids need things that we’re not going to give them. Therefore, they’re going to be ill-equipped for life. Therefore… So I’m like, I am gone. I am dog paddling through a sea of cortisol right now. And I have all that information. I have received it, and I know it’s true.
But like reappraisal in that situation would be the process of re-evaluating it and being like, is it possible that he’s in a meeting right now? Is it possible he is doing research on what I’ve suggested? Is it possible that his processing of information albeit different than mine doesn’t reflect his not caring just as much as I do about this thing? Is it also possible that my kids, in this moment, are okay? Right? So, I am having, genuinely, that response. It is true to me. It is also possible that there is more information available to me that would cause me to have a better ability to handle life and to react to challenges in life because really that’s what emotions are for. Right?
GD:
Yes. So what you were saying to me is that, I mean, emotion, which is energy in motion. Energy, it’s energy, it’s flowing through our body. That is real. That is information. It is often completely… it is information that is sometimes also flawed or informed by our past trauma or incomplete.
AD:
Incomplete.
GD:
It’s incomplete. So, there is an and both here. There’s a third way. So there is a way of not ignoring or shutting down that emotion, but also not completely succumbing or surrendering completely to it. Feeling it and meeting it with some wisdom and questions. I liked your, “is it possible that?” Because I go through that too. Abby, doesn’t that sound familiar to me? I mean, what is it Sister that makes us feel in every moment that the world is against us?
AW:
Even your partners. Even the people that you guys chose to marry and spend the rest of your lives with. It stuns me how quickly it can happen. It happens so often, honey, and this is not a judgment, this is who you are and it’s fine, or these are emotions that come up for you. But I see it happen so frequently that it makes me feel sad for you that, that’s your instinct, your knee jerk reaction, that reptilian response, is questioning, is lack of trust, is fear, is I could have done it better, like this kind of belief system that I think both of you probably would agree that you have, which makes you so successful in so many ways, but also really makes you probably suffer.
AD:
Mm-hmm.
GD:
Yeah. The immediate feeling of what is happening right now is verification that I am on my own.
AW:
Yup.
GD:
I mean, at the end of the day, I think that’s what it is. It’s like this… I mean, when we learned how to fight better, babe, it took me, I would say this entire time, maybe four years, maybe three solid years, to really believe that we were on the same team. To not go into every fight with like up here we go. Yep. This is where it’s me versus you.
AD:
I think it’s interesting that we started this whole podcast. The first ever episode was on depression, anxiety. So where do you see that, Glennon, in this conversation?
GD:
I’m wildly defensive and protective of all of my depressive and anxious buddies. Okay. Because I feel like we live on a planet that no one understands.
When someone says to me… like compares depression to sadness or anger or envy, it feels to me like comparing like diabetes to those things. Like they’re just completely and utterly different. People experience depression in all different ways. But for me, there’s usually a catalyst to it when it comes and visits me in life that has to do with, at first, it feels like an onslaught of all the feelings, of all the uncomfortable feelings. So it’s like, if you can deal with them one at a time, there’s this time that happens to me every few years where it just all starts coming so fast and so furious and so constant that I am unable to even identify them anymore. Okay. Like, I don’t know what’s what anymore.
When I’m in that time, when I read back on those essays from Untamed about feelings being deliveries, they feel totally Pollyanna and ridiculous to me. And I wrote them. But when depression comes, it’s such an onslaught that… It’s like if you take all the colors, if all the feelings are colors, and then you just take a huge paint brush and just like smushed them all, swirled them up so much, that just turns into this like dark gray nothingness.
AD:
Mm-hmm.
GD:
So, to me, depression is this like onslaught of everythingness that suddenly turns into a nothingness. And the nothingness is almost a relief at first until it’s not, because you decide, even though you’ve already been there and gotten out before, that you will never get out. That now you’re in the abyss of gray. And now I feel like maybe this is a little too much.
AW:
No, I think that something that happens though, is you spend those weeks, sometimes months, trying to pinpoint, oh, here’s fear, here’s anger, here’s… And you’re like trying to like self-diagnose. And then all of a sudden, and I think that you have such an anxiety of the gray of that depressive-
GD:
Yes. I’m anxious about my depression.
AW:
Yes. She’s like, I think I’m getting depressed. I feel it coming. And so you have anxiety about getting depressed and then when you do find yourself in depression, you feel like you will never return.
GD:
Yeah. Because it feels like, you know those space movies where someone’s like… Like the people on the space shuttle are trying to keep somebody from flying off into nothingness. That’s how I feel when I am going into it. It’s like, I want to be with my people. I want to be on the spaceship, but am I going, am I going, am I going, okay?
So, I’m glad you asked that though, because I just want to… I know we have to stop in a minute. And so I think in the next one, in the next episode, we should talk about this the way the world seems to be experiencing the world right now, like a lot of people who are probably listening.
When people talk to me about how they’re feeling these days, after years of the deluge, the onslaught, of things to be angry about, things to be fearful about, the COVID of it all, the climate change of it all, the Afghanistan of it all, the Haiti of it all. The new things every week. The way they’re describing themselves to me, it’s not depression. Trust me. I live on the other planet. I know it’s not depression. But it feels to me a touch like all the colors have blended together. The onslaught of hard feelings have made even healthy people a little bit gray. Just using numbness and gray as a freaking survival, an understandable survival technique. We can’t even pinpoint anything anymore. We are just frozen.
AD:
And that makes sense, right? When you think about, I mean, in a very real way, for the past year and a half, we have been… and many people who’ve been traumatized even well before then, we have been receiving a deluge of information that we need to adapt to very quickly to survive this situation. All of our structures closing, all of our things our kids relied upon, our health is at risk, or whatever. And if you’re constantly like threat, threat, adapt, adapt over and over and over again, nonstop. When that happens chronically, the studies show that that does… like when you’re activating on a constant cortisol dump, chronically, chronically, chronically, that does lead to depression. Like they’re very highly correlated, including other really unhelpful ways of coping. And so I think a lot of us, I mean, my God, that’s why eating disorders have spiked during this time. It’s like every way of coping with the uncopeable is in effect right now.
GD:
Yeah. And I think we just… There is part of that that is the plan, that is the idea that if the powers that be just wear us the hell out, if we just go numb, if we just… There’s a third way. There’s a way that we can protect ourselves and still be in the world, and still be showing up, while allowing ourselves to also have a human experience because we only have one life and we get to have joy during this life, right now.
AW:
That’s right.
GD:
Let’s talk about that a little bit more in the next episode.
Right now, our Next Right Thing this week y’all, is going to be…Sister, do you want to do this one?
AD:
Sure.
GD:
Can you do the Next Right Thing for us?
AD:
Okay, this is really exciting. We’re going to think about our feelings about our feelings, because we cannot control the things that happen to us, but the only way that we can affect our ability to recover and have stronger mental health is to think about our beliefs, about our own emotions.
So, number one, we’re going to think about whether we believe emotions are good or bad, or helpful or unhelpful. We’re going to try to get to the place where we can just have neutral acceptance, they’re all just information, all helpful in that they are delivering information, not good, not bad, just delivering information.
Number two, we’re going to think about whether we think our emotions are completely out of our control, and unchangeable, or whether they are capable of shifting with new information. Because even just our belief about that, affects… You don’t even have to let the new information in. You can just believe-
GD:
Okay, wait a minute. I need to understand that one. So, this number two is: So, I have texted Abby, she is not texting me back immediately. I am pissed off, I am abandoned, I am alone, I knew I couldn’t trust anybody-
AW:
True story, folks, true story.
GD:
I am fired up. Okay? Are you saying that, all you’re asking me to do is consider whether more information, like wondering if Abby’s just in the dentist chair, might be able to shift that fury?
AD:
I am asking you to make a belief about your emotions, that your emotions are capable of shifting, that they are not completely out of your control. If you believe that your emotions are not out of your control, you will be more likely to engage in the reappraisal process, which is allowing new information in, which is re-imagining the situation as possibly different than you originally experienced it. And if you do that, it’s similar to the growth mindset in education. You know how like this whole revelation of, if you believe that intelligence comes from effort, rather than natural talent, scientists believe that the exact same parallels happening with emotions, that, if you believe that emotions are something that you can impact, that you yourself, Glennon, have an impact on the emotion you’re feeling right now, and it’s not wildly out of your control, then you will be more willing to try new strategies like reappraisal, and you will recover better from life.
AW:
Wow. I feel like what Sister just did in terms of closing this up is going to literally change Glennon’s life.
GD:
No. I’m not ready to consider it. I’m going to consider considering it is all I’m saying.
AD:
She’s going to try, to try.
GD:
I’m going to try to try. I’m not going to try.
AW:
Wow.
GD:
Okay, but I’m serious, I understand what you’re saying. I’m going to think about whether I might or might not believe that it is possible for me to have different emotional experiences, that it’s not just constantly happening to me, that it’s not out of my control. I will consider that. That would perhaps make the next part of my life completely different than the first part. So I’m going to think about it, Sister. Thank you for that very difficult next right thing.
AW:
And might have a very big impact on what you’re going through right this second.
GD:
With Chase, I hear you.
AD:
And it’s not to say that it isn’t a neurological physiological response, right? The same place where we store, where we experience those emotions, is the exact same place that releases the neurotransmitters for memory, which is why when we have an emotion like that, we are experiencing in reverse.
GD:
Yes, that’s how it feels.
AD:
Our situation right now is being justified by, very unfortunately, the place where we hold recall, also holds the emotion, right? So we are experiencing that the 60,000 times that affirm why we should be super upset in this moment, okay? It’s not forward thinking; it’s not taking into account what’s happening right now.
AW:
Wow.
AD:
It’s backward justified, but that doesn’t serve us, right? I’m preaching to you your same stuff.
GD:
I know you are, you’re saying in a different way. To me, I would say, “Glennon, don’t attach this to a story.” What’s happening right now, the language I use is, “Okay, Abby, hasn’t texted me back. Don’t jump. What is actually happening right now is that Abby hasn’t texted you back yet.”
AD:
Correct.
GD:
“You’re attaching it to the story of, you can never depend on anyone and you will always be abandoned, and someone will… And here we go. And the other shoe and blah, blah, blah. But actually that’s attaching a story. All that’s happening right now is-“
AW:
The irony is that I’ve never let you down in that way.
GD:
I know. Reality doesn’t matter, babe.
AW:
It’s from before I even got here. So it’s crazy. And the next right thing this week folks is, listen to everything that Sister just said, I am. Wow, that was incredible. I feel changed.
GD:
You didn’t even need to change, baby.
AW:
I feel changed.
AD:
The only one on this call that didn’t need to change.
GD:
Exactly, that’s why. She’s so open.
AW:
No. But I’m your partner. I’m the partner of somebody who-
GD:
Needs to change?
AW:
No. Who is deeply in her feelings a lot, and so it makes me know you better, it makes me help be a better partner for you. And yeah, this is equally as important to me as it is to you, even if it’s not necessarily directly influencing my life.
GD:
I love you. We got to wrap it up, y’all. We love you so much, good luck with that next right thing. We’re going to see you back here in a couple of days. If things get hard this week and they will, just don’t forget that we can do hard things. See you soon.