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Welcome to Skillful Means Podcast . I'm your ever emotional host , jennifer O'Sullivan . Before we get into today's episode , I want to tell you about some virtual events I have coming up . As an experiment , I'm hosting monthly pause and reset gatherings . These are hour-long meditative sessions that combine desk-friendly yoga , mindfulness practice and parts work meditations , and they're designed to help you reconnect to your inner wisdom and ground your awareness in embodied presence . The next one will be on June 4th and is pay what you can , so check the show notes for a link to sign up , and I hope you'll join me for that .

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On today's show , we're doing a bit of an about face . Last month was all about grounding the strategies and practices that we nurture in order to stay calm and centered , especially when we're under pressure . But or I should say , and we don't want to use these practices to suppress our feelings Grounding is about accessing a sense of equilibrium within ourselves that is inclusive of our difficult feelings , not instead of them . Admittedly , this is confusing , because often big emotions are quickly followed by words and behaviors that we may later regret . There have definitely been times when I was kind of out of my body watching myself say something I really didn't mean , wishing that I could just pluck the words out of the air before they reach the other person's ears . Of course we don't want to be mucking things up like that and to make things even more confusing . Many of us pick up the impression that emotional expression is a failing of spiritual growth and personal development . I've encountered many people who believe that to be a real yogi or a real practitioner , one must show up in this stoic , unimpacted kind of way and honestly , I get it . I think many of us turn to yoga and meditation to teach us how to feel better , to suffer less . I know I started practicing yoga because I was having all this anxiety-fueled , unwanted , intrusive thoughts bubbling around in my head and the embodied movement of yoga class those same grounding practices I talked about last month . They were , without exaggeration , life-saving .

Speaker 1 2:59

After more than 20 years in the yoga world , I've come to realize that not an insignificant portion of people are performing a kind of equanimity , not because they're bad people or dishonest , but because we're trying to model what we see in our teachers . But what we see in their behavior is not necessarily reflective of what's happening inside them when they encounter hardship and , honestly , oftentimes we just don't see them in those situations . I've been fortunate to be in close proximity to Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh a few times . I felt his equanimity wafting off of him like the scent of lavender on a French breeze . There are people who really are at a point in their practice where things don't shake them up , but people like Thich Nhat Hanh have spent decades investigating directly the roots of their thinking and emotionality . In other words , they don't get to this point through emotional suppression . And in fact , during the QA portion of a retreat I attended with Tay , I saw on his face how a retreatant's question affected him . He was moved by this person's expression of suffering . What he didn't do was jump right in with advice . He sat there quietly for what felt like ages , and meanwhile the audience was weeping all 700 of us . Now I can't say with any certainty what was going on in the privacy of Tae's own heart and mind , but I imagine he was practicing exactly what he had been teaching us throughout that week . We approach our suffering , our difficult feelings , like a mother cares for her crying baby . She doesn't get angry at the baby , she takes it into her arms and cares for it tenderly .

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The question that inspired this month's theme is one I've received from yoga students and IFS clients alike . It goes something like this , jen , I've heard you say that we're supposed to welcome all emotions , but I find that really hard . I don't like feeling anxious or sad , and at this stage in my practice I should feel more contented and compassionate , but I find that I still get really angry about things . So how can I work with emotions ? I don't want to be having . This is a fantastic question and I'm going to do my best to point you in a helpful direction , but I also want to say that learning to suffer well , welcoming and embracing all of our emotions is the practice . The Buddha and Patanjali both set this out at the beginning of their teachings and both outline a lifestyle that helps us to suffer less . In other words , there are no simple lessons that we can just learn and then move on to new material . It's something that will develop and refine throughout our lives .

Speaker 1 6:34

The first thing is that I would invite you to reframe how you think about difficult emotions . A helpful question to get you started is what is it about these emotions that I don't like ? What is it that I really want to happen when they show up ? When I ask myself these questions , the answers come really quickly . I don't like them because they make me feel bad . The answers come really quickly . I don't like them because they make me feel bad , not just mentally bad , but my whole body feels bad . When I'm angry , I get headaches . When I'm upset , I feel achy and weighed down , and what I want is for those feelings to go away as quickly as possible , because I don't know how long I can tolerate the pain and I also worry that they'll impact my effectiveness across my life domains . You're going to have your own answers , but I bet that , whatever they are , they make sense In my case . Who wouldn't want the pain to go away ?

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The Sanskrit word for suffering is dukkha , and in Buddhism , the first noble truth states that dukkha is inevitable , and the second noble truth is that the ultimate cause of dukkha is our own dissatisfaction with the circumstances of our lives . Here's where I pause to say that nothing in the Four Noble Truths suggests that we should endure dangerous circumstances . We're not talking about that kind of suffering , so anyone who is in harm's way should focus on getting help , not challenge their mindset about it . Instead , we're talking about developing the capacity to live in a world that is , by all objective measures hard to live in . In such a world , if we are to remain resilient , fulfilled even , the only way out is through , which brings me to one of the types of suffering that encapsulates my relationship with pain . It's called dukkha dukkha or the suffering of suffering . It's I don't want to have to deal with this thinking which actually gets in the way of addressing what's causing the suffering in the first place . It's born of a longing for things to be different than they actually are . And because dukkha dukkha is my pattern , I can tell you from experience that this way of thinking changes nothing and it just adds to my frustration . And it's probably why I'm attracted to Buddhism in the first place , because , like the Stoics , the Buddha is like girl , just deal , and I sometimes need someone to say that to me .

Speaker 1 9:34

There are other types of suffering related to emotional life , including Viparinama Dukkha , which is the opposite of Dukkha Dukkha and stems from the attachments that we hold for pleasant experiences . More specifically , this kind of suffering arises when we're experiencing joyful emotions , because we sense that they're not going to last . In other words , we can't be fully in the moment because we're waiting for the other shoe to drop . Some people go another step further by really doubling down on positivity . It's kind of encapsulated in the good vibes only culture , which is an attempt to lock in happiness by rejecting what might threaten it .

Speaker 1 10:22

Another type of suffering is sankaradukka , which is related to the way we talk to ourselves about painful experiences , and it includes a lot of self-judgment about how we should be feeling . I should be more compassionate , or we catastrophize about what the pain means and where it could lead . You could hear a bit of sankharadukha when I noted that I wasn't sure I could tolerate the pain . The implication is that if it goes on too long , I'd be annihilated by it , at risk of getting perhaps too cerebral . Maybe that's too late about our feelings . It's nevertheless a helpful practice to investigate the nature of your relationship to your feelings . You've probably heard the parable of the second arrow . The first arrow represents the first noble truth Bad things are going to happen to you and everyone you love . No one gets through life without some scars . The second arrow represents our reaction to the first arrow . Instead of facing our challenges directly , we take a second arrow and stab ourselves again as we fret about the unfairness of getting struck in the first place . Pain and painful experiences are also subject to change . Like all things , they're impermanent . The clarity we get when we learn to separate the first and the second arrows goes a long way to alleviating those additional types of suffering I just mentioned .

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We can also turn to psychology . These days , psychologists believe that all emotions serve a function . Positive emotions are believed to broaden our perspective , while also helping us to develop internal and external resources that support our thriving . So-called negative emotions have a purpose too . In some cases , they kick off physiological processes that spur action . So the classic example is fear , ramping up the body to fight a foe or run away from danger . Where positive emotions open our minds , negative emotions help us narrow in on solving particular problems . For instance , anger is a response to injustice or harm to yourself or people you care about , and it motivates us to take action to right wrongs . Sadness engenders compassion and caring , and fortifies our bonds with others . Worry encourages us to plan ahead and seek others' help . Resentment indicates a violation of a boundary which probably should be fortified , and guilt encourages us to own our mistakes , so we develop social sensitivity and learn to repair .

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These are just a few examples , but what I want to impart is that difficult emotions are not evidence of bad character . They're designed to turn our attention towards something that needs it . It's kind of ingenious if you think about it , because bad feelings are hard to ignore . It's kind of ingenious if you think about it because bad feelings are hard to ignore . To sum up , psychology tells us that our negative emotions serve an important function for our survival . Buddhism takes it further by suggesting that when we don't take this on board , we compound our pain . I recognize that adopting this view is one thing , but living it may be another . A lot of cultures around the world are very antagonistic to emotional expression , especially unpleasant emotions , and we may have picked up spoken or unspoken rules from family members , teachers and other people in our lives . But my hope in sharing this with you is that I've planted a very important seed in your mind that may take some time to grow , and that seed is . Nothing is wrong with your feelings now .

Speaker 1 14:56

You know I like to make these episodes practical in some way , so I want to wind down this show with some practices to help you establish a welcoming inner atmosphere . First , I suggest developing your emotional vocabulary . The more clarity you have about the precise emotion you're feeling , the less encompassing it will feel . For example , I feel horrible is really different from I feel discouraged because I didn't get the response I was expecting . You can't do much with horrible it's like a storm cloud hovering over everything . But naming discouragement opens up some possibilities for learning and refinement . And if you're looking for more emotion words to draw on , I recommend doing an image search for emotions wheel . There are a ton of great ones out there and I wasn't sure which one to link to , so have a go .

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The second thing is to practice creating a bit of space around your feelings is to practice creating a bit of space around your feelings . We can do this by incorporating parts language into how we talk about emotions . So instead of saying I'm so angry right now , try , a part of me is really angry right now . This helps to bring a bit of perspective into the moment , while also helping you to step back from the full intensity of the feeling . This extra bit of space also opens the door for you to find out what's caused the feeling in the first place , and it's at this point that you might ask the part what is it that you need me to know right now ? So you're going from I'm angry to a part is angry to a part is angry about dot , dot dot . It's that last bit that turns a big , unwieldy , difficult , uncomfortable , painful feeling into an important messenger .

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Ultimately , welcoming and working collaboratively with parts is an act of self-compassion . We have a right to feel what we feel , and not only that . Emotions are there for a reason . Suppressing them denies us our authenticity and wholeness . It also deprives us of important information that we may need to act on . This doesn't mean that we get to behave unhinged and run around destroying all of our relationships , but I have found that we are far less reckless when we are more in tune with our inner world than when we aren't . Well , that about does it . That went a little faster than I thought it would .

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As always , I put together the topics for this show based on questions I get from from you guys . So if you're wondering about a yoga , mindfulness , daoist or ifs topic , I'd like to hear about it . Send me your questions to feedback at skillfulmeanspodcastcom , and if you'd like to share your story on this show , check out that link to the form in my show notes . And don't forget to check out one of the upcoming pause and reset gatherings . And , as always , thank you for listening and for sending in your thoughts and encouragements Until next time . May you meet each moment with courage and compassion .