By Sibel Ozer
“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world”
Earlier I described a process whereby parts of us stay behind and argued that our psychological wellbeing requires all parts of the psyche to be anchored within the home-body. That was a call to reunite our many parts in service of living in the best and fullest way possible, which can only happen in the present. I want to repeat Rilke’s words that the point (of life) is to live everything, and build on this idea by inviting contemplation on how to navigate our negative emotions, which are the hardest to feel.
My art has come to accompany this message as a sweet dragon, and my beloved serpents surround this female figure. Snakes are symbolic of transformation, so it is apropos that they have arrived in number to accompany the topic of navigating challenging emotions. In my work as a psychotherapist I rely on many theories, but only a handful offer irrefutable reliability. One of these golden nuggets is the Gestalt theory of paradoxical change—it never seems to fail being helpful when we encounter large and difficult emotions. The theory says that contrary to our impulse to avoid pain, the better response to negative emotions is to allow them to be. Our defense mechanisms are designed to help us avoid pain and most of the time they are somewhere between useful and life-saving. The problem with this is that the unfelt emotions end up lingering within our psychic landscapes, which, depending on the situation, can be as problematic as a small infection staying somewhere in the body. Just as an untreated infection can turn into a full-blown health crisis, unfelt, unprocessed emotions can also build into something potent, explosive, and hurtful.
The theory postulates that when you simply let the emotions be what they are, giving them nothing but your time and attention, they will organically run their course, and the danger of buildup (unhealthy accumulation) disappears as they transform into a neutral or positive emotion. For example, anger that is avoided can over time build up to become resentment, whereas anger allowed can turn into anything ranging from indifference to peace.
This female figure reminded me of Medusa, but one that has to be redefined in that she wants to teach us to not be afraid of our anger, to not despair when a sadness raises within us, that there is no need to hold onto guilt or shame if learning accompanies our failures.
She is here to teach us to learn to be okay with not being okay.
I have come to understand that this teaching is a core piece of mindfulness. Contrary to the myths we might hold around it, mindfulness is not about reaching a state of equanimity where we no longer experience turbulence, but rather about developing our wherewithal with upset of all manners. Whether we are sitting on the cushion meditating, walking in the woods contemplating, or practicing mindfulness during meal preparation (any and all moments of life are perfect for practicing), the point is to let the mind bring up whatever thoughts it has, and the emotional body to feel whatever emotions happen to be present, noticing them without judgement.
Whether the emotions are good, bad, or ugly doesn’t matter, as what defines who we are has nothing to do with the transient thoughts and emotions that pass through us. What matters is realizing that we are not them. What matters is strengthening our witness function that can observe our thoughts and emotions in their transience. Added to that, is becoming more adept at questioning the validity of our thoughts and emotions which may or not be reasonable.
There is absolutely no problem with having all manner of unreasonable thoughts and feelings. In fact I don’t know a single person who doesn’t have them. Our goodness and kindness and our measure as a human being cannot be defined by the manner of thoughts and emotions that pass through our minds at any given moment. It is what we do or don’t do with them, in other words our response to them, that ends up defining our character.
All of us will experience all manner of thoughts and emotions throughout our lifetime, whether we like it or not, as a natural result of the human condition. I don’t know a good mother who at some moment didn’t entertain some unfavorable thoughts or felt some unsavory emotions toward her own children. It simply is not compatible with life, and therefore needs no exorcism. Thoughts cannot be stopped anymore then emotions, even though having said that I must add that we certainly work very hard to do so. Also as I said before, we also have an arsenal of defense mechanisms that are part of our psychic structure and that help push away unwanted thoughts and emotions. Even though they help us with momentary relief, they do not succeed in fully eliminating them.
The range of issues that create unpleasant emotions would make a novel and doesn’t need expanding upon since we all know them. You don’t need to be a mother to be annoyed by a child’s endless wailing, nor to think a teenager is behaving like a brat. We don’t need to be married twenty years to experience a moment of temptation, or be committed to a profession while catching ourselves dreaming of another. We all get to have different reasons to be mad or sad; what matters is that we all experience these universal emotions rather regularly despite our well-developed defense mechanism of repression, denial, projection, or intellectualization.
Here’s the problem: somewhere along the way we decided that the positive emotions were good and healthy, and the negative ones aren’t okay!
I would argue that the entire gamut of emotions are healthy given they are appropriate to the situation. For example, sadness in the face of pain, and joy when experiencing pleasure. The problem lies with thinking that negative emotions aren’t okay. There is a particularly powerful distaste for the presence of negative emotions in the western world, at times gender specified. The Medusa archetype exemplifies our fear of women’s anger. It is deemed so worrisome, metaphorically speaking, because it turns those who experience it to stone. Because of this, she and feminine feelings of anger have to be beheaded. Sadness is similarly problematic for men, which is a big problem given that without it our capacity for empathy, connectedness is seriously jeopardized.
A good chunk of my counseling is dedicated to help clients be okay with their various feelings throughout their life experiences. Grief and loss, aging, disease and ultimately death are inescapable realities of our mortality. It is impossible not to feel sad, mad, guilty, anxious, shy, incompetent, insecure, uncertain, or full of shame every so often. We really ought to get rid of the idea that if only we were better human beings we could bypass these feeling states.
The first time Medusa visited me in a painting was when I was a new mother struggling with the times where I would feel impatient, or dare I admit, angry, with my newborn. I wasn’t a complete idiot, though not half as wise as I am in my fifties, and yet I was convinced that I wasn’t supposed to feel what to me were unwarranted, unacceptable emotions in relationship to my needy, helpless, perfect baby. I had ideas of good and bad parenting and feeling negative emotions without the most legitimate of reasons wasn’t part of my parenting ideal. I also didn’t know I could simply witness their presence and didn’t have to do anything other then blow them a compassionate kiss in passing. The guilt and shame were right at the heels of impatience, byproducts of the mind judging the initial emotion. If only I had been able to shamelessly sit with my anger, I might have discovered that it was related maybe to my exhaustion, or maybe to my role as primary caretaker, with very little sharing of the work entailed, which likely felt a little unjust, even though it remained unquestioned at the time. There are often discoveries related to some injustice hiding behind feelings of anger.
This year of the pandemic is making us experts at adjusting to unexpected conditions and teaching us flexibility in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty. The state of the environment and our collective lack of collaboration as a species at large, will likely result in harder times to come caused by new natural disasters and other pandemics. And even if harder times weren’t ahead of us, I would still recommend learning to be okay with not being okay, simply because it makes navigating everyday life smoother.
So the next time you find a negative emotion rising within you, see if you can manage to allow it without judgment, stay with it long enough so that it can organically transform into something else. Snakes have been symbols of healing and transformation throughout the millennia, and have shown up to support you, in yours.
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I was hesitant to share my latest painting as my ingrained skepticism rears its head whenever angels appear, making me feel childish that I paint them. I grew up in a household where rationality ruled; the fantastical was accepted as part of the arts, but not necessarily respected. The intelligence of people of faith was questioned in principle, and my innocent curiosity was frequently ridiculed. I think it is rather miraculous that my spiritual interests and seeker tendencies weren’t wiped out altogether. In some of us, the yearning for a relationship with the Divine is strong—no different than a love of the arts or a passion for music is in others—and therefore hard to extinguish.