Accept Both Positive and Negative Emotions

My friend Polly did a remarkable thing. She saved money and took time off work to educate herself so she could improve her marketability. In five years she earned a Masters degree in communication. Actually, the Bachelors degree took four years and the Masters one. When she first told me she was going back to school, I thought, “Yeah, okay. Take a few classes. I’ve done that.” But this woman got a Masters! Then she spent a couple years caring for her sick mother who is doing much better. I am in awe of her determination and her accomplishment.

She called me this weekend crying because she’s having trouble finding work. The recruiters she is talking to say she’s been out of the work force too long. What? She hasn’t kept up her skill set. What? Here’s a woman who not only made a decision to get a degree and actually got it, but she also planned and saved so she could take the time off from work and still support herself. How many people do you know have such discipline and foresight?

I’m a believer that we choose our life lessons, and that everything happens for a reason, though we may not understand it at the time. Polly believes these things too. But we need each other to remind us because it’s easy to get lost in the problem. So I reminded Polly. I tried to cheer her up with positive encouragement. While we were talking another call came in that she had been waiting for, so she promised to call me back.

After we hung up, I started thinking about her situation. I realized that it wasn’t that she couldn’t find a job that made her cry. She’d been looking for only a couple of weeks. It was lack of control. She had had complete control for years. But now she was in a position where she had to rely on the cooperation of others to meet her goals.

Polly wasn’t afforded simple courtesies by these people that she was now relying on to help her find employment. Her phone calls weren’t returned. Her emails were not acknowledged. She was just another “client” that was easily set aside and ignored. The recruiters abandoned manners in favor of efficiency. I imagine they just don’t care about Polly’s goals.

I also got to questioning why I was trying to cheer her up? What about our society makes sadness so unwelcome? She was frustrated. Okay. Feel the frustration. She was crying. Go ahead and cry. It’s all good. It’s all part of life. Why was I trying to fix it?

The last two years have been some of the hardest years of my life. I lost a beloved cat, George, who was the finest person I ever knew, and I lost his sister, Tiny, a couple months before. My business income was being reduced every month by competition and a failing economy. I couldn’t afford my house. I was perimenopausal and anemic. I was vitamin D deficient and depressed. I was having a hard time of it and cried quite a bit. I was being emotionally and physically wrung out.

People that I confided in suggested I see a doctor for hormone replacement or antidepressants. One woman was concerned that I might become suicidal because, I guess, her own depression had made her suicidal. I appreciated the concern of these people, but I wasn’t suicidal. Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I don’t even think I was depressed. What is “depressed” anyway? I was simply experiencing the full range of emotions that humans are built to experience.

I had physiological reasons for feeling sad and depressed, and I certainly had enough negative thoughts to further disrupt my body chemistry. I was grieving the loss of a loved one. I was fearful because I was unable to pay my mortgage. I hated my work but had to keep doing it to pay the bills. These negative emotions were a normal response given my circumstances. So I embraced them. I rested in them. Why would I want to deaden my emotions and feelings because they happened to be unpleasant? Why run from them?

Why are we so obsessed with feeling good and so afraid of feeling bad that we take drugs and food to elevate our mood? People trade emotional pain for a fog of pharmaceutical bliss, a fog that diminishes their capacity for both joy and grief. People run from tears, try to fix others that are tearful. I drank for 15 years to drown my own emotional pain and had to face it when I got sober.

You will have times when you are sad and depressed and hopeless. But if you fight the feeling, if you tighten your body against it, you’ll only be worse off. Embrace your pain. It’s all good. Let yourself cry. Don’t deaden it with drugs or alcohol or pharmaceuticals. Let it motivate you to change.

Many doctors will be happy to prescribe an antidepressant for you, and it sure seems like a quick way out of pain. But at what cost?

Anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia (severe restlessness), hypomania, and mania have been reported in adult and pediatric patients being treated with antidepressants for major depressive disorder as well as for other indications, both psychiatric and nonpsychiatric. Although FDA has not concluded that these symptoms are a precursor to either worsening of depression or the emergence of suicidal impulses, there is concern that patients who experience one or more of these symptoms may be at increased risk for worsening depression or suicidality. Therefore, therapy should be evaluated, and medications may need to be discontinued, when symptoms are severe, abrupt in onset, or were not part of the patient’s presenting symptoms.–FDA Public Health Advisory

Do you want to trade unpleasant and painful emotions that can motivate positive change for anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, impulsivity, akathisia, hypomania, mania, worsening depression and suicidality? Manipulating body chemistry is a scary thing.

Polly is now dependent on strangers for help. It’s not a comfortable place to be in when you’re as determined and accomplished as she is. But relinquishing control can also be a life-affirming step, a step that teaches you to trust God, trust the universe, trust the flow of life experience to take you where you need to go.

The Serenity Prayer of AA is:

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference

That saying has helped a lot of drunks, me included. Let it help you and motivate you through your hard times.

Tagged as: antidepressants, depression, grief