When, like Erika, we welcome every emotion with mindfulness, we can live with our feelings as they move through us, without getting defined by them.
Interestingly, a recent study underscores the importance of letting ourselves feel all of our emotions, including those we usually consider “negative,” such as anger and sadness. Using the biodiversity of ecosystems in the natural world as a model, the researchers found evidence for the notion that emodiversity—their word for the whole spectrum of human emotions—plays a key role in our overall health and well-being.
This idea was beautifully rendered in the Pixar animated film Inside Out, in which the emotions of an eleven-year-old girl named Riley are personified by avatars who live in the girl’s mind and reflect her moods. They are: Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness. At the start of the movie, Joy dominates the action. But when Riley’s family moves across the country and she must adapt to a new school, as well as the loss of her best friend, the other emotions start to jockey for power, especially Sadness. It isn’t until Riley allows Sadness—who trudges around in a blue dress—a chance to express herself that she begins to heal and enjoy the promise of her new life.
Many years ago, during an intensive retreat at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS), I had my own experience of waking up to the importance of welcoming all emotions as they arise. A few months earlier, a close friend had committed suicide, and I was filled with sadness and grief. Still, I was reluctant to let myself experience the full force of my feelings or share them with the Burmese monk leading the retreat, Sayadaw U Pandita. In my mind, I saw him as an ascetic who had left the world of messy emotions behind. I believed I should be stoic, too, the way I imagined him to be, and tried to refrain from feeling the depth of my sorrow.
One day during an interview, after I shyly told him about my sadness, Sayadaw U Pandita asked me if I’d been crying.
I tried to contour my response to what I thought he’d want to hear. “Just a little bit,” I said.
His reply shocked me: “Every time you cry, you should cry your heart out. That way you’ll get the best release.”
After that conversation, I let myself cry fully. Eventually, the sadness moved through me. Once I allowed it in, I was no longer held captive by it.
HEALING IS AN INSIDE JOB
WHEN EMOTIONS ARE long held and extremely complex, it sometimes takes years for them to enter fully into awareness. Until then, they cannot be released and healed.
This was true for my friend Barbara Graham, whose memoir, Camp Paradox, describes coming to terms with an experience that had taken place decades earlier.
“It took me thirty years to understand that what took place between my camp counselor and me the summer I was fourteen—and she was twenty-eight—was sexual abuse. It took another decade for me to forgive her for touching me and—hardest of all—to stop blaming myself,” Barbara told me.
“When at last I understood what had happened, I was stricken by a grief that had been there all along but which I never knew I carried,” she added. “I wept uncontrollably. After a time, grief gave way to rage that had also gone undetected. Before then, I had felt only great shame, believing there was something intrinsically wrong with me. The shame was accompanied by a kind of numbness whenever I thought about that summer at camp, but mostly I tried not to think about it.
“It’s clear to me now that both the grief and the rage were necessary. I needed to experience the internal hurricane that had been bound up inside me for so long.”
As Barbara later discovered, experiencing the raw power of her emotions was a critical step toward realizing love for herself. Sometimes, we find that we must go further—by speaking the truth not only to ourselves but to others, as well. We may feel the need to take action, pursue justice, or seek to make amends of some kind. But even when opening to our emotions is just the first step, it is the foundation of real love and happiness.
CHAPTER 3 PRACTICES
RAIN: An exercise for welcoming your emotions
Most people who come to meditation are looking for respite from what is sometimes called the “monkey mind”—the perpetual, hyperactive (and often self-destructive) whirl of thoughts and feelings everyone undergoes. But the truth is that meditation does not eradicate mental and emotional turmoil. Rather, it cultivates the space and gentleness that allow us intimacy with our experiences so that we can relate quite differently to our cascade of emotions and thoughts. That different relationship is where freedom lies.
RAIN is an acronym for a practice specifically geared to ease emotional confusion and suffering. When a negative or thorny feeling comes up, we pause, remember the four steps cued by the letters, and begin to pay attention in a new way.
R: RECOGNIZE. It is impossible to deal with an emotion—to be resilient in the face of difficulty—unless we acknowledge that we’re experiencing it. So the first step is simply to notice what is coming up. Suppose you’ve had a conversation with a friend that leaves you feeling queasy or agitated. You don’t try to push away or ignore your discomfort. Instead, you look more closely. Oh, you might say to yourself, this feels like anger. Then this might be followed quickly by another thought: And I notice I am judging myself for being angry.
A: ACKNOWLEDGE. The second step is an extension of the first—you accept the feeling and allow it to be there. Put another way, you give yourself permission to feel it. You remind yourself that you don’t have the power to successfully declare, “I shouldn’t have such hateful feelings about a friend,” or “I’ve got to be less sensitive.” Sometimes I ask students to imagine each thought and emotion as a visitor knocking at the door of their house. The thoughts don’t live there; you can greet them, acknowledge them, and watch them go. Rather than trying to dismiss anger and self-judgment as “bad” or “wrong,” simply rename them as “painful.” This is the entry into self-compassion—you can see your thoughts and emotions arise and create space for them even if they are uncomfortable. You don’t take hold of your anger and fixate on it, nor do you treat it as an enemy to be suppressed. It can simply be.
I: INVESTIGATE. Now you begin to ask questions and explore your emotions with a sense of openness and curiosity. This feels quite different from when we are fueled by obsessiveness or by a desire for answers or blame. When we’re caught up in a reaction, it’s easy to fixate on the trigger and say to ourselves, “I’m so mad at so-and-so that I’m going to tell everyone what he did and destroy him!” rather than examining the emotion itself. There is so much freedom in allowing ourselves to cultivate curiosity and move closer to a feeling, rather than away from it. We might explore how the feeling manifests itself in our bodies and also look at what the feeling contains. Many strong emotions are actually intricate tapestries woven of various strands. Anger, for example, commonly includes moments of sadness, helplessness, and fear. As we get closer to it, an uncomfortable emotion becomes less opaque and solid. We focus less on labeling the discomfort and more on gaining insight. Again, we do not wallow, nor do we repress. Remember that progress doesn’t mean that the negative emotions don’t come up. It’s that instead of feeling hard as steel, they become gauzy, transparent, and available for investigation.
N: NON-IDENTIFY. In the final step of RAIN, we consciously avoid being defined by (identified with) a particular feeling, even as we may engage with it. Feeling angry with a particular person, in a particular conversation, about a particular situation is very different from telling yourself, “I am an angry person and always will be.” You permit yourself to see your own anger, your own fear, your own resentment—whatever is there—and instead of spiraling down into judgment (“I’m such a terrible person”), you make a gentle observation, something like, “Oh. This is a state of suffering.” This opens the door to a compassionate relationship with yourself, which is the real foundation of a compassionate relationship with others.
We cannot will what thoughts and feelings arise in us. But we can recognize them as they are—sometimes recurring
, sometimes frustrating, sometimes filled with fantasy, many times painful, always changing. By allowing ourselves this simple recognition, we begin to accept that we will never be able to control our experiences, but that we can transform our relationship to them. This changes everything.
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MEETING THE INNER CRITIC
AN ARTIST NAMED JOSEPHINE DESCRIBED a recent rendezvous with her inner critic this way: “Some mornings when I look in the mirror, I feel my inner critic standing on my shoulder pointing out my many physical flaws and how poorly I am aging. And my appearance is just the starting point. I picture her holding a great long list written in thick calligraphy on ancient parchment, a list so comprehensive that it includes my moral lapses, blown opportunities, weaknesses, and embarrassing moments stretching back to grade school. The recitation of flaws is an oral tradition in my family, passed down across the generations like family heirlooms.”
The inner voices that tell us, “You aren’t good enough,” are a huge obstacle to connecting fully to ourselves and feeling fully loved. We may sometimes argue with those inner voices, but when we feel disconnected from ourselves or suffering from loneliness, it’s easy to fall prey to them. What’s more, resisting their hurtful messages can be especially challenging in a culture that emphasizes individualism, ambition, competition, striving, greed, and perfectionism. But regardless of whether we believe or resist these messages, our in-house critic can keep us imprisoned by our own limiting thoughts.
Josephine hasn’t banished her inner critic, but practicing mindfulness has loosened the critic’s hold on her. Mindfulness has opened up the space between her authentic self and her critic, enabling her to give less credit to the critic’s incessant negativity. Like Josephine, we can change our relationship to our experiences and feelings simply by becoming aware of them. We can begin to let go.
Lilah likes to think of working with the critic as a kind of ongoing experiment. “When I meditate regularly,” she says, “I’m better at noticing when self-deprecating or critical thoughts come. Then I ask myself, ‘Would I talk like that to a friend?’ Or, ‘What would I say if a friend was being so self-critical?’ Or, ‘How would I treat a younger version of myself?’” In each case, Lilah’s investigation of her habitual negative thinking helps her to identify and disengage from her inner critic.
RECOGNIZING THE CRITIC
THIS PRACTICE IS really about communicating with the inner critic, and, as for Lilah, the first step is to catch that voice when it appears. We notice that the critic lives in a world of absolutes, with little room for nuance or gray areas. Her favorite words are should, always, and never, and blame is her operating system. “You’ve blown it, you always do.” “You should just give up.” “You’re so different, no one will ever love you.” “You’re so flawed, you’ll never be able to help yourself, let alone anybody else.” Instead of creating a wide and open space for embracing our lives, the inner critic causes us to question our worth and collapse in on ourselves.
For some, the inner critic is a specific voice from the past—your mother, your aunt, a child, the boss who fired you. My friend Joseph Goldstein still remembers the first-grade teacher who gave him a big red F in cutting and pasting. (This was in the days when you mixed flour and water to make paste, and Joseph’s work was apparently very messy.)
A friend or stranger may make an offhand remark that we take so deeply into our bodies and minds that they become part of our identities. And if, as in Josephine’s case, the critical voices have been passed down “like family heirlooms,” the identification goes even deeper. I have a friend who hears the scornful voice of her long-dead mother—a woman who revered thinness above all human attributes—when she gains even a few pounds. Paradoxically, at times, such critical voices may even comfort us by linking us to our past and to the most important people in our lives. The judgments of those we loved or admired are part of our story, and, if we don’t spot them when they arise, they become the judgments we project on others, as well as ourselves.
Mindfulness helps us see the addictive aspect of self-criticism—a repetitive cycle of flaying ourselves again and again, feeling the pain anew. The inner critic may become a kind of companion in our suffering and isolation. As long as we judge ourselves harshly, it can feel as if we’re making progress against our many flaws. But in reality, we’re only reinforcing our sense of unworthiness.
Yet when we start to pay attention, we notice how quickly the critic jumps in, even when something good happens. If people befriend us, our critic may whisper that if they only knew how insecure and defective we are, they wouldn’t stick around for long. Or say you’ve just run a marathon. Are you celebrating the fact that you trained, ran, and finished? Or are you upbraiding yourself for being the last person to cross the finish line?
One student told me that shortly after the birth of her second child she went into a tailspin of self-judgment because her house was messy and she wasn’t keeping up her appearance or getting to the ironing. The noise of her self-abuse was so loud that it was more than a week before she realized she was comparing herself to her mother, a woman who always looked put together and kept a spotless home despite having two children—but she also happened to have a housekeeper who came in every day. Comparison is one of the critic’s favorite weapons. Luckily, mindfulness is so much wiser and more robust than our inner critic.
THE POWER OF STARTING OVER
STILL, WHILE UNDER the tyranny of the critic, we believe that self-love depends on constant striving, success, and the love and admiration of others. In other words, we’ll be lovable only when we get that promotion, master public speaking, drop fifteen pounds, and never lose our temper, exhibit fear, or cry in front of our children.
Burdened by such impossible standards, learning to treat ourselves lovingly may at first feel like a dangerous experiment. Students ask me, “If I constantly practice self-acceptance, aren’t I just allowing myself to be lazy?” The key here is to recognize the difference between self-preoccupation and love. Often when we believe we are practicing self-control or self-discipline, we’re actually confining ourselves inside an overly analytical, self-conscious mental chamber. This precludes us from giving and receiving love both from others and ourselves.
Though it may seem productive to cling to the voice of the inner critic in a culture that extols self-discipline and control, it turns out that the reverse is true. Studies show that just as stress causes our cortisol levels to rise, catalyzing our fight-or-flight response, self-criticism initially can make us feel revved up and motivated. But we’re not energized sustainably, not connected to our creativity and self-trust. Over time, the critic’s voice saps our energy, leaving us depleted, frozen, and afraid.
I remember a daylong class on lovingkindness I taught shortly after the recession hit in 2008. Many of the students attending had lost their jobs, and their worlds had been shattered. But it was hard for them to see this as anything but a personal defeat brought on by some failing of their own. One man’s sense of humiliation was so overwhelming that it was as if there was no such thing as a worldwide recession.
This is not to say that he, or any of us, could not learn or do things differently. But self-blame and humiliation lead to passivity, not intelligent awareness and resolve. Taking responsibility for ourselves doesn’t mean ignoring the circumstances of our lives. Instead, it inspires us to recognize a situation for what it is, then plot a new course of action.
The highly competitive world of sports models the difference between punishing blame and the wise use of energy. Although many coaches have famously berated their players to get them to perform, that approach simply doesn’t work: in his book, The Mindful Athlete, mindfulness teacher George Mumford writes, “I came to realize that you couldn’t solve problems with the same consciousness that you created them … It’s only in changing your consciousness that you can solve problems and transform your game, whatever it is and wherever you’re playing it.” Mumford has taught m
indfulness to the championship Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, and now teaches the New York Knicks in addition to individual athletes. He recalls a golfer who “would lose it every time he made a mistake, his performance going from bad to worse because of his own internal negative self-talk.” Fortunately, mindfulness taught him to relax on and off the golf course.
Mindfulness allows us to shift the angle on our story and to remember that we have the capacity to learn and change in ways that are productive, not self-defeating.
MANAGING YOUR INNER CRITIC
WHEN I TALK about the inner critic, people often say their goal is to silence it or knock it out of their heads. Although this is natural, it’s not the most realistic or skillful approach. It sounds so violent, as if the only way to handle criticism is to tape the critic’s mouth shut or banish him or her to solitary confinement. Yet when we direct a lot of hostile energy toward the inner critic, we enter into a losing battle.
My colleague Mark Coleman, meditation teacher and author of the book Make Peace with Your Mind, recounts, “Sometimes in my work with meditation students I find they need remarkably little nudging to make a radical shift in relation to their critic. One student comes to mind, a successful attorney in her forties. She was in a healthy relationship, financially stable, and living a relatively balanced and engaged life. Yet she felt deeply troubled. She lived with the nagging feeling of dissatisfaction, as if she wasn’t doing enough, trying enough, succeeding enough.
“As the weeks went by, it became clear that she’d never really identified the fact that there was an insistent critical voice in her head. Although she was flourishing in her personal and work life, she was still living with an unacknowledged inner judge. No wonder something was casting a gray cloud over all her achievements! When I brought this to her attention, it was as if a lightbulb had suddenly switched on. The woman behind the curtain was revealed and she realized she could bring discernment to her constant inner criticism, and not be so caught in it. The voice had become so familiar it was like white noise, except that drone had a detrimental impact on her well-being.
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