i have a lot of resistance to metta / loving-kindness practices, or any kind of deliberate cultivation of positive emotion, and i think a lot of it has to do with feeling like as a kid i was constantly pressured into pretending i was happier and more satisfied than i was
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the practices i've been drawn to instead, like circling or bio-emotive, have felt so tremendously relieving by contrast because they create space for me to express all the unhappiness and dissatisfaction i've been storing up over a lifetime
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focusing on negative emotions does start to feel unbalanced after awhile though. so i've also been taking more opportunities to notice what i like, what i love, what excites me - stuff that's already there but that i haven't historically focused on
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there's a tension here between something like acknowledging and accepting what's already True vs. taking deliberate action to create new Truth that i don't know what to do with yet
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the good news is that the positive and negative emotions aren't very separate anyway. a lot of what comes up for me is grief and where there's grief there's something that was loved, and i can notice and express that love too
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i feel that. come to think about it, as a child *at school* i was pressured into being happier than i was but at home it was the opposite — being happy and satisfied and calm and well, anywhere near equanimous was seen as a sign of being lazy ingrate selfish and got me punished.
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those mixed messages tho 😔
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I think it's extremely important and AWARE to be on the lookout for toxic positivity vs genuine empathy
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Interestingly I've found that focusing on loving kindness toward myself can evoke sadness, so....two for the price of one?
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One thing I’ve noticed is that whatever coping mechanism I was forced to do has a ton of resentment around it, but when I let myself run very hard away from it til I find the limits of its extreme opposite, I’m better able to come back and find the healthy form of both.
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The healthy forms always have this flavor of really peaceful agency. Not shoved or yanked into or stuck swirling in the positive or negative space, but actively choosing when and how to step in and to step out.
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