Olympic champion Djokovic says, “I believe that one of life’s greatest lessons is learning to be comfortable with discomfort”. That is how it is with ‘negative’ emotion. What if there is no such thing as ‘negative’ emotion? What if ‘negative’ emotions such as anxiety, sadness and anger are just judgements? What if feeling is not the same as suffering? What if people can learn to become comfortable with feeling?
Human beings need to feel. Feelings have been misunderstood for thousands of years. Around three thousand years ago, leaders were only interested in experiences that were functional and comfortable. This belief is still the same today. For example, exam anxiety is thought to decrease student performance. In extreme cases, students become paralysed and cannot answer the questions, or they have panic attacks in anticipation of the pending examination period. What if it is not the anxiety that is the problem here? What if it is the disconnection from the anxiety that is the problem?
Disconnecting from Discomfort
Disconnection can come in the form of suppression, distraction, avoidance, numbing, denial, lying, self-deception or even denial of denial. In the exam example, students might not be able to feel the anxiety, they go into the exam room feeling “chilled” and they can get through reading time but when it comes to answering the questions, they read the question incorrectly; they answer the wrong question; they read the question accurately and write down the answer to another question; they may be able to read the question as it written, and yet interpret the question incorrectly and not answer the question. In any of these cases, the student will fail the exam or scrape through with a lower GPA for the unit. In all cases, the student felt ‘fine’. When they get the results back, they are shocked or stunned that they did so badly and become confused. They studied hard, they did the work, they participated in class time, they did all the assignments and assessments throughout the semester and yet they did poorly in the final exams. Of course there are many explanations for this phenomenon, but the explanation at focus here is the disconnection from the anxiety with no self-awareness that they are suffering from exam anxiety.
Silent Anxiety
What are the tell-tale signs that a student is suffering from this form of silent anxiety? If care givers are attentive to this problem, they might notice signs of confusion or ambiguity when they ask their students, “how did you sleep”? The student may get some words mixed up when answering the question or words back to front, they may be a bit clumsy and spill their drink over breakfast, they may not be able to find their favourite socks or jocks. There are many subtle signs of anxiety when one is attentive.
On the morning of the exam, caregivers can support students by touching them on the shoulder when walking past, reminding them to feel their body in the chair and feet on the floor, the pen in their hand, the water in their mouth and feeling the coolness of the water trickling down their throat. Encourage a healthy breakfast at least two hours before the exam. Being organised on the morning with no rushing or time pressure. Arriving in plenty of time to find the exam room remembering that the easy things become hard for students who suffer with exam anxiety.
The exam is only one of many scenarios where anxiety gets the blame for declining performance. The simple, but not easy, solution to high anxiety is to connect to it. Be curious about what it feels like. Take the time to recognise what is happening in your body when you are stretched or stressed. Overwhelm is a huge feeling that is difficult for most people to connect with unless one is aware of the source of the overwhelm. Overwhelm is usually generated from a perceived threat that appears bigger than the resources available to you at the time. Remember this is a perception, it is not the ‘truth’. For example, when the world becomes overwhelming just feel something, anything. Feel your bum on the chair, feet on the floor, the tension in your body. The best thing about connection is it is your choice. In other words, you can connect by placing your hands on your face and feel the contrast between warm and cool, you can cover your eyes with your hands or take a drink of cool water. There are unlimited ways to connect with your body. Play around with connecting, you don’t have to get it right, you can experiment with no harm done. There is only upside by exploring how to connect with yourself.
Judgement is not the ‘Truth’
People find it easier to connect with their emotions when they become aware of how judgemental they are in the world. Becoming aware of your own judgement is challenging because when someone points this out, the first thing people do is defend themselves because they hear criticism. What if the person is giving you genuine feedback and has your best interest at heart? It is offered here that ‘negative’ emotions are simply judgements. People are judging anxiety or sadness as negative. This is understandable as most people have been taught that anxiety is not desirable, and they need to reduce the anxiety at all costs. People usually cannot feel sad because they haven’t been taught and adult advice is that “no one wants to be around sad people – laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone”.
There are many myths that people live by that have become the ‘truth’. The myth that some emotions are negative or bad misses the benefit of feeling. We are human, we need to learn how to feel. Feeling often gets mixed up with suffering and people have suffered enough, we don’t need any more suffering in the world. Remember, we cannot hurt ourselves or anyone else when we are feeling. Our feeling systems are essential for humans to navigate safely through the challenges of life.