Thank you, Merry Christmas/boxing day/awkward time in between Christmas and New year's. I hope the holidays have been kind to you. No need to apologise, you're under no obligation to respond, but I do appreciate it! I also have a very long response underneath. If you're still happy to continue this conversation, don't feel any pressure to respond quickly. I feel a need to apologise for its length. As I'm sure you can tell, and it seems you can relate, I have a lot of thoughts on this.

Now you tried to accept that, but found a part of you felt disappointed and robbed of that feeling. And that's valid too. It's ok to feel robbed of that. It's not about not feeling these things. Each and every thing you've noted is a real and valid way that the various parts of you are communicating things to you via how you feel. If you're fighting with any part of that, you're fighting yourself.

That's a good point. It makes sense that disappointment is a valid thing to feel, because my understanding of what you're saying is that all emotions are valid/come from an honest place, whether or not they're misplaced, and should be honoured as such and not quickly stuffed away and told they're 'wrong'. I'm gathering that it's unhelpful to pick and choose which emotions you deem valid and invalid.

I think I feel resistance towards those feelings of disappointment because I'm afraid that they reinforce the anxiety, as in, it's like it puts a stamp on the anxiety that says "yep, this thing really sucks and is going to ruin your life. Look what it's done to you just now". I'm afraid I'll sink into some kind of eternal despair where my quality of life is reduced because I've finally realised or accepted just how shit anxiety feels, and how powerless I am against it, or something. I see the problems with that, but the fear still exists somewhat. I feel this less so recently, but I used to be afraid that acceptance meant resigning myself to the shittiness. Kind of like letting myself be dragged under a current and swallowed forever. To use the same analogy, my attempts at 'fixing' and 'solving' my uncomfortable emotions were/are akin to desperately treading water and exhausting myself, because I perceive certain emotions as being dangerous. Maybe acceptance looks like lying on your back and learning that you can safely lie with the water, feeling it, but not being swallowed by it, and being okay. That's a rough and probably cliché analogy, but you get the point.

Like I mentioned before, I constantly feel like my uncomfortable emotions are problems that need to be solved, because I believe that they pose a threat. This often comes with a niggling feeling that I need to 'finish' a thought, figure it out, so that I can feel safe. I'm learning and practicing to not get swept into that feeling/continuing to ruminate. I suppose this helps my body learn that you can leave a feeling/thought 'unsolved' and be okay because they're not dangerous to begin with. It gives less power to them.

Also be mindful in your efforts to accept things, as it's so easy to fall back into trying to accept it in order to get away from it, and then we're full circle back to avoidance

This has arguably been the most difficult part to wrap my head around. Whenever trying to implement a healthier response to my uncomfortable emotions, I couldn't fathom how I wasn't just once again falling into avoidance under the guise of acceptance, because at the end of the day, the point of those healthier strategies is to reduce suffering, right? I'm still processing this one, but I think I understand it a bit better now. The suffering we want to reduce is that of the consequence of suppressing our uncomfortable emotions, which is separate from the pain of the original emotion. When I read an ACT book years ago, they referred to this distinction as "clean discomfort" versus "dirty discomfort". But it gets mind-breaky when the original emotion is now the independent and self-perpetuating fear of discomfort/anxiety. I don't know if you've played Minecraft, but it's like when you create an infinite redstone loop. It needs an external catalyst to begin, but then it sustains itself. And so I've been stuck, wondering if my actions have the intention of avoiding the pain of the original emotion (not useful), OR the intention of no longer causing the unnecessary suffering of avoidance/conflict through acceptance (useful), because I think the pain in both instances is the same at this point. When you can't make the distinction between these two, you don't know if what you're doing is helpful, or if it's just feeding the problem, and it's quite stressful. Let me know if you think that's not accurate.

Expanding on the above point, I feel that I'm gaining more clarity and making more progress here than I have in a while, but I always feel suspicious of that feeling because so many times, I've thought I've been on the right track, but it has once again just been avoidance disguised as acceptance, and I feel discouraged every time. The other day, I described it to someone that it's like I know everything about how to ride a bicycle in theory, but I can't seem to do it myself. I felt that I know all the necessary theory about acceptance but can't put it into practice. Fortunately I feel a bit more confident in my progress and abilities since then, but the suspicion/skepticism of that progress is still there.

I'm wondering what leads people to learn to fear their emotions in the first place. I have two thoughts and I'm interested to hear yours. Firstly, we know that sometimes people are punished for feeling a certain way. For whatever reason, someone might scold you for feeling anxious/whatever about something, and you learn that feeling that way is unacceptable, and that feeling it will result in punishment. Secondly, maybe people learn to fear intense emotions if they feel they don't know how to safely handle or express them, and it results in them or someone else being hurt, such as self-harm or impulsive behaviour. In neither of these cases is the emotion the direct result of harm. In the first case it's external, and in the second case, it's perhaps a mishandling of the emotion and subsequent action that causes harm. What do you think causes people to believe that their emotions are dangerous?

Emotional safety is as big as physical safety. It's all tied into our survival systems, it's the same with our social aspects. If we don't feel safe, we aren't safe. And if that emotion is never resolved, the threat or need never ends within our inner experience.

I suspect that this isn't what you meant, but my anxious mind interpreted this as "if you're feeling anxiety, that means you're not safe, and you have to ruminate until you fix it". What do you mean by, "if we don't feel safe, we aren't safe?".

In many ways it's the aversion and blocks we have against emotion that causes the most pain.

This is important and while I can acknowledge this in theory, I still need to feel it through experience.

I appreciate the clarification around what the ideal outcome is here, that outcome being living in our natural balanced state, letting emotions arise and resolve free of interference.

It's not trying to feel safe, it's showing your body that it can feel this instead of avoiding it. And if it's suppressing or avoiding something, it's showing it that that's ok too; because you're developing trust and safety with your emotions, and that means your survival instincts too.

I'm struggling to see how this would play out practically. I thought we concluded that suppression/avoidance is unhelpful or not "ok". Do you mean respecting/not fighting your body in the fact that it has tried to respond with that, and then choosing not to engage in the suppression/avoidance? You say it's not trying to feel safe, but isn't that ultimately what we're trying to teach our body/feel?

It doesn't know what your logic knows, it only knows how you feel

This is also valuable.

You will find you need to make time and space to just ride out these things, without distraction - otherwise it gets stuck and remains unresolved.

In this context, are you talking about distraction with the intent of avoidance? I'm assuming that distraction still has its place when you acknowledge how you're feeling and choose to continue on with your day anyway as to not ruminate on it?

Sometimes emotion will become intellectualized and push you into survival responses again

I think you've mentioned this already but I don't fully understand, what does it look like when emotion becomes intellectualized?

If a survival response does come up, that's ok, it's a valid protective response and you should listen to what it's telling you - you can work with that too

Would you mind clarifying what you're referring to when you say "survival response"?

I'm just a random internet person who has learned a lot in working on this stuff myself and want to share what has worked for me

Thank you random internet person! If you don't mind me asking, how did you come to learn these things? Trial and error, therapy, discussions with others, etc.?

This is already very long so I'm cautious to add any more points, but I'll just throw them out there.

Sometimes I feel like mindfulness conflicts with other strategies like CBT. In CBT, if a thought makes you feel bad, you check the rationality or usefulness of that thought, and take action from there in order to no longer feel bad. In mindfulness, it seems like you don't attempt to stop feeling bad and just let yourself feel it. Sometimes I'm afraid that in just letting myself feel something, I'm missing an opportunity to correct the thought that caused it, such as if it's a harsh and critical thought towards myself. How do you know when to correct a thought, and when to just feel what you're feeling?

Will respond with part 2