When feelings are meant to disappear, they often become more present
Many people experience wanting to change — and still ending up at the same points again and again.
They resolve to be less anxious. They wish to be less sad. To react differently than before.
And at the same time something else often shows itself:
the stronger the attempt to get rid of certain feelings, the more stubbornly they persist.
The wish for change seems sensible at first glance. And yet it frequently brings a particular stance with it: the way it is right now, it should not be.
With that an inner movement arises that often goes unnoticed:
one part registers something — fear, tension, exhaustion.
Another part turns against it and tries to change or end this experience.
It is then no longer only about the feeling itself, but about how it is handled.
The feeling is not simply experienced; it is judged and rejected at the same time.
In that moment an inner conflict arises.
Not only is the feeling there, but so is the attempt not to let it be there. And exactly that often intensifies the experience.
Trying not to feel something any more does not make it disappear. It keeps it in the foreground. What is being rejected in the process is a part of your own experience.
When that part is met with rejection, additional pressure arises. And this pressure in turn has an intensifying effect.
What would happen if you tried something different for a moment?
If what turns up did not have to be changed straight away.
If unpleasant feelings were first simply seen as what they are.
Not pleasant, perhaps even painful — but not wrong.
That does not mean not wanting to change. Change happens constantly anyway.
The question is rather what it comes out of.
Whether out of the attempt to eliminate something in yourself, or out of a more precise noticing of what is already there.
Because sometimes what feels stuck does not lie in the feeling itself — but in the way it is dealt with.