Bad Feelings-Fast Shipping

Description

Bad feelings are ubiquitous to human experience. Everyone deals with grief, envy,disappointment, dejection, humiliation, mortification, and anxiety. However, whenwe consciously push troubling feelings aside and then avoid them, we should be underno illusions that such repression empowers us to lead untroubled lives. The pricethat we pay, simply, is feeling less alive.

Our attempts to avoid feeling pain manifestthemselves in feelings of disconnection and numbness. To make matters worse, badfeelings often bring moralistic self-condemnation that arises unconsciously or evenconsciously: “It is bad of you to feel that way!” “You’re being a nuisance to worryabout that!”

Many families even elevate mental health to the status of an EleventhCommandment. They believe that when they have negative feelings and express them,this constitutes behavioral problems. When they begin to feel anxious, glum, or ashamed,they are stricken with guilt or fears of punishment. Their goal is perfect adjustment,and their taboo is the secret forbidden pleasure hidden by pain.

This book demonstrateshow psychoanalytic understanding can reduce the painfulness of negative feelingsand increase our tolerance for emotional pain. This work can enable freedom fromfrightening, vengeful, and guilt-ridden fantasies, decrease reliance on passive andmasochistic ways of being, and increase our ability to take pleasure in the body,to enjoy relations with others, the use of one’s assets, and to take pride in one’sachievements. These changes outweigh the emotional pains that we inevitably sufferby living, and they help us feel that it is worth our while to enjoy a lively existence.