Feel Bad Feels

A lot of effort goes into avoiding bad feelings. Bad feelings are generally bad, but rather than focusing on avoiding them, it might make sense to focus on resilience. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from bad feelings, and get through the tough times just as well as the good times.

Although this is pure speculation, it does seem like there’s a shift away from teaching resilience and towards avoiding anything that might induce a bad feeling. A good example of this is bullying: rather than teaching kids how to deal with bullies, we’re trying to eliminate bullying altogether. This is a noble goal, but it might not be the most effective way to build resilience.

In the “real world”, there’s nobody to protect the children from the bullies once they become full-grown adults (assuming they achieve that in their lifetimes).

To use a more extreme example, let’s consider how things work in nature: if an animal becomes sick or injured, it will either heal or die. There’s no way for a deer to call 911 and have an ambulance dispatched to take them to the veterinary hospital if they break a leg. Most likely the deer will die, and in some cases its leg might heal and it can continue living. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have medicine, hospitals, and ambulances, but my point is that it’s in some ways unnatural to remove all obstacles and bad feelings from our lives.

To illustrate with a more serious example, consider the case of common communicable diseases: generally speaking, the more people are exposed to a disease, the more likely they are to develop immunity to it. This is the principle behind vaccines, which are a way to expose people to a disease in a controlled manner so that they can develop immunity without getting sick. If we were to place every child in a hermetically sealed bubble so they never get the sniffles, these children would be at a disadvantage when they grow up and are exposed to the real world (should they ever leave that bubble).

This is the basis for the hygiene hypothesis, but I think it applies to many other areas of life as well. Whether it’s bullying, people saying mean things on the internet, the ups and downs of relationships, or the general unfairness of life, it’s important to build resilience and learn how to deal with these things rather than trying to avoid them altogether.

A worrying trend (in my opinion) is the general shift toward nanny-ism, such as the desire for more censorship on the internet. I’m generally in the camp of “more speech is better than less speech”, and I think that the best way to deal with bad speech is with more speech. Some people however can’t simply learn to ignore the idiots, and instead focus on trying to silence them by metaphorically yelling over them on the internet. These people should practice detachment, and learn to let go of the things that bother them. This is a skill that can be developed, and it’s a skill that will serve them well in the long run.

Most of the outrage on the internet can be solved by simply ignoring it. If you find yourself mad about something you read on Twitter, I recommend not using that website, or at the very least, not following the content you don’t like. If Instagram makes you feel bad about your body or lifestyle, maybe you should stop using Instagram, or at least stop obsessing over and over the people who make you feel bad.

We can’t control other peoples’ actions and behaviour, and bullies will always exist, but we can control how we react to them. We can choose to ignore them, or we can choose to engage with them. We can choose to let them bother us, or we can choose to let it go. We can choose to be resilient, or we can choose to be fragile.

On the topic of bullies and the children, it’s true that bullying can have a significant negative impact on a child’s mental health, and in many cases kids are in situations where they can’t simply walk away or ignore a bully. And sure, trying to eliminate bullying is a good cause, but it makes sense to also teach kids how to deal with bullies, because they will encounter bullies in the future, and they won’t always have a teacher or parent to protect them.

I may be a bit of a masochist, but in some ways I enjoy the bad feelings. You can’t have the highs without the lows, and it feels rewarding to bounce back from a bad streak and come out ahead. So next time you’re feeling bad, try to think of it as an opportunity to prove to yourself that you are resilient and can get through it.