329 - How to Stop Beating Yourself Up for How You Feel With Psychotherapist Daniel Smith

Speaker A: On today's episode of Mentally Stronger, have you ever felt frustrated that an old fear or insecurity still shows up even years after you were pretty sure you'd already dealt with it? Have you ever caught yourself thinking, I should be over this by now? Or maybe you've spent hours trying to figure out why you feel a certain way, and maybe you've gotten convinced that if you could just track down the root cause, your feeling would finally disappear. If any of those things sound familiar, today's episode is for you. Most of us were taught that the hard feelings, things like shame and envy, anger or boredom, um, are problems that we should solve or that they're somehow flaws that reflect our character. And then when they don't go away, we sometimes create another whole layer of distress because we feel bad. That we feel bad. But my guest today says that's exactly where we go wrong. Daniel Smith is a writer who became a therapist, and he spent his career writing about the mind, mental health, and the part of our emotional lives that we'd prefer not to look at. Now he's written a new book, and it's called Hard Feelings, where he argues that the goal isn't to get rid of the hard feelings, it's just to get more curious about them. So if you struggle with hard feelings, stick around. Some of the things we talk about today are why hard feelings aren't problems that you need to solve, why shame is the master uncomfortable emotion, and why asking why do I feel this way can sometimes keep you stuck. All the mental strength strategies in the world won't fix your sleep if your mattress hurts your back. I had to remind myself of that just recently. I don't stay at my house in Maine very often because I'm usually on the sailboat, so upgrading the mattress hasn't been on the top of my to do list. But my old mattress was starting to get pretty uncomfortable, so I knew it was time for a change. I did some research and learned that 82% of people who sleep on a Helix mattress see an increase in their deep sleep cycle. So I had to try a Helix mattress for myself. I ordered a Twilight luxe mattress and I'm sleeping so well and I feel incredible when I wake up in the morning. Helix mattresses get delivered straight to your door with free shipping. They offer a, uh, 120 night sleep trial and a limited lifetime warranty. Take their quiz to learn which mattress is best for you and order your Helix mattress today so you can feel the difference too. Go to helixsleep.com stronger for 20% off site wide, 25% off luxe mattresses, and 30% off elite mattresses. Make sure you enter our show name after checkout so they know we sent you helixsleep.com stronger evening.

Speaker B: Buyer's remorse.

Speaker A: Buy a new car.

Speaker B: I'll be moving in. Let's get started.

Speaker A: Uh, sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah. Great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it.

Speaker B: So there's no.

Speaker A: No, no Buyer's remorse. More like buyers rejoice.

Speaker B: I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it.

Speaker A: Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana. Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven day return policy@carvana.com welcome to Mentally Stronger. I'm Amy Morin, a psychotherapist, mental strength trainer, and the international bestselling author of seven books on mental strength. Every Monday, I introduce you to a guest whose story and expertise can help you think, feel, and do your best in life. And the fun part is we record the show from a sailboat in the Florida Keys. Now let's dive into today's episode. Daniel Smith, welcome to Mentally Stronger.

Speaker B: Thank you for having me.

Speaker A: So we live in a world where we talk a lot about the importance of positive psychology and feeling good and doing the things that help us to feel better. But you just wrote this book about hard feelings. What do you think we sometimes get wrong about hard feelings?

Speaker B: I mean, I think what we tend to get wrong is that we're supposed to get rid of them, that they're a problem to be solved or that they're sort of something to be optimized away. That's. That's the thing. As opposed to parts of us to understand.

Speaker A: I. I think so, too. And where's that line between, like, acknowledging feelings and let yourself feeling them versus staying stuck there and wallowing in them?

Speaker B: Oh, man, I. I swear to God, I'm still trying to find it. Um, I don't. I'm not sure I totally know. I mean, I wish I can give, like, a really clear answer on this because it's not like they're fun to have. Right.

Speaker A: Well, something I'm curious about, too. So you were a writer who became a therapist. I, on the other hand, was a therapist who became a writer. So, um, I was thinking about, uh, the journey. What was it like to. You were writing about feelings, obviously experiencing all these feelings. Did becoming a therapist change a lot in the way you thought about emotions, or did it Validate some of the things you already knew.

Speaker B: I think it, I think it deepened my understanding of our emotional experiences. I mean, I had, I had been writing throughout most of my life, my writing life about mental health, about mental illness, about psychiatry and psychology. So that was already, that was already there. But, but I wasn't sitting in front of people doing this kind of clinical work. And so it allowed me to kind of really home, uh, in on these particular emotions that if someone came in and said they were annoyed at home or bored in their relationship, or if they're feeling despair, all of a sudden I had an entire contextual world for all of this. I had a way to conceptualize what their experience was and to kind of place it in the context of what the culture might be giving out, what might be emanating from the world that they're actually living in, whether that's technology or entertainment, what's going on in their family, but also what our understanding of these emotions actually might be. What are their ideas about boredom that they might be coming in with? What does it mean to feel shame about feeling certain emotions? So all of that, all of that really helped a lot in sitting down with people.

Speaker A: Uh, that makes sense, to hear other people's stories sometimes and to have those open conversations about emotions. Oh, can you tell the story about the birthday gifts?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's funny to tell the story because it's, it's the story that begins the book and it is absolutely true. But of course it's, you know, it's, it's memoiristic. So you're trying to find a way into the subject. But the anecdote that starts the book is that when I was 40 years old, my wife threw me a party and I got, I got these gifts from a very dear friend of mine who recently passed away and his wife. And it was a two volume set of the classic Robert Burton study, Anatomy of Melancholy from, I think the 17th century or 16th century. I forget in any event, and my brother has got me an enormous art book of Hieronymus Bosch's paintings. And these were things I was interested in. Like I said, I was writing about mental health and psychiatry and the mind. I'd always been interested in that. I'm interested in art. But they were all like, also like really painful, screwed up, like chaotic texts and works of art about pain and suffering. And I'm like, why, why am I being identified with these particular things? And so it allowed me. They ended up being kind of, I don't know, emblems for me, of the way that I'd lived my life, the way I was viewed, the way that sort of negative emotions emboss, its, their sins, they're, they're conceptualized in Christian terms. In the Burton, it's this, this classic psychological text very much about, about anxiety and depression and despair and shame. And so it allowed me to start thinking about how these aspects of experience have played in my life and had played for the last 40 years and I guess what kind of relationship I actually want to have with them and therefore with myself, because I guess I'm a kind of dark guy and had always struggled with the negative parts of myself.

Speaker A: And uh, you talk a lot too, about your emotions, um, in the book, about how they're outside and they change rapidly.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Since becoming a therapist, is that still the case? Did you find tools, strategies, or did you just accept this is my nervous system and who I am?

Speaker B: I mean, the, the process of acceptance is, is ongoing. I mean, the book I'd wrote before this was a memoir of anxiety and, and people would say, was it therapeutic to write that book? And I'd say absolutely not. Because writing, writing to me isn't a therapeutic act. I'm too busy trying to figure out what the hell the audience is going to think and how I'm trying to convey these ideas and work through them and the pain of it and the difficulty of it. But being a therapist is therapeutic. I don't know if you have this experience like being a therapist and having to show up for people, having to conceptualize other people's experiences, having to make sure that you're showing up with some appropriate level of understanding and compassion and presence and acceptance, and having to keep yourself as an instrument kind of tuned up means that it helps you to do the work for yourself as you're doing it for other people. So that helped. Writing the book might have, because it sort of coincided with me going back to school and then beginning to practice. And there's a whole other thing, which is when patients read your actual book. Yeah, that's all. That's a whole other. Can I curse in this podcast?

Speaker A: We'll bleep it out.

Speaker B: But yeah, okay, that's a whole other mind folk. But like, but it's um. But doing the clinical work is absolutely helped me to find more compassion for myself because I, uh, still struggle, as I'm sure I always will, and still am, trying to grow and learn. But, but you do want to practice what you preach to the extent that therapy is at all about preaching. But you do want to show up when you're inviting someone to like, be curious about their own experiences and when they show up and they say, you know, not only am I angry and I'm an angry person, but I hate myself for being angry and you're trying to open up the space with, they're going to be able to experience and be curious about the anger without feeling that second thing, then it would really help if you can do it for yourself. Not just you don't feel fraudulent, but also so that you have the lived experience of what it is to actually do that, so you can actually be a more attuned and more appropriate guide for other people.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's the thing, right. Becoming a therapist doesn't mean you now have 100% control over your emotions and you never experience the uncomfortable ones or that we've mastered everything. I think sometimes people expect that we have the skills, tools and resources so we don't have the same struggles, but emotions are the same in terms of we all feel the same emotions. And that was one of the things I appreciated about your book is you talk about things like envy and shame, the ones that we're often told, oh, you shouldn't experience these things and you say that shame is the worst of all. Can you talk a bit about shame?

Speaker B: Yeah, because I think shame is, is in a sense a kind of like the master negative emotion. Because there's a word that keeps coming up for me, I keep remembering, and it's from a psychoanalyst named Helen Lewis Block, whose daughter is the. Is. Is the great writer on trauma, Judith Herman actually, but she used to write about shame. Helen Block Lewis, I think is her name, or Lewis Block. Um, I'm going to mess it up. But she talks about shame being experienced as a kind of implosion of the self. So, so if you feel guilty, it's because it's about something that you've done wrong. If you feel shame, it's about the fact that you are wrong. And so shame is, is totalizing. It's about all of you. And so there's something about shame that creates dissociation, that creates escape, that creates a, uh, kind of running away from others and therefore from yourself. Like when I feel shame, when I personally feel shame, I become. I never thought of it this way, but I become stupid. Mhm. Like I can't think, I get confused, I get hazy, I get sort of buzzy and anxious and. And it ends up feeding into itself. Because the more shame you feel, the more afraid you are of Exposure. The more afraid you are of honesty, the more afraid you are of other people and the more alert you become to. To any. Any eyeballs on you. Right. Like shame is about being seen. Mhm. And those eyeballs can be external. They can be your partner or a friend or your family. But they could also, in my experience, be your own eyes, like looking inward. So shame is also the emotion that ends up coming up as a response to other negative emotions. Right. The idea that I'm not supposed to be feeling envy. I have learned that envy is a bad thing. If I think that envy is a bad thing or that contempt is a bad thing, or rage is a bad thing, which, um. And these things may have actually negative or bad effects or may lead to negative behaviors. But if you think that the feeling itself is bad, then the next step is to feel shame. M. Because I should not be the kind of person who feels these things. If I am feeling these things, then there's something wrong with me. And that's shame. It's. Something is wrong with me. Um, and the defenses against shame internally are dissociation, the blanking out, the going stupid or rage or lashing out. And I don't see how that leads to what for me is the kind of ultimate virtue which is just plain curiosity.

Speaker A: And the thing about shame is it can kind of be contagious. We see this in families, right. Where shame ends up affecting other generations or affecting other people within the family system.

Speaker B: I mean, that's been my experience.

Speaker A: Mine as well. Yeah.

Speaker B: That resonated with you, the shame within families?

Speaker A: Oh, absolutely, from my own personal lived experience, but also the families that I've worked with, where people just grow up feeling like we, we have shame around this specific thing in our life or this family secret or this family issue. And uh, children feel it too. Maybe they weren't even in the same experience. Uh, but they still feel the shame that was passed down from another generation.

Speaker B: Oh yeah. I mean, when I wrote about shame, that's the way I got into it. That's what I was interested in. I don't know. Like the word that always comes to mind here is ambient. Like the way that shame I don't like, atomizes into the. Into the environment of a family. And like, I've had. I've had patients who were explicitly shamed by their family. But the way that, the way that shame showed up in my family was in the form that I think it most commonly takes, which is silence. Like no go zones. Ways that people, in my case largely my father Who I think experienced a lot of shame and who was a very like, he was like a really warm person, very funny. But there was something sort of there but not there about him. There were things about himself that, that I think because they were so saturated with shame that you just couldn't reach.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And you wouldn't talk about them. And the frightening things about, thing about children, at least for me and having children, is that they notice everything. They're just like absorbing everything and they, but they don't have the cognitive capacity to actually know what it is that they're seeing. So there's just the feeling of things that aren't said, of things unspoken, which, how do you metabolize that? Like, what do you do with that? And, and I think that that leads to its own kind of development of like cultivation within the self of shame. And in that way silence is conducive of silence is conducive of silence. Which is to say shame is conducive. Shame is conducive shame. And you could probably go, you know, hundreds of years that way.

Speaker A: Okay, we're going to pause right here for a word from today's sponsors, but when we come back, we're going to discuss what do you actually do with those hard feelings like shame? Three out of four US homes have toxic chemicals in their tap water that could put you at risk for health issues like fatigue, hormone disruption, cognitive decline and even cancer. That's why you need Aquatru, the countertop water purifier tested and certified to remove 84 contaminants including chlorine, lead, forever chemicals and microplastics. Its patented four stage reverse osmosis system goes way beyond ordinary filters for pure healthy water you can trust. No plumbing and no installation needed. I love how great my water tastes with my Aqua True water purifier. And I'm not surprised it was named best countertop water filter by good housekeeping. Join 98% of customers who say their drinking water is cleaner, safer and healthier. Go to aquatrue.com now and get 20% off your purifier using promo code stronger. Aqua Tru even comes with a 30 day best tasting water guarantee or your money back. Take the guesswork out of pure great tasting water with this exclusive podcast only offer now at Aqua True A Q U a t r u.com using promo code S-R-O-N-E R. The best clothes are the ones that you want to wear over and over again. That's why I love Quince they make high quality clothes that become wardrobe staples and they're priced 30 to 80% less than similar brands. Whether you're looking for a silk skirt, comfortable denim shorts or an organic cotton sweater, Quince has everything. They even have everything you need for your home, like bedding and bath or kitchen essentials and furniture. Quince's European linen pants, dresses and tops start at just $32. I actually have three pairs of the linen pants and several tops. They keep me cool even on the hottest days, and I wear them everywhere from my niece's afternoon softball games to meetings at work. I use quints and you should too. Make your summer wardrobe feel easier. Go to quince.com stronger for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com stronger for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com stronger you always hear about the steps you should take to improve your sleep. Use sleep trackers and blackout curtains, take supplements and stop using your electronics in the evening. It can feel overwhelming, but upgrading your bedding might be the simplest and most powerful thing you could do to improve your sleep. Bolen Branch has everything you need to turn your bed into a sleep sanctuary. Signature sateen sheets, breathable pillows, cozy waffle bed blankets and beautifully crafted comforters are all designed to work together to keep you comfortable and and help regulate your temperature. My sheets and blankets were pretty worn out and I finally decided it was time to treat myself and I upgraded to Bolan Branch's signature sheets and waffle blanket. The sheets feel really high quality and soft and the waffle blanket is just the right level of comfort. My bed feels cozier and I've been sleeping better than ever. Sleep cooler this summer with Bowland Branch during their annual summer event. For a limited time, get 20% off site wide@bolenbranch.com stronger or with code stronger that's Boland Branch B O L L a n d branch.com stronger code stronger to take 20% off bolandbranch.com stronger code stronger exclusions apply okay, we're back. So when we take an emotion like shame and uh, you mentioned curiosity earlier as perhaps being something we should practice. When we experience shame, what do we do when with that emotion if the emotion's not necessarily bad but we don't want it to lead to bad things, we don't want to fuel it in a way that's unhealthy, but we want to work through it which as therapists we often talk about processing emotions, working through them as opposed to avoiding them. What do you do when you experience a uh, high degree of shame so that you don't stay stuck there or end up doing something that is self destructive?

Speaker B: I mean I, I remain confused about the concept of processing like what it even means to process something. I've had this conversation with uh, with a few patients actually and have thought about writing about it. Like what does it mean to actually process something? And I think I have a, like, I think I have a strange allergy to the idea. Allergy. I think I have a strange allergy to the idea of processing. I mean it goes back. You know, Freud has a paper about working through and I think it's related to that. But I think there's something technical about the idea that I, that I don't love something, something suggestive of the fact that you could kind of like take it in as a raw material, work it through the system and then you have something like a product at the end. And, and I don't, I don't know if for me, particularly for these emotions that, that have been developed in childhood, which is to say like all of them, not all of them. I mean there are ones that are developed by other routes, in particular later trauma say. But the strong emotions that we're talking about, I don't know. Because they've been formed by habit. Because they've sort of been baked in almost as ingredients to the, to the psychic cake. I don't know what there is besides a kind of development of a habit of noticing. Right. Almost the way that, that expert meditators learn to deal with the situation. What is you sort of learn to not cleave it off from yourself, which may have been the previous habit. I feel envy. I feel anger. I feel boredom. I um, feel shame. This is bad. I don't want to think about it. I need to find ways, some of which may be good like you know, exercise or, or sublimation or some, some productive way to kind of move away from it. I don't want to be an envious person. So I'm going to, I'm going to start a gratitude journal. Right. I have nothing against gratitude. That sounds great. But there is something within that practice that I think is, is also an escape. Mhm. That is also an attempt to optimize the self away from the negative experiences. Instead of developing the habit of noticing it and asking what it is. Right. Knowing what the physiological responses are. Knowing that this is part of You? Yeah, this is just a part of me. Like sometimes maybe when I'm feeling most vulnerable, I'm going to feel really envious of other people's success or, or alleged success, and I'm going to feel really sensitive to that. And, or maybe when I'm getting closest to intimacy is when I'm going to feel most shame. Not trying to run from it, but being just simply saying this is shame. This is, this is boredom, this is envy. I think I'm quoting my own therapist here. Um, uh, when, when I say that the first obligation we have toward our emotions is simply to notice them. And that really resonates with me, that, that idea. And, and I think it's the ethos of, of the book, which is probably why it resonates with me when I resonated when I heard it. Because I, I think that's how, that's what my approach is.

Speaker A: Uh, what I hear from some people is they'll say something like are you healed? Or I'm healed already. And then they get frustrated that perhaps the same thing that once brought them some shame still does 20 years later. And even though it may not make any logical sense, the same emotions still get stirred up. And I'll tell you one of the experiences in my life. I grew up an incredibly anxious kid when it came to public speaking. Like I probably could have been diagnosed with a selective mutism because I had some amazing friends and family that spoke for me. I can speak now. Not only do I have a podcast, but I gave a TedX and I do a ton of public speaking. But you put me in a restaurant with my childhood friends and they'll still order for me. And that's my like default of if I have to ask for something on my own. It's uh, like I have this moment of hesitation and I would almost experience the same anxiety that I did when I was 7, even though it makes no logical sense anymore. But rather than try to get rid of the anxiety, which I could, cuz my friends would still say order for me and that would get rid of my anxiety. Noticing this is ridiculous. I still experience this anxiety. But that's okay.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean the that's okay part is really, is really can be, can be, I should say really powerful. Like the fact that you don't have to place a judgment on, um, the experience. You could say, just say, oh, there it is again. And, and it's like the, the knots loosen a little bit when you're able to say that. When you don't feel the Aversion or the sense of why is this still happening? I mean, because that, that definitely happens to me. I'm like, oh, I work through this to use that, like I process this to use that, all that, that, that way that we were speaking before. Why am I still feeling or feeling this again? And there may be an answer, right? But I don't know if you experienced this with, with your clinical work, but people often want to know why, right? Like why is it like, why am I feeling this way? And the why, like, I guess it could be interesting intellectually, but far more important is often the what, like, what is this? Oh, it's that thing that happens where when I'm with my childhood friends, I'm um, feeling this again. And if you, if you start asking why, you get sort of caught up in fear, self pity, dread, anxiety, as opposed to a kind of movement toward acceptance. Maybe even what I think I heard in you, which is like, like a little humor, right? Like, this is, this is ridiculous, right? I gave a TedX talk, I have a podcast, I do public speaking, and here I am at a restaurant and I'm feeling this. Like, that's funny, right? And who knows, you know, everything's so over determined. Who knows what biologically or physiologically or psychologically is going on with you in those moments that's recalling that old experience. And maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Speaker A: I'm glad that you said that because I find that in today's world especially, I think all of the increased talk about mental health stay on social media has stirred up more of the idea that we need to find out the why. And I'm hearing from more people who are like, if I could just find the root cause, then I wouldn't do this thing anymore. It would go away. And they end up feeling like they need to keep researching more or doing more work on themselves to make it go away.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that, I mean that comes up all the time in my work. And, and I don't think that there's, I think there's sort of an infinite regress. Like, I don't think there's any true, truly satisfying answer to why. Because that's not how life works. Because we don't have recordings of every minute of our childhood. Because we don't have actually a strong neurological understanding. And also because that's not how I think growth works. I think it's a bit of a red herring to, to understand the why. Right now I'm reading a book about psychoanalytic diagnosis. And it's, and it's incredible with different personality types, how little we know about the temperamental causes of all these things. We don't necessarily know. There's not a lot of research. What we do know is what the, what is and what the structure is and how to deal with that.

Speaker A: But even if we could get rid of all of our hard feelings, it may not be a good idea. Right?

Speaker B: I mean, I wouldn't want to. Right. People, people have observed for a long time that, that uh, Dante's Inferno is a lot more interesting than Dante's Paradise. You know, when you take away all the negative and you take all the shadows away all the, all the darkness, where's the flavor? I'm just not sure. I'm not sure that even the Buddha himself felt just joy. I just think he didn't necessarily mind that all the other stuff was coming up and then going away. I think he just didn't sweat it as much. That's my understanding of, of Nirvana anyway, that you don't attach to any of it. But I don't know, I don't think I would get rid of my negative emotions. I might, I might choose to have a different relationship to them because there's something, um, masochistic about it. There's something self harming about it. I mean, these things make us these things, these things create us, these things teach us. What is your envy telling you? What is your boredom telling you? There's a speech in the book that I quote by the great Russian poet Joseph Brodsky. And he gave it at, uh, Dartmouth College, I think, in the 80s, and it was called In Praise of Boredom. And he's talking to these poor 21 year olds who just want to hear bromides about what it's going to be like to go out into the world. And he says boredom is a great teacher. Because what boredom is telling you is that you're going to die one day. And if you listen to boredom, you will, you will notice that you are finite and that's where you can begin to find meaning. Don't try to run from your boredom towards drugs, sex, distraction, consumerism. You're going to be tempted to do all that, but at some point you're going to, you're going to do well and be wisest to just let it wash over you. And I think, I think that's true of, of all the emotions.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Educators, they're teachers and we know, uh,

Speaker A: a glass of cold lemonade tastes better after you've moved the lawn than if you just had lemonade while you're sitting on your couch. Right? The relief from pain and the opposite emotion, like, oh, okay, this tastes really good right now. So that when you experience joy and happiness, it feels a lot better if you've been on the other end of the spectrum.

Speaker B: Yeah, it'd be weird to just have an orgasm all the time every day.

Speaker A: On that note, we're going to take our final break to get a word from today's sponsors. But stick around because when we come back, we discuss how to cope with the pressure to be positive all the time and how to just sit with an uncomfortable feeling right now.

Speaker B: Get up to 15% off select storage solutions put heavy duty HDX totes to good use, protecting what's important to you. The solid impact resistant design prevents cracking, and the clear base and sides make items easy to find even when the totes are stacked. Find select shelving and tote storage up to 15% off at the Home Depot. To organize every room in your home from your garage to your attic, visit homedepot.com how doers get more done

Speaker A: this episode is brought to you by Google Health. Stop chasing someone else's definition of health. What matters is what's healthy for you. Google Health Google Health offers a new kind of coach built with Gemini for effortless tracking, sleep insights and holistic coaching tailored to you. Visit googlestore.com to learn more and start a new relationship with your health. Requires Google Account, Google Health App Internet and Google Health Premium. Um, subscription features subject to change. Availability and results vary. Not intended for medical purposes. Works independently of Gemini apps. Check responses for accuracy.

Speaker B: Do you hear that? Sounds like breakfast is ready. Because Quakers coming in hot with morning nutrition 100% whole grain oats and a good source of fiber to fuel the rhythm of your morning and kickstart your day. And that sounds absolutely delicious. Fuel to start whatever's next Quaker Official sponsor of FIFA World Cup 26 I'm out. Let's go.

Speaker A: Okay, we're back,

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Or if we were just happy all the time, you wouldn't appreciate it, right? You would, uh, just think, well, this is, this is normal, I guess, and it would kind of go away.

Speaker B: Well, I think of it this way and I might pick off a certain region of your listeners here, but like, there's a reason no real great art ever came out of San Diego, right? If it's that beautiful and warm all the time, you're not going to be like, you know, Sweden or Norway or Germany, where things get dark and rainy. And a lot of great art comes out of these places where you need that information, you need that sense of things in order to be a full human being. You need the full spectrum of colors. I think so. I don't think this is just rationalization because I'm a grumpy guy. I hope not. I believe it to be true. I believe that a full human experience requires us to have a relationship to these things.

Speaker A: I think so too. And I think now that we experience so much pressure to be positive all the time. I think it puts a spin on it where people feel like, uh, oh, there must be something wrong if I'm not feeling as happy as I should be.

Speaker B: I mean, it drives me nuts. The sort of, the positivity industry that brings out the curmudgeon in me. I recognize some, some real benefits and virtues in positive psychology and some great and important work that has been done. The, the objection I have is when it becomes dogmatic. Mhm. Or preachy or, or unwittingly shaming. Usually it happens in the effort to get a point across that is valuable. I, uh, talk about this a little bit in the book, but in an effort to be vivid or to encourage people to take some control over their experiences, all of which I endorse, people sometimes go a little bit too far in the rhetoric in a way that sends the message to people, I'm not supposed to feel the other things. There's something that I'm not, I'm not optimizing myself. I'm not, I'm not conforming to what the standard of emotional experience is in 2026America. Mhm. And we have a lot of things to feel dark about.

Speaker A: Yeah, Right. And if we woke up every day and just said everything's wonderful, we would, uh, not be very honest with ourselves or anybody else.

Speaker B: And I, uh, I don't think.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And I don't, you know, I don't think anyone's saying just that like everything is wonderful. But I, but I do think that in this, in, in our business, in psychology and in the sort of public relations of psychology, we have to be, we have to be very careful.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: About how we speak. Because, you know, one thing we know about the cultural history of psychology and psychiatry is that it, it becomes folk psychology. It becomes the way that people understand themselves. The way that we conceptualize, not just diagnoses and problems, but the way we conceptualize phenomenology, the way we conceptualize experience ends up, uh, being absorbed into the way that people understand themselves and Their experience and the way they judge their own experiences. So I feel very, very strongly, and I think I have throughout my, my writing career in about how we talk about how we think and feel. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: So if somebody listening right now says, all right, I'm experiencing a uh, difficult emotion. I've been experiencing a lot of shame lately, or I'm dealing with some anger or some sadness, what would you want them to take away from your book?

Speaker B: Oh geez, I'm so bad, Amy. I'm so bad at the takeaways. I think my publisher is maybe frustrated with me for being so bad at the takeaway stuff, um, because it can

Speaker A: be useful and maybe they can learn to manage their frustration. Right. To sit with that emotion.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I, I uh, keep going back to this word because I, I don't know a better one. But to feel those things and to struggle with those things is eminently human. That it is not neither a sin or a character flaw. And that the imperative, if there is any, is toward curiosity. That the feeling itself is an invitation to understand yourself more fully. That there is some part of you that is responding to the world in a way that you will live. I, uh, use the word advisedly, but better if you are able to take the time to listen to it.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: That does not mean indulging it. That does not mean acting on it. Feeling envy does not mean you're going to harm another person. Feeling, feeling angry does not mean, although it can, and then there's a problem that you're going to be destructive. It simply means that you're having a feeling. That's it. Congratulations, you're human. You're having feelings. And these include really difficult ones. Pay attention. Find someone to talk to about it. Find someone who's not going to try to fix you, but who's going to sort of carve open a space with you in which you can be like, oh, that's really interesting. You're feeling envious of um, all these other people who have, who books have sold more than you, for example, just to take something from thin air. Um, and what's that bringing up? What are the associations related to that? What is there to learn about yourself? I mean I, you know, I'm a therapist. I believe in self knowledge. I believe, I believe pretty passionately in it. So that's what I would say.

Speaker A: And I like that idea because again, we've been trained to kind of run from our own emotion or we pathologize a lot of things. If I have too much of one emotion, there must be something wrong with me. And you've kind of answered this question, I think already. But I, uh, always ask my guests as a final question, how would getting better at sitting with our hard feelings help us to grow mentally stronger?

Speaker B: I mean, if we're talking about resilience and we're talking about toughness, then we're talking about staying with. Then we're talking about not escaping, we're talking about not running from. If strength, if mental strength, the idea that you've spent so much time with means anything to me, it means that. Mhm.

Speaker A: Mm.

Speaker B: It means. It means not running away from things. Including the fact of your tendency to run away from things. Right, right. I go through phases where I just want to escape. And I might indulge myself in ways that I'm escaping. Hopefully I could sort of within shorter timeframes, become aware that that's what I'm doing. And the strength, it's. It's not necessarily weakness, although I do tend to conceptualize it for myself in that way because of, uh, my own struggles. It's not weakness for me to escape, it's it's strength when I actually notice that that's what I do. And as I get older and, and wiser and hopefully stronger, I don't have to take that route quite as often or for as long. So attendance is what we want to build up, I think. I hope that's an answer to the question.

Speaker A: I think that is a very well said answer. And, uh, I absolutely agree. So, Daniel Smith, thank you for being on Mentally Stronger and for giving us all, I think, more confidence, courage, and knowledge about hard feelings. Welcome to the Therapist Take the part of the show where I break down my guest strategies and share how to apply them to your life today. Here are three of my favorite strategies that Daniel shared. Number one, notice the feeling and name it. Sometimes we want to ignore the uncomfortable feelings because we feel bad about them or we're afraid that if we pay attention to them, that feeling will just grow bigger. Daniel said the first obligation we have toward our emotions is simply to notice them. And I agree. This is something we've talked about on the show before, and there's an exercise in my book, the Mental Strength Playbook, about how to name it to tame it. Because naming an emotion takes some of the sting out of it. Tons of research behind that. So if you're bored and you say, all right, I feel bored right now, your boredom will decrease just a little bit. Or if you can say, I Feel shame, whatever it is. Naming an emotion creates a little bit of space between you and that feeling, and that can actually help you to feel just a little bit better. So the next time a difficult emotion crops up, skip over trying to decide what that means about you, that you feel this way, and just label what it is. Number two, ask what is this? Instead of why is this happening? So we're often encouraged to look for the root cause of everything, and then we think, oh, if I can just find that explanation, this feeling is going to make sense. Or maybe it will go away. But our, uh, feelings don't always make sense. They're not always rational, and that's okay. Daniel pointed out how asking ourselves why sometimes puts us in that tailspin of self pity and dread and frustration. And it keeps us from just accepting, this is how I feel right now. Now, as I said in the episode, I have spent 25 years working as a therapist, and yet I still get that jolt of my old childhood anxiety in everyday situations, even the ones that don't make any logical sense anymore. I don't need to go back and figure out, why does this still happen? Sometimes it's just about noticing, there it is again. And letting that be okay. And number three, build what Daniel calls attendance. When I asked him how sitting with our hard feelings makes us mentally stronger, he said, strength is about staying with a feeling instead of running from it, including noticing when you are running from it. And I just want to be clear. I was at a speaking engagement last week, and afterwards somebody asked me a great question. She said, how do you know when to sit with a feeling or when to change what you're feeling? Now, I might do a whole episode on this topic alone because it's important. Because if your emotions aren't helpful in the moment, you might need to shift them, right? Like, if you have a whole bunch of anxiety right before you step into a meeting, sitting with the anxiety probably isn't helpful in that moment. You might distract yourself for a few minutes so that you can reduce your anxiety, and then you walk into the meeting and you're able to think a little bit more clearly. Or maybe you're going to a social event, like your friend's having a birthday dinner and you're feeling really down. Well, you could just allow yourself to feel really sad before you walk into this social engagement. Or you could do something to cheer yourself up a little bit. Listen to some upbeat music on the way there, or go for a walk to get yourself in a better emotional space before you walk into the room so that you could enjoy the party. So keep in mind that building mental strength doesn't mean you're not going to feel bad. Sometimes it's just about knowing when do you stay present with the discomforts and when do you need to shift it so that you can function better. So, uh, those are three of Daniel's tips that I highly recommend. Notice the feeling and name it. Ask what is this? Instead of why is it happening? And build what Daniel calls attendance when it makes sense to do so. If you want to hear even more of Daniel's tips, check out his book. It's called Hard Feelings. Thanks for hanging out with me today and for listening to Mentally Stronger. If you know someone who beats themselves up for the way that they feel, share this episode with them. Simply sharing a link could help someone feel better and grow stronger. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. It's one of the best ways to help us reach even more listeners. And if you want more content on Mental Strength, subscribe to Mentally Stronger Premium. You'll get weekly bonus episodes where I answer your questions on Mental Strength. Plus, uh, there are always monthly extras to help you grow stronger. To subscribe, just click on the link in the show notes and as always, a big thank you to my show's producer who says you listen to the music when you're happy and you listen to the lyrics when you're sad. Nick Valentine.

Speaker B: When the going gets tough, get after it with NOS Energy. Keep your foot flat to the floor and never let off thunder. From top gear to no fear, never back down, never slow down. Your body is machine with 800 horses coursing through its veins. So go hard, go fast. Go on, grab a can of NOS Energy and get after.

Speaker A: The most memorable gifts aren't found, they're made. Zazzle is a custom marketplace where you pick any product, a mug, a card, a tote, a phone case and make it personal. A photo, a name, an inside joke. The kind of gift that actually fits the person. That's what 30 million customers have been coming back to Zazzle for over 20 years to find right now. Save 25% on your first order@zazzle.com and that's Zazzle. Com. Make it Zamazing.