How to Overcome Negative Emotions with a Counterintuitive Approach

Become a mighty ocean instead of building walls.

Two years ago, my dog died.

We got him when I was nine years old and I spent half my childhood and all my adolescent years with him.

On his first day with us, I carried my mattress up to the living room so both of us could sleep on there and he’d have some company during his first night in a foreign house.

We grew up together, ran around in the grass, exchanged belly rubs for licks on the face, and often spent hours cuddling.

Unfortunately, man’s best friend ages a lot faster than man himself, and by the time I moved out for college, grey patches on his fur had already formed.

During his last months, the toll old age had taken on him became obvious. He was shaky and needed a lot of encouragement to even touch his food. Every now and then his legs would give way and he’d fall over.

On one beautiful summer day, my mum called me after I left work to tell me that he had to be put down because he couldn’t get up anymore and was in pain.

It hit me. Hard.

But I did what all emotionally immature people — especially men, because we rarely get taught how to deal with our feelings — do in such a case.

I fought the negative emotions.

I acted stoic and cool. I distracted myself with friends, sex, and other activities. I suppressed any feelings that came up as much as I could.

Think back to the last time you experienced a major negative event. You got fired from your job, a close friend died, or your long-term girlfriend dumped you.

That sucks. You feel down in the dumps like you’ve been hit by a freight train and beaten up for good measure. You feel empty, hollow, sick, like the ground fell out from underneath your feet and life has lost its meaning. It feels like you’ll never be happy again.

But how do you deal with it? You’re a man, after all. Life must go on. Your best buddy gives you a pat on the shoulder, you pull yourself together and somehow go on. That’s what everyone expects of you. Everyone would like the big tough guy’s shoulder to cry on, but what if you need one to do the same? Crying? That’s for girls.

Unfortunately, this is not how you overcome a devastating event. You can’t suppress your feelings indefinitely and expect them to magically vanish into thin air at one point. You’ll stuff them inside of you, for years, without ever giving yourself the chance to heal. Everyone sees you smiling, solid as a rock, and pretending everything is fine. But nobody sees the mountain of emotional despair that you carry around deep inside of you.

Look, you don’t need a degree in psychology to see that suppressing negative emotions and keeping them bottled up for years isn’t healthy and won’t make you happy.

What you need to do instead is to heal like a vulnerable man. Vulnerability is the key to healing — you need to open yourself up to your feelings first before they can go away.

“Whatever you resist, persists.”

As men, we often judge ourselves for feeling down. We feel like a pussy and think we should be strong and unshakable instead. If we catch ourselves crying, we often feel like a failure.

What kind of man cries, anyway?

The strong one.

True strength doesn’t mean you can suppress your emotions. True strength means you are tough enough to face your emotional pain and deal with it. It means you make yourself vulnerable and open to your feelings, whatever pain they may bring with them. Vulnerability is strength.

To heal from a devastating event and process and overcome the negative feelings associated with it, you have to lower your guards and make yourself vulnerable.

The Two Ways You Can Respond to Emotional Hurt

When things go south, it’s like life fires a bullet at you. Sometimes it’s a small 9mm, sometimes it’s a big, armor-piercing, fuck-your-life-up .50 BMG. A regular bullet will hurt your physical body, this one will hurt your mind.

There are two ways you can react to it.

Build a wall

The default reaction. You see a bullet flying towards you, so you build a wall to protect yourself and stop it. This will feel good in the short run, which is why so many men do it. The bullets get stopped by the wall and you can go on as if nothing happened.

You put on a stoic mask and let your wall do the rest. Done is the unshakable man.

Have you ever seen a video of a gun nerd firing tons of ammo into a brick wall? The bricks stop the bullet but get torn apart in the process. They explode and send shrapnel and debris all around. After enough shots, the place looks like Hiroshima 1945.

Building walls and trying to suppress your feelings will tear you up from the inside until everything crumbles and you break down.

Become an ocean

How do you stop a bullet without building a wall? Become an ocean instead.

When you fire shots into water, it’s a completely different story. The rounds cut through it, lose their energy, leave no trace or damage behind and sink to the ground. After the turbulence has cleared, the water is still the same — no damage has been done.

When life fires a bullet at your ocean, it will rip apart the water and send shockwaves through it. That’s the initial hurt, when the pain hits you for the first time.

Then, the bullet will lose its energy, becoming slower and slower. The healing takes place.

In the end, that potentially devastating round will sink to the dark depths without leaving a trace or turbulence. The surface of your ocean will be smooth as glass and you’ll have successfully overcome the hurt.

3 Actionable Steps to Become an Ocean and Heal

This is easier said than done. We’ve spent our whole lives living under the notion that practicing vulnerability will hurt us, that allowing for negative emotions is like opening the gates of hell.

But there is a very simple, three-step process you can use to let go of your resistance and therefore your negative emotions. All you need is a quiet place and some time for yourself.

I have found nature to be especially calming and supporting for this sort of healing, so whenever I feel like I have some unresolved issues, I go out into the woods.

Whether you do it inside or outside, make sure you’re alone, unless you want your best friend to accompany you. Having strangers watch or hear you makes it much harder to let yourself go because you erroneously think it’s weak and you don’t want anyone to see you like that.

#1 Become aware of your feelings

Think of the negative event or emotion that you want to work through. It might be disappointment because you didn’t get accepted by your dream job, betrayal because your partner cheated on you or sadness and loss because someone close to you died.

Close your eyes and focus on the present moment. Connect with your body. Where is the pain — your chest, forehead, or stomach?

What does it feel like — a tingling, a pressure making it hard to breathe, or a hollow space yearning to be filled?

Don’t judge, don’t think, just feel. Feel where the bullet is aimed at and what it feels like.

#2 Take down your wall and let the bullet hit you

Now that you know what the pain will feel like, open yourself up to it. Take down your walls and allow the bullet to hit you.

It will hurt. Depending on what you’re going through and how well you can open yourself up, the pain will hit you like a train. All the suppressed feelings and thoughts will come at you, like a staccato of discomfort.

You’ll fully experience the desperation, the hurt, and the blame.

When I opened myself up, I thought of all the times I rather played computer games than spending time with my dog. I thought of all the times I yelled at him because he didn’t obey. I thought of how I’d do things differently if he was still alive. And the tears came.

If you feel like crying, don’t hold back. Don’t judge, don’t label, don’t think. Just experience it and let the tears flow. Crying is like the mind’s spring cleaning — a natural healing ritual washing away pain and hurt.

#3 Heal and let the bullet sink

Once the initial shockwave of pain has subsided, the bullet starts to lose its energy.

Experience and observe the pain without creating resistance. Does the pain spread? Does it come in waves?

Let it run wild. By embracing and feeling your emotions and allowing the pain to go right through you, the bullet will lose its energy. It will become slower and slower until it sinks to the ground.

The negative energy it brought gets released through you — either through crying, screaming, cursing, or sitting there in silence and allowing it to flow through you and evaporate.

All that will be left is a feeling of calm and peace — peace with your negative emotions, with the world, and with yourself.

Mastering the Art of Healing

If you spend your whole life suppressing your emotions and acting tough, it will take a while to unlearn this behavior.

Making yourself vulnerable and overcoming negative emotions is an art. Mastering it is a process that involves a lot of effort, time, grief, and iteration.

Nevertheless, it is absolutely worth it. Negative and devastating events are part of life and overcoming them is vital to living a successful, happy, and fulfilled life. The sooner you learn to deal with them in the right way, the better.

The first step is always the hardest — which is why I have put together three methods that will make it a lot easier for you to make yourself vulnerable and open up to your emotions.

• Meditation To overcome negative emotions, you need to first become aware of what is going on inside you. Sit down, do nothing, and observe what your body feels like. Do your ears tingle? Is your stomach tight? By paying attention to the different parts, you will develop the awareness you need to observe your pain.
• Talking about your emotions This one can be hard — sharing and making yourself vulnerable in front of someone else is a big step. But talking about something will take a lot of the weight off your chest. Get your best buddy, crack open a beer, and tell him how you feel.
• Journaling If you can’t conjure up the courage to talk about your emotions in person or don’t have someone to do it with, you can journal instead. Writing down your thoughts is like talking to a piece of paper. And paper is the best listener of all — it doesn’t judge, it doesn’t complain, it doesn’t interrupt. It just listens. Feel free to spill your feelings.

The Pain Paradox

“Pain is a relatively objective, physical phenomenon; suffering is our psychological resistance to what happens. Events may create physical pain, but they do not in themselves create suffering. Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is… The only problem in your life is your mind’s resistance to life as it unfolds.”

— Dan Millman

When life hits you, you will feel pain. There is nothing you can do about it. In fact, pain is a great thing. It means you are alive and a functioning human being.

While you can’t do anything about the pain, you can influence the amount of suffering you experience. Suffering is created by resistance. The less you resist your emotions, the less suffering they will create, and the faster you will heal.

That’s the pain paradox.

Unfortunately, society doesn’t teach men how to deal with their negative emotions in a healthy way. It teaches us to resist the pain, to stop crying, and to “man up”.

Don’t sulk, don’t suffer. Just allow yourself to feel the pain and heal.

Just like suppressing your emotions isn’t healthy, faking your self-esteem won’t get you anywhere. Here’s how to build real esteem instead:

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