"In that moment, something clicked. I felt the rush and the relief of sudden emotional clarity. I think this came from seeing that my psychoanalyst, by not apologising to appease my anger, by not taking an easy way out of the conflict, by persisting in offering me her honest thoughts about what was going on in my mind and by bearing my struggle to take them in, was giving me an extremely rare and precious experience."
"I experimented with keeping a gratitude diary, writing down what I felt grateful for each evening. It was an interesting exercise. What I discovered then and what I've learned through experience since is that if you try to game gratitude or any emotion in this way, treating it like an asset to be accumulated, it can only ever be a nice feeling — and a fleeting one."
"Nice feelings have their place. But I don't believe they help to build a better life. They are one part of the outcome of a fulfilling and meaningful life (along with lots of not-so-nice feelings). On their own they are not sufficient for precipitating internal change. I've said it before and I'll say it again: what we all want is to feel better but what we really need is to get better at feeling."
A misunderstanding with a psychoanalyst provoked anger and a desire for an apology, yet the analyst refused to appease and persisted in offering honest observations. That resistance produced sudden emotional clarity and a profound surge of gratitude. Earlier experiments with a gratitude diary showed that deliberately 'gaming' gratitude yields only pleasant but fleeting feelings. Pleasant feelings alone do not build a better life; they are one part of a fulfilling life alongside difficult emotions. Genuine change requires learning to tolerate, process and grow through challenging emotional experiences rather than merely accumulating positive feelings.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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