"When we run up against difficult emotions, one of the places I find that people get most tripped up is expecting that there is a certain way that one should feel. And, taking this further, that often translates into "There's something wrong with me that I'm feeling/or not feeling this way or that." All too often, I've had patients cry in my office and apologize for doing so (as if crying is bad, a sign of weakness or something to be avoided)."
"Additionally, we are wired to avoid pain. Through evolution, there was survival value in avoiding physical pain (think being bitten by a poisonous snake or being attacked by a predator), but in our modern lives, this evolutionary wiring carries over to our human tendency to avoid our emotional pain. While many people are familiar with the five stages of grief (as written about by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross): denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, it is important to recognize that, in fact, there is no empirical validity for this as a stage theory to explain the grief process."
People often expect a specific way to feel during difficult emotions and then judge themselves for not meeting that expectation. Self-judgment compounds the pain of emotions like grief, shame, or sadness, leading people to apologize for natural responses such as crying. Evolutionary wiring favored avoiding physical pain, and that tendency now promotes avoiding emotional pain in modern life. Common models like the five stages of grief lack empirical validity as a rigid stage theory, and treating them as prescriptive can be misleading. Learning to meet suffering without additional self-criticism can improve coping.
Read at Psychology Today
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