I'm having a great day. So why do I feel like shit?

Yesterday I had an objectively great day, and I felt terrible.

I was productive, I had multiple important things go my way, and yet I spent most of the day mired in worry about stuff that no one else would think was a problem.

It was one of those days when you feel detached from your whole life and everyone in it, and you fear that trying to explain your internal monologue will only make you feel all the more cut off.

I don't think I'm the only one with this experience. So what’s it all about then? Here are a few theories on how we get stuck in this particular pickle jar...

Worrying about everything, even when everything is going just fine

I’ve been called an ‘active worrier’. If I have a health problem (real or Googled) I’m always trying to find Something To Do About It, even when it’s very clearly a ‘wait and watch’ situation.

This problem-solving approach extends to when there’s not any problem at all. Say it’s a Sunday afternoon and I have a big week coming, I’ll exhaust myself looking for the Best Way To Relax.

Alan Watts - hippy philosopher from the Sixties - would say this all makes perfect sense. Consciousness, Watts says, is essentially a glorified trouble-shooter. It evolved as a radar for identifying potential threats. When you’re having a good day, and there are no threats about, it’ll find something to worry about.

So, to be aware of anything at all is to be on the lookout. No wonder it can be so exhausting?

Worrying about existence itself

The existential pickle jar.

Maybe it’s existential anxiety - the dizziness of having so many choices in life, meaning you’re never sure if you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing.

Or maybe it’s existential guilt - the feeling that no matter what you choose, you can never live up to the infinite possibilities of human existence.

Even if life’s going well today, sometimes that’s not enough to distract you from the gnawing truth of your limited incarnation. Lovely.

Worrying about worrying

What does it mean that I worry so much all the time? Should I be this worried about how much I worry about worrying?

Pickle jars within pickle jars my friends.

Worrying about not worrying enough

Worrying that whatever fleeting happiness you’ve just found will disappear if you get complacent.

Whether it’s ‘I’m finally happy, I need to freeze everything in place just as it is.’

Or ‘I’m finally happy, I need to make sure I really take this in.’

Or ‘I’m finally happy, wait what even is happiness and am I sure this is it?’

What this all adds up to is that - even when things are just fine - we feel this deep seated urge to do something about The Way Things Are. And that leaves us feeling restless, detached.

So… what are we gonna do about that?

AHA! IT’S A TRAP!

If the problem is that we keep trying to do something about The Way Things Are, then the answer can’t just be to do something.

Where does that leave us?

There’s the standard Buddhist trope, 'do nothing'. Or as Paul Rudd puts it, “Remember don’t do anything, do nothing…. Well no you’ve gotta do more than that ‘cos now you’re just lying there.”

Then there’s what an actual Buddhist might say. What does Pema Chödrön, Purveyor of Velvet Truth-Bombs, suggest for those times you find yourself spiraling for no good reason?

“Rather than letting our negativity get the better of us, we could acknowledge that right now we feel like a piece of shit and not be squeamish about taking a good look.” ― Pema Chödrön

For Chödrön, the question isn’t what we should do about our dissatisfaction, but how we should relate to it. Is feeling like a piece of shit a problem to be fixed? Or is it an experience to be courageously explored?

So instead of 'why do I feel shit', a Chödrön-y line of enquiry might be, 'what does it feel like to have a shitty day in the midst of an objectively great day?'

Well, back to where we started: for me it feels weird. It feels lonely. It feels sad.

So... what do I do with that?

Why we feel squeamish about feeling like 💩

We'll get to that question of what to do next, but first, Pema says don't be squeamish about taking a good look at how you're feeling. It may be helpful to ask, why do we feel squeamish in the first place?

I think it goes back to this idea of primary and secondary emotions, from newsletter issue two:

Primary emotions are your immediate emotional response to something (I’m upset because no one liked the post of my dog looking adorable.) Secondary emotions are our feelings about those feelings (I’m ashamed that I care so much that no one has liked the post of my dog looking adorable.)

I know we did this joke in Issue Two. But seriously, only nine likes for this??

Often, what really gets you is the secondary emotion, the notion that you shouldn’t be feeling how you're feeling. You shouldn’t still be so sad about that break up. You shouldn’t get so angry when your sister says something thoughtless.

It all comes back to those damn Shoulds. On a 'good day' especially - when life is going well by any objective measure - I feel like I should feel good. And then comes the trusty shame spiral: your life is great and you feel terrible. You're really not cut out for this whole 'life' thing are you?

On these days I feel like my feelings don't make sense to anyone else. That no one else would feel the way I'm feeling if they were in this same situation. I feel like I'm doing it wrong. I'm in my own little reality bubble - and it's lonely in there.

Tell someone who gets it

My go to strategy for this situation is fairly simple (though often, not easy). Find someone who's likely to get it, and tell them what's going on. 

This is technically ‘doing something’, but I think I can get away with it because the aim isn’t to solve my situation. The aim is simply to connect. And to feel like just maybe I'm not the only person to feel shitty when things are supposedly going well.

It's true, no one can completely understand how utterly overtaken I sometimes get by some objectively minor life detail. But I do know multiple people who can relate to the feeling behind that experience. That weird, sad, loneliness of worrying about something no one else thinks is a problem.

What I’m looking for when I tell someone what's going on is not reassurance - it’s just connection.

Connection with someone who gets it at the feelings level. At the 'we both have pickle jars of our own' level. Maybe mine is full of weird health concerns and yours is stuffed with anxieties about your career. The content isn't what matters here - it's the fact we've both been stuck in there before.

None of that gets me out of the pickle jar, but it often helps me feel less alone in there. And that's something.