Are You Squashing All of Your Joy?

I hear this often from clients who are about to see a new doctor or try a new treatment option:

"I'm trying not to get too excited."

Wait, WHAAAAAT????!!!!

You've probably heard that getting excited about something that hasn't happened yet (e.g., getting a promotion, your crush contacting you after the first date, or passing an exam) will make it more disappointing if that something doesn't happen. Hence, it's best not to get excited about things.

That's not a thing.

This thought process is an adaptive response. This means that your mind created a set of beliefs or rules to help you adapt to a painful situation.

This is how it happened: At one time in your life, something unpleasant came after something pleasant. You didn’t like the unpleasant thing, so you learned to avoid it by not allowing yourself to experience pleasant things. Thus the belief, "I shouldn't get excited about things," was born.

Here's the truth:

• You will be disappointed whether you let yourself be excited or not.

• You don't feel the drop from the pleasant emotion to the unpleasant one. Your mind incorrectly attributes the resulting feeling to the fall or decline.

• The sadness or disappointment didn't come because you got excited.

• The sadness or disappointment is not made worse because you experienced a different, more pleasant emotion before it.

• Avoiding a feeling, whether pleasant or unpleasant, doesn't make it go away. You just squished it into something less noticeable for the time being. It's still there.

• Also, to you superstitious folx out there: Getting excited doesn't cause things to go wrong. Stop spending your life waiting for the next shoe to drop.

Does your mind want to justify the pattern, by saying something like, “but, it’s TRUE! Bad things always happen to me!”? If so, ask yourself, "Even if this were true, do I actually have that much control over my life?"

No, you don't. You're special, but you're not that special.

To the folx with chronic illness and health conditions:

The next time you're about to see a new doctor or try a new treatment option...

Don't rob yourself of the excitement of this new possibility.

Trust that if you end up disappointed or sad, YOU CAN HANDLE IT.

You'll grieve. You'll find new solutions. You'll move forward.

JUST LIKE YOU ALWAYS DO.

PLEASE stop squashing all your joy.