Answer Helen: readers reply to an Ask Helen about controlling our feelings

Wow! Last month's newsletter sparked some good conversation amidst a whole slew of unsubscribes. I'm laughingly referring to it as my most controversial Ask Helen to date! 😂

Click here if you missed it and want to get up to speed.

In lieu of a new topic, I'd like to dig a little deeper into what I shared last month.

Also, it seems worth saying: This is all just philosophical conversation. There isn't a right answer. Who could even say for sure how choice works—if we choose our feelings and reactions or not. I'm merely giving you a peek into what it looks like to me, as someone who's really interested in exploring this kind of stuff. You might have a different opinion, which is fantastic; I'm always curious to hear what you think, even and especially if it differs from what I think.

Anyway, a good place to start today is with some of the feedback I got from readers.

Before unsubscribing, one reader wrote me the following:

“All humans can learn and become better. Dictionaries are free to use in any library, there you look up words, the pronunciation, and the various meanings for each word. Pencil and paper & take notes, learn!”

They were referring to this part of last month's newsletter:

“Let’s say someone mispronounces a word. It’s not a mistake that they feel embarrassed about or even correct themselves over; more like they think this mispronunciation is actually how the word is supposed to be pronounced.

We could say the person who mispronounces the word is in control of how they pronounce it, right?

But that doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense, because a person can only pronounce a word in the way that occurs to them. They don’t choose to mispronounce it, just as they don’t actually choose a pronunciation to begin with. They just go ahead and say the word in the way that occurs to them, maybe in the way they’ve said it in their mind when they’ve read the word on paper.

The same could be said for any feeling or reaction of ours.”

Here's what I wrote back to the reader:

“Thanks for your reply. I totally agree! And it will absolutely occur to some people to look up the word, if they suspect they’ve been mispronouncing it. But if they have no idea, it likely won’t occur to them—until/unless someone points it out.

All I’m saying is, we can only ever do what occurs to us. It’s less about choice and more about newfound awareness and insight.

The same goes for feelings/reactions. It will absolutely occur to some people to get the help/resources they need to shift their feelings/reactions, if they suspect that how they’re currently experiencing life isn’t working great for them. But none of us can do what doesn’t occur to us. It’s not a matter of choice. Do you see what I mean?”

I guess I'd take that even a step further and say this: We educate ourselves when it occurs to us to do so. Sometimes we deeply desire to become "better" (whatever that means), so we set about finding ways to "improve" ourselves (again, these are pretty judgmental words to use, but I'm sure you know what I'm getting at).

At no point was I or am I suggesting that humans can't learn or can't become better. I'm simply saying that the thought has to occur to us in order for us to do so.

Let's return to my mispronunciation analogy.

Imagine English isn't my first language. For the most part, I speak it pretty well, though I'm really keen to nail the pronunciation of a word I struggle with (I know I struggle with it because native speakers have a hard time understanding me when I say it and/or have gently corrected me before).

I might go to the library, pick up a dictionary, look up the word, and practice pronouncing it. I might google the word and find a YouTube video wherein I can actually hear a person pronouncing it. I might ask a native speaker for help.

I'm capable of learning, yes! And, the thought has occurred to me to learn more; the thought has occurred to me that the way I'm saying the word 1. isn't correct, 2. is making me difficult to understand, and 3. could be improved upon. It occurs to me to use a resource or two to land on the correct pronunciation of the word.

Someone else who mispronounces a word might never have the thought, Hmm, I'd like to make sure I'm saying this word correctly. Is this person choosing to stay ignorant? Can we say with certainty that a choice is being made here, or might it be more accurate to say that the person is quite simply oblivious? And innocently so. There can't be a choice where there isn't a lightbulb moment of insight.

Later, I received a really thoughtful comment on the blog post, itself. This one is from my cousin, Debbie:

“I’ve seen these messages around too, however I took choosing how one reacts not to mean choosing how you feel about it, but rather what you do about it. You can feel upset with a situation, but do you want to actively sit in that feeling, or do you want to get up and do the next thing in your day, or go for a walk? Someone at work could really make you angry, but do you react by being passive aggressive or choose a different approach?”

This response makes a ton of sense to me.

In fact, I shared this exact perspective when I first considered the idea of choosing our feelings and reactions. This is what made sense to me. That people always chose how they behaved, how they responded, what came out of their mouths. That people chose to be kind or unkind, forgiving or grudge-holding, better or bitter, and so on.

But at some point recently, I started digging around a bit more and began to see 'choice' differently.

Here's how I responded:

“Great points, Debbie! (And thanks for taking the time to articulate that.)

I wonder, though, if this interpretation really changes anything. I mean, yeah, we can say that someone who actively stews in a negative feeling, pouting or being snarky or whatever, is choosing to react that way—instead of, say, going for a walk or taking a time-out. We can say that someone who’s passive aggressive to an annoying co-worker is choosing that negative behavior. It sure looks like they’re choosing it, right? Especially because there are other options available to them. Or, at least it looks that way to us.

But I guess I’m just not convinced it’s a choice. ‘Choice’ kind of implies that someone weighed their options and deliberately selected one. And sure, that happens sometimes, when it occurs to someone that they want to break a pattern of behavior/reactivity. Absolutely, yes. But besides that, I don’t think anyone’s deliberately selecting anything. I think we’re all just reacting in the ways that occur to us. On some level (or levels), it makes the most sense to us to react in this way or that, regardless of what might be a “better choice”—retrospectively, of course.

I think ‘choice’ and ‘choosing’ make it seem like there’s a bunch more higher-level, thoughtful consideration happening than what’s going on in reality. It also implies that we can somehow go against our natural impulses—which, sure, we can when it occurs to us to do so...but not when it doesn’t.

Does this make sense?

I love philosophizing about this stuff! And it’s even more fun with company. 😉 Feel free to disagree and argue back! I think this is how we all come to understand a bit more about the nature of humanity.”

And now that I'm rereading my reply to Debbie, I'm seeing a place where I should probably elaborate.

When I use the phrase "a bunch more higher-level, thoughtful consideration," I don't mean to imply that such consideration can't happen or never happens. Plenty of people make a conscious effort to choose reactions that are less destructive, or to talk themselves into feeling differently about some situation—because such techniques have occurred to them.

But even then, I don't see it as control. I see it as maybe a combination of insight and good fortune; not as something over which they have limitless agency.

So, I'm curious to know what all of this looks like for you. Do you feel as though you always choose how to think about something, how to feel about it, how you respond to it? Can you think of a time or times when, perhaps, you didn't feel like a choice was being made?

Share in the comments below. I always love hearing from you, whether or not you agree with me!

Ask Helen: a reader question about controlling our feelings

Dear Helen,

It seems like a popular thing these days, to tell people that they're in control of their reactions. I see it on Instagram a lot, especially. "You can't always control what happens, but you can control how you react to it." That kind of thing. I hear parents talk about needing to teach kids to "control their emotions," too. Someone recently suggested a mantra of "I'm in charge of how I feel." It seems a little...off. But I’m not sure why. What do you think? Is it true that we're in control of how we feel and how we react to things?

Thank you!
Not Sure

Dear Not Sure,

In a word (or 13): I don't see how we could possibly be in control of such things.

I mean, I get the sentiment behind these statements.

We like to feel we're in control. On some level, we know we're not, at least not ultimately—but in an effort to empower ourselves, to maintain some sense of agency, I think we sort of parse out which little components of an experience are "ours." We like to imagine that there are pieces that we consciously and capably decide for ourselves.

Surely our feelings are in our domain, we think. Surely we choose how to feel, how to view some experience, what words come out of our mouth in response to an experience.

But I don't see how this could be true.

Let's say someone mispronounces a word. It's not a mistake that they feel embarrassed about or even correct themselves over; more like they think this mispronunciation is actually how the word is supposed to be pronounced.

We could say the person who mispronounces the word is in control of how they pronounce it, right?

But that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, because a person can only pronounce a word in the way that occurs to them. They don't choose to mispronounce it, just as they don't actually choose a pronunciation to begin with. They just go ahead and say the word in the way that occurs to them, maybe in the way they've said it in their mind when they've read the word on paper.

The same could be said for any feeling or reaction of ours.

We're not choosing to feel a negative emotion. We're not choosing to say the unkind thing or to have the big, dramatic response. We're not choosing to make bad decisions (even though some of the decisions that are made turn out to have undesirable consequences).

We're doing what occurs to us in any given moment.

Only always!

Maybe some folks would still see that as choosing. They believe people have agency over what occurs to them—anger or gratitude, kindness or unkindness, right or wrong (as if we always know ahead of time which is which!).

If we could choose, if we were in control, wouldn't we pick the best feelings and responses and actions, though? Wouldn't we make it so that we're experiencing only positive feelings? Wouldn't we make only the right decisions?

So, while I understand the sentiment behind the statements you shared—the desire for it to be the case that we're in charge of certain things about ourselves and our inner workings—I just don't see how that's possible.

What I do see is that we're all doing the best we can, the best we think to do, every moment of every day. No exceptions.

Sometimes this looks lovely and sometimes it looks awful. But I'm not sure it's ever helpful to focus on choice in all of this.

'Choice' suggests it's our fault that better feelings and reactions aren't occurring to us. Which makes us feel even worse about the ones that are.

Maybe we're simply better off remembering that new ways of seeing are becoming available to us all the time. Change is happening effortlessly, without our involvement. Fresh feelings and reactions will occur to us, because that's the nature of life.

I hope this helps!

Love,
Helen

Ask Helen: a reader question about fear, readiness, and inaction

Dear Helen,

How can I figure out what's hanging me up from moving forward? How do I know if it's fear talking, or if I'm hesitating because I'm truly not ready/it isn't actually the right time to pursue the thing?

Thank you!
Stuck Here

Dear Stuck Here,

I promise I'm not being snarky, but I have to ask: Does it matter?

Does it really matter if you're feeling afraid versus the timing isn't right?

Don't get me wrong, I completely understand where you're coming from with this question. It's a distinction I know many of us puzzle over when we find that we're not moving forward in the way that we think we ought to. (Let's put a pin in the whole concept of "moving forward" and come back to that in a minute, because—big surprise—I have a lot to say about that, too.)

But I'm just wondering: How would it help you to know one way or the other? What would you do next, if you knew 🔮 FOR SURE 🔮 that you were experiencing fear, or, on the other hand, that it really isn't the right time to pursue this thing?

I suspect you're asking this because you want to know if this is a 'you' problem (something you need to get over or solve for in some way) or if it's merely a timing thing or circumstance (something you might see as being more unchangeable and, therefore, maybe a more legitimate reason for not making progress).

Minds do this. I've said it before: They're black-and-white thinkers with strong opinions, and they tend to compile pretty compelling evidence to support whatever their current belief system is. So, it's not at all surprising that your mind wants to know, definitively, if it's your fault you're not moving forward (as though it could be) or if it's truly out of your control. Your mind wants to know if you should push through this (whatever 'this' is) or hang back.

So binary!

It believes there's a right answer to this question you posed, a trustworthy way of discerning what should happen next, and it's on you to figure it out.

I'm pointing all this out because I've found that it's helpful to start to notice where our minds jump in and try to run the show for us in ways that aren't entirely or even mostly helpful.

Your mind thinks you should be pursuing this thing, and because you're not, your mind is saying there's a problem. And then your mind is really bearing down on this so-called problem and wanting to fully understand it in an objective way, as though it wasn't the one to create it in the first place and as though objectivity exists in this situation.

It's kind of bonkers when you think about it, right?

Okay, now for the second part of my answer, which, of course, involves posing another question to you: How do you know you're hung up from moving forward?

Really think about that for a moment.

How do you know?

How do you know this isn't supposed to be the way forward—with you not doing the thing, regardless of the reason?

From what I can tell, nothing ever gets hung up. It's impossible. Things keep unfolding, life keeps on going, and change keeps happening.

'Forward' is a funny way of describing the direction, because it implies there could be a 'backward' or a 'standing still'—and when I really look at these concepts, I see that they're exactly that. Concepts. They don't seem to exist outside of a mind. Nothing but a mind could determine that the direction a pursuit is going is backward. Or that a pursuit is somehow hung up, frozen in place, not advancing. Can you see how there's no objective truth there? It's all mind-created.

But I get that, societally, we often think of the unfolding of things as 'making progress' or as 'forward movement' because that's what it feels like—or, more probably, what we want it to feel like to move through life.

It sounds like you're simply not doing a thing that you expect yourself to do, want yourself to do (or think you want yourself to do), or believe you should be doing.

You're not doing it, who knows why, and then your mind is coming in with A Lot To Say About It.

Of course it is. This is what minds do.

Minds are meaning-making machines. It's their whole job to generate the stuff, and the meaning they make can be total nonsense.

So, what if nothing is wrong here? What if it isn't on you to figure out if or when you should be going after this pursuit? What if that's just a giant misunderstanding?

Try on these questions and see what you see.

I hope this helps!

Love,
Helen

Ask Helen: a reader question about comfort versus growth

Dear Helen,

I have been wrestling with a question lately, and it seems like the kind of thing you’d have interesting thoughts on. How do we reconcile our desire for comfort and ease with our desire for growth, which nearly always comes with discomfort? 

Thank you!
At Odds

Dear At Odds,

This is a question that I'd have given a completely different answer to only a few years ago. I would've thought some kind of ✨strategy✨ would need to be employed, or, at the very least, a bit of noodling on the mechanics of competing desires.

But, nowadays, it looks quite a bit simpler to me.

As I see it, there's nothing to reconcile here. Nothing is actually at odds.

Some moments, you will gravitate toward so-called comfort.

Some moments, you will gravitate toward so-called edginess—or something you might describe as being "outside your comfort zone."

And truly, only a mind would categorize your actions as one or the other. Minds love to make distinctions; they love to chop up the seamless, flowing experience of life and slap a label on each component.

This is me, seeking comfort.

This is me, striving for growth.

That's just the function of the mind. It's what minds do.

In reality, though, you're doing what occurs to you in any given moment—be it watching Netflix on the couch or putting in the miles to train for a marathon.

Your mind might say that one activity is 'easy' and the other is 'hard'; it will probably even suggest that one merits more kudos than the other.

But such distinctions couldn't possibly exist outside of a mind.

Minds think in black-and-white and they have strong opinions (often changing and contradicting themselves, though they won't cop to that). It sounds like your mind has a lot to say about how you spend your time, and whether or not you're choosing the kind of activities that require you to step outside of what's comfortable and easy.

Your mind also has ideas about how and when growth happens (and I'd bet anything it has evidence to support its claims).

Who could say that growth occurs mainly through discomfort? (A mind would totally say that, but, really: How do we know that's true?)

It sounds like your mind is recalling what it believes about growth, maybe even remembering past experiences of growth—how uncomfortable things felt, how you were in limbo for a period of time or stretched in some particular way—and it's trying to reverse-engineer the whole thing going forward. Like, I grew so much via such-and-such experience; my memory of it is that I was super uncomfortable and challenged the whole time. Ergo, in order to keep growing as a person, I must make sure I'm seeking out experiences that are uncomfortable and difficult.

What the mind won't like to hear (because it renders moot the mind's chatter and scheming) is that we're changing and growing constantly, regardless of what we do with our time.

Uncomfortable, challenging moments (that may or may not inspire something we'd later refer to as 'growth') arise on their own over the course of a life, and we respond in the moment in whatever way occurs to us. Some future version of us might look back on all that and call it 'growth,' even though we didn't choose it or make any real decisions about it; it was just the natural unfolding of circumstances, plus our common sense responses to those events.

As I said, the mind will come in and want to chop up everything. It will want to know which season of life you're in right now, and when it will end, and what efforts you plan to put forth in the spirit of growth. It will want to know if the marathon is challenging enough or should it have been a triathlon? And what will be your growth project after this? As though that's the only way you'll grow, if you're consciously moving toward some outward goal that requires so-called discomfort and discipline.

Of course your mind is going to wrestle with this question, At Odds! It feels like something you really have to reconcile, because it feels like there really are two competing desires at play. But, in truth, there is no binary here. Comfort and growth aren't in opposition to each other. How could they be?

I'm going to take it a step further with this: You don't even need to be intentional in order to grow.

Your mind is going to resist that statement, because it goes against everything a mind believes it needs to do to advance our position in life (not to mention what we've been societally conditioned to believe about growth)—but maybe that's exactly where real, honest-to-goodness growth lies: in considering that you don't have to do anything in particular in order to grow.

Bodies and minds grow all the time, without our involvement or effort—even in spite of our blessedly messy interference.

I hope this helps!

Love,
Helen

A gentle New Year's reminder

Happy New Year!

Our household is emerging from a solid month of sickness. Back-to-back viruses (COVID for Christmas! An interminable January cold!) that have me wanting to buy stock in Kleenex.

It's funny because I keep thinking, We've been sick for SO LONG. But then I look at the calendar and realize that a month isn't actually all that long. I mean, what's 'long,' anyway? Longer than I'd like? Yes, for sure. But, really and truly 'a long time'? No, not in the grand scheme of things.

Anyway, how are you feeling?

Are you finding yourself drawing any conclusions about how the rest of the year will go, based on the past three weeks?

When the new year starts off rough, superstition tends to creep up even for folks who say they don't believe in it. They get to thinking that a couple weeks of feeling kind of meh or blah in the new year means something.

Let me tell you what: It doesn't mean anything beyond a couple weeks of feeling kind of meh or blah. I promise.

(And besides, it's January. Who doesn't occasionally feel meh or blah about January? Or about any random month, for that matter. Our emotional landscape is changing constantly, so there's a good chance if you live a decently long life that you'll feel crummy at some point during each and every single month. This is okay! This is what it is to be a human being. Nothing is broken or wrong.)

Are you falling into any of that superstitious thinking?

Have you decided that what's happened so far this month (bad or good—watch out for both) means something about what will happen the rest of the month...or the rest of the year?

If this feels familiar, go gently. Smile for the fact of this new awareness. Remember to stay present to what is, to recognize the good- or bad-feeling moment for what it is—a single moment comprised of moving energy.