"Why do I get these strong negative feelings? I'm not a jealous or hateful person. Times like these, I get scared of myself"
(Dedicated to my dear friend, "Kira" - sometimes I wonder if we are parts of a shared past soul)
I've come to realize more and more that we cannot be our most resilient, most effective, and most compassionate, when we laud parts of ourselves and reject/shame the rest. When we cherry-pick and appreciate certain characteristics we deem desirable, while condemning and denying others, we are not appreciating parts of ourselves, but rather, fortifying distorted ideals.
1) While it's healthy to continually strive to improve how we think, decide, and act, we cannot grow effectively by suppressing our negative sides. Denial does nothing to treat the roots of destructive habits, just as sticking our heads in the sand does nothing to address our not knowing how to swim. In order to control our responses of frustration, anger, resentment, jealousy, hate, etc., we must first accept that we are capable of frustrating, angering, resenting, envying, hating. This realization doesn't suggest that we're incorrigibly "bad" -- it just helps direct our focus and reminds us that we are students in Living Life 201. Berating ourselves for not living up to one-dimensional ideals wastes our energy and forestalls our growth.
Becoming aware of and accepting that we have unhealthy responses is the first step of change. In college, when friends shared excitedly about research roles they landed or travel abroad fellowships, my desired reaction of enthusiasm was tainted with a twinge of envy. If I were to surrender that "I'm just a bad, envious person", a) no motivation to change, since you can't change something you "naturally are" and b) misdirected focus on the emotional response rather than the source. Rather than deny or suppress, I accepted and prodded - after some self-reflection, I realized that my envy stemmed from their good news' triggering the painful reminder that I hadn't found my calling. Energizing the drive and courage to find my own passion was the real issue I had to address -- envy was just a side effect.
When we admit our triggers and approach them constructively, we can detach and give ourselves space to deconstruct the underlying cause (oftentimes, not the actual incident at hand but the memories or insecurities it evokes). If we can create space between a stimulus and our response, we create freedom - freedom to choose, freedom to change.
2) As human beings, almost all of us have the broad bandwidth for all types of psychosocial desires and emotions. There is no such thing as "good" people only having "good thoughts" and "bad" people having only "bad thoughts". Even the most docile understands the will to retaliate. Even the most violent understands the stress of being afraid. As criminal expert Gavin DeBecker avers, everyone can be aggressive enough to commit violence - what differs is only the justification. E.g., not everyone has physically bullied another, but all of us know what it's like to want to humiliate after we've been humiliated.
Having fleeting thoughts and emotions of all kinds is okay - it's how we channel these thoughts into (in)actions that they gain the power to help or hurt. In order for law enforcement to prevent, in order for therapists to empathize, in order for people of vastly varied backgrounds to relate, we have to harbor and tap into a broad bandwidth of motivations and fears. It is only through our own aptitudes for all types of impulses, both constructive and destructive, that we are able to understand, learn from, and predict the behavior of others.
3) While we often zero in on stifling our vices, it's critical to remember that the very "virtues" that endear us to others can work against us. It is nice when a law student shares her detailed reading outline with her study group. It is nice when her study group acknowledges "Thank you; this [act of sharing] was really helpful". It is problematic when the study group decides "It's in her nature. She always want to help. She will always be willing to help". As my friend "Kira" recognized, a compassionate habit she chose to exercise suddenly became a burdensome expectation. What once provided a sense of fulfillment became a source of resentment.
What we label "virtues" and "vices" are just points on a spectrum -- affection can turn into possession, drive can turn into narcissism, shame can turn into compassion. Thus, we should be at peace with experiencing all types of thoughts and desires, as long as we do our best to consciously navigate them in constructive ways. Virtues and vices are sides of the same die -- we can't roll with just half the sides.
It's inevitable that we are able to feel a broad spectrum of desires and emotions. The more we shame ourselves for having "bad" thoughts, the more we hinder our abilities to change for the better. As Brene Brown notes, "You cannot shame people into changing" - the same goes for ourselves. When we are able to accept, respect, and value our whole Beings, the "desirable" and "undesirable", opportunities for growth that were once fleeting may suddenly reveal themselves clearer in our purviews.
