Feeling Bad About Feeling Bad.

My mood sucked yesterday. Like, really sucked. I went to bed in a foul mood the night before, woke up in a foul mood, and the dark cloud over my head refused to go away. I felt bad, and it made me grumpy all damn day. And then, to top it all off, I felt bad about feeling bad.

The reason I was in a foul mood was the accumulation of a lot of little things that were getting under my skin. It wasn’t the result of one event or one person wronging me. It was this, and then it was that, and then it was this on top of that, until they snowballed into an avalanche that smothered my smile. I won’t bother mentioning them because, in the retrospect of a clearer mind, they were pretty trivial.

And then the cosmos in its infinite “wisdom” decided, at the height of my bad mood and when I was feeling the need to vocalize my feelings, that I should receive some bad news concerning another friend. It was serious bad news that put my trivial bad news in perspective, and just like that… I felt bad about feeling bad.

I fell into a dangerous mental trap. The thought that your bad feelings are invalid because someone else’s bad feelings are caused by something comparatively worse is a pitfall you need to avoid. “How dare you feel upset about something trivial? Look at what’s happened to them!” is something my brain has told me more often than I’d care to admit. It’s still important to recognize the differing circumstances, but don’t invalidate what you’re feeling. That leads to repression, and that is never healthy.

It’s good to recognize your feelings, no matter how trivial the source of your foul mood may be. It’s important to give space to more serious circumstances, but don’t go so far as to throw yours away out of guilt. Never feel bad for feeling bad. You’ll only feel worse.