I know what you're going to say, it sounds very romantic and very easy but very complicated in real life. Who likes to be sad, frustrated and on edge? To nobody! really no one! I don't like it at all either...

A few years ago I was very frustrated because I felt that my life was empty, that there was a feeling of despair and deep sadness that followed me... I already knew a lot about emotions but this feeling kept appearing repeatedly and I didn't understand why.

So one day, while I was washing the dishes, I started to feel the same thing and I thought: “how strange! If in the morning I was fine and nothing new has happened.” I asked myself, “Is this real?”

I didn't understand where that feeling of deep emptiness came from, although my life was not perfect, because no one's is, nor will it ever be. Well, I had very nice things and I liked what I had built so far.

So I decided to stop thinking... I told myself: “don't follow that path, try to use what you know, just accept that despair, let that emptiness be, it will go away on its own. Don't do it either with the intention of making it go away if you have to feel like this the entire day, nothing to do. Tomorrow will be a better day". 

It's not easy! Accepting is not wanting something. It doesn't mean you start liking that feeling. What feels ugly, feels ugly. There is nothing to do! Even with this, I decided to stop thinking to look for an explanation, because I knew that in that way, I was only going to make my discomfort worse and worse. 

I didn't achieve it right away. Sometimes it was easy to observe and other times the discomfort was so intense that I just acted... Then I went back to observing my thoughts, my sensations and my actions... And something surprising happened.

I discovered how my behavior changed because of that discomfort, I was irritable, I argued easily, I spoke in a slightly hostile tone of voice, I criticized myself and I looked at the story of my life painting it with that feeling of emptiness. 

It was impressive to realize everything that triggered a feeling of discomfort and how it permeated my relationship with others, my self-concept and my personal history. All this because of not knowing how to identify it and accept it.

Over time, I realized that it always appeared at the same times. I was surprised to find that when I slept in the afternoon I woke up feeling a unbearable despair… It was incredible how waking up like that and wanting to get rid of that discomfort triggered so many things. The sensation of it was so intense that even just noticing and accepting it lasted the rest of the day. 

It still happens to me sometimes when I sleep in the afternoon... The good news is that it doesn't last long anymore, half an hour or so and it no longer triggers everything that it did before. 

Why does it work? It sounds nice but it has scientific bases, the culprit is… Tatatatan… A learning process that occurs through classical conditioning. It is a learning that occurs by association. 

In my case, I repeatedly paired the discomfort upon waking with a series of thoughts about what was missing in my life. So just thinking about this reproduced over and over again the same discomfort that I felt when I woke up.

Thus, it could last throughout the entire day. And like the cherry on the cake, it also made the sensation get bigger and more unbearable.

Well imagine that the solution for this is: the exposure. Hence it is important to accept…When we continually expose ourselves to the associated stimulus, in my case the blessed thoughts; without pairing them again to the original stimulus, that is, the unpleasant sensations after a napThe association loses strength and the thoughts stop generating the discomfort response.

It's like when you hear the three beeps that indicate that the microwave has finished heating your dinner. You get up excited and take out your dinner. The beep is associated with dinner being ready and makes you excited to eat, perhaps even salivating like Pavlov's puppy. 

If your microwave breaks down and starts beeping all the time, even though it continues heating your dinner, you get used to that sound and stop paying attention to the beeping because it is no longer a sign that the food is ready. The association between ready food and the sound of the microwave has been lost. 

But then why do I still sometimes feel discomfort when sleeping in the afternoons? What was actually eliminated was the increased discomfort. The discomfort that I was generating with my thoughts. But the discomfort that arises from a nap is part of life.

At least part of my life, part of my physiology. Sometimes I perceive it as similar to when small children wake up angry or crying. In reality, I will never know if it is the same but it doesn't matter much.

Life is full of beautiful things and ugly things. Pain, loss, fear, frustration and disappointment are inherent to life. It is not about not suffering, because by seeking not to suffer, we suffer more. 

The important thing is not to always be happy but to learn to face discomfort so that it does not become bigger than us and ends up staining the rest of the beautiful things with the paint of sadness. Like me, remembering my life story, reinterpreting it with emptiness and despair.

It doesn't always have to do with unpleasant sensations when you wake up. It can be the stress of a long day at work, frustration because something doesn't go the way we want, anger after an argument, sadness after losing something or someone, tiredness after a bad night's sleep. 

The situation doesn't matter. We can experience high intensity “negative” emotions for many reasons; and these become a snowball when instead of accepting them, we try to eliminate them. 

learn to recognize emotions, to name them and to accept them. A more satisfying life inevitably involves knowing how to include the small bitter touches. When we accept them, they pass faster and are less intense and we can continue enjoying other experiences full of sweet nuances.