how to feel bad properly

Emotionally exhausted. Kinda lonely.

Yesterday, I watched a National Geographic documentary which drew an inverse relationship between the amount of stress you experience in your life and the quality and length of your life. In conclusion, those who are rich and powerful or higher on the social hierarchy are those who live the longest and have the healthiest lives. Not the most comforting thing.

Spiritually, I wonder if having a regular prayer life and a Christ-focused worldview may aid in the quality of everyday life. Perhaps it does, in the sense that it provides a means to cope with external stressors as well as release pressure. If such is the case, perhaps it might be time to make a more conscious effort to practice the spiritual disciplines.

Whenever I consider this area of my life, I always find myself lacking. And I feel tremendous guilt.

This book that I'm reading tells me that self-inflicted guilt and self-deprecating thinking can actually be an ego-defense mechanism, in the sense that it can be used to make a person feel safe inside a percieved self-image, as low as it might be. One could suggest then that those who engage in emotional self-flaggelation are acutally engaging in a form of narcissism, as the immense self-focus on one's own shortcomings leaves little room for what healthy realities may exist outside oneself. And it's isolating as well.

Stress is powerful. Forcing myself to not be stressed stresses me out even more. Feeling bad about feeling bad makes me feel bad. So perhaps instead I should find a different way instead of engaging in this self-defeating circle whose only result is despair and apathy. Learning to accept my feelings is the first step. Learning to acknowledge and accept that God loves me despite my percieved inadequacies regardless of their basis in reality is the next. Hoping in and acting upon the redemptive power of His resurrection is the next step. Eternal life is the the journey and the destination.