When Avoiding Pain Deepens Suffering

How Contemporary Ideas are Worsening our Mental Health

It may seem surprising, especially coming from a clinical psychologist, but I firmly believe that one of the major factors contributing to the mental health crisis in the United States is the way mental health specialists and experts have responded to our cultural challenges. We've inadvertently bought into and perpetuated misguided notions about the human experience and how to navigate emotional and behavioral difficulties.

Folks, we're all living in an intricate illusion. An illusion meticulously crafted over decades through mass manipulation and media influence. This illusion has been on a turbocharge over the last 25 years, thanks to the rapid flow of information via the Internet and the supercomputers we carry in our pockets.

You've been sold a particular idea of happiness, and you've been sold on a specific definition of "mental health." And when you don't quite match the feelings they tell you that you "should" have, you might start to think something's wrong with you. That anxiety you're experiencing? Well, it's labeled as bad, and suddenly, you could have an "anxiety disorder." That sadness lingering for the past two weeks? Well, that might be classified as "major depressive disorder."

This ongoing narrative has given rise to a pervasive illusion that emotions are dangerous. Feeling them too intensely is considered a sign of mental illness. The unspoken expectation is that you should be happy most of the time, just like those people you see on your Instagram feed or the characters in that romantic comedy you watched last weekend.

These images wield a significant influence, and even your trusted mental health specialist isn't immune to the pull of these illusions. The chances that they've managed to escape the matrix of these illusions are slim, which means we're continually fed more misrepresentations of what it truly means to be "psychologically healthy."

At first glance, this idea might appear rather radical, particularly for those who have been consistently served the Hollywood rendition of mental health, garnished with a generous serving of academic propaganda. Nevertheless, these concepts I'm about to discuss have solid scientific backing. The irony lies in the fact that many of the so-called "experts" you turn to for "expert advice" tend to overlook or disregard this scientific support. In reality, adhering to their guidance can ultimately lead to a decline in your long-term well-being.

Experiential Avoidance

A peculiar paradox governs our emotions. The harder you try to evade a negative emotional state, the more it tightens its grip on you. It's akin to those Chinese finger traps: the more you struggle to break free, the tighter they ensnare you.

Let's compile a comprehensive list of the harmful ways people seek to escape from distressing or uncomfortable internal experiences such as thoughts, emotions, and sensations. This list includes but is not limited to alcohol, overeating, drug use, excessive social media use, video game addiction, pornography consumption, self injury, gambling, food restriction, binge eating, purging, over-exercising, emotional suppression, engaging in promiscuous sex, compulsive behaviors, over-controlling actions, isolation, and even excessive sleep - you get the idea.

Frequently, it is these behaviors that lead someone to seek out professional help. However, the well-meaning professional, often taught that emotions are mere symptoms of a "disorder" and influenced by the same materialistic, superficial portrayal of happiness perpetuated by Hollywood, might misattribute these troubling emotions as the root cause. They believe that if they can just help their clients "feel better", those destructive escape behaviors will naturally recede. In fact, many clients are told to take a pill and when the “underlying depression” improves they will no longer engage in (insert problem behavior).

The most uninformed and potentially harmful practitioners resort to yet another escape mechanism: psychiatric drugs intended to dull or mitigate these emotions. Inadvertently, they end up introducing a new issue to solve the initial problem, exacerbating the situation instead of resolving it.

The issue doesn't originate from the emotional pain itself, but rather from one's relationship to these distressing feelings.They've learned to see these emotions as unbearable, which, in turn, creates a cycle of harmful behaviors that perpetuates long-term suffering.

Experiential avoidance (EA) is a widely recognized concept that encompasses the attempt to escape thoughts, emotions, memories, physical sensations, and other internal experiences, even when it ultimately leads to harm. This behavior is reinforced by the short-term relief it provides, encouraging its persistence.

The crucial point here is that the real issue isn't the negative thoughts, emotions, or sensations themselves. Instead, it's how individuals respond to them that causes problems. When people consistently avoid facing uncomfortable thoughts and feelings, it results in a range of issues.

When mental health professionals recommend psychiatric drugs as a solution to difficulties in managing emotions, they inadvertently perpetuate a harmful cycle. This further convinces individuals that their emotions are "too painful" and "too intense" for them to endure. It also reinforces the damaging belief that experiencing these emotions is a sign of being "mentally ill" or having some genetic or biological disease. As you can probably guess, this only strengthens the very ideas that initially caused harm.

Emotion Regulation

There exists a robust science supporting the human ability to effectively learn how to diminish the intensity of emotions and, in the long run, actually feel better. This scientific foundation is deeply rooted in neurobiology and our innate capacity to utilize our emotions as tools for improving our lives. Changing our relationship with uncomfortable experiences triggers a paradoxical effect that ultimately leads to improved well-being. When an emotion, thought, or sensation no longer needs to be suppressed, medicated, numbed, or avoided, our connection to that experience transforms. Our entire system possesses the capacity to adapt, and what once provoked intense panic, anxiety, or other intense emotional reactions gradually diminishes.

A poignant illustration of this is the experience of grief. We possess a remarkable capacity to confront loss, tragedy, and traumatic experiences while still moving forward in life. Our emotional bonds and attachments to loved ones mean that the loss of a loved one brings about profound pain. It is culturally accepted, worldwide, to acknowledge this pain, shed tears, grieve, and even withdraw from daily life for an extended period. This allowance and acceptance of emotional pain enables us to heal and adjust to life without our loved ones, and over time, this pain transcends and transforms.

The real challenge is that, to attain lasting emotional relief, you need to be ready to face and endure the emotional distress in the here and now. Nowadays, many people are utterly fearful of this experience. They often perceive it as if they might "lose their mind," become incapable of functioning, or find it overwhelmingly unbearable. However, this is not the case. In fact, numerous mental health professionals, who themselves have been conditioned by fear, are often apprehensive about their clients' emotional states. They unintentionally sidestep addressing emotional avoidance, treating their clients' emotional pain as a sign that they're spiraling out of control.

Many therapists feel uneasy when their clients grapple with intense emotions. They have been inundated with alarming messages regarding suicide and struggle to break free from the cultural notion that emotions are mere symptoms of illness. Psychiatrists often view the pain solely as a symptom to be alleviated through medication. It's imperative that we place greater emphasis on established scientific principles, historical wisdom, and plain common sense.

In recent years, the field of psychological sciences has introduced a transdiagnostic approach for addressing emotional disorders. However, it's disheartening to note that the majority of training programs and the prevailing ideology in the medical field still adhere to the DSM psychiatric diagnoses based on a medical model. This steadfast adherence has hindered the advancement of our field and perpetuates inadequate training for therapists and medical professionals.

Instead of trying to compile and diagnose over 500 psychiatric diseases (DSM diagnoses), it is more valuable to pinpoint shared mechanisms that form the basis of various emotional disorders. Oftentimes, the very mechanism driving the emergence of conditions like bulimia also plays a significant role in shaping depression, social anxiety, and panic attacks. Consequently, it implies that fundamental treatment strategies should address all of these conditions collectively. For instance, if experiential avoidance leads to severe emotional dysregulation and the adoption of harmful behaviors to cope with those emotions, then addressing experiential avoidance should be a primary intervention.

Is Addressing Emotion Regulation the Key?

An example of interventions based on this transdiagnostic approach is the Unified Protocol for the Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders (UP).

The UP program encompasses eight treatment interventions, with five recognized as core interventions because they target distinct emotional regulation strategies: (1) mindful emotion awareness, (2) cognitive flexibility, (3) countering emotional behaviors and establishing alternative ones, (4) understanding and confronting physical sensations, and (5) emotion exposure. Preceding these core targets, the first two concentrate on goal setting and motivation enhancement, coupled with psycho-education about emotions.

A wealth of studies consistently attests to the UP's efficacy in enhancing emotional well-being, with promising results seen in the amelioration of some medical symptoms, especially in conditions like gastrointestinal issues. In essence, the research can be distilled into the following key points: as individuals gain a deeper understanding of their emotions, augment their present-focused awareness, and actively address behaviors associated with emotional avoidance, they often successfully eliminate these problematic escape mechanisms. This supports the value in confronting, processing, experiencing, and utilizing emotions to face and resolve problems, leading to a marked improvement in overall quality of life.

“Mental Health” Is NOT the Absence of Distress

You know what? If the pursuit of constant happiness is the benchmark for mental health, and feeling unwell is the definition of mental illness, then by those standards, every one of us would qualify as "mentally ill." It's not a disorder; it's a human condition, and it's entirely normal. Now how you respond to these challenges will determine whether or not this becomes prolonged suffering and legitimate mental health and medical concerns. This is where the concept of experiential avoidance & improving emotional regulation changes the conversation.

Normalizing struggle and improving peoples ability to cope w/ inevitable pain in life is not a lucrative business strategy. It certainly does not serve the pharmaceutical industry nor the biomedical model of mental illness.

Emotional distress can serve as a guiding force, leading us towards self-discovery, resilience, and personal growth. In fact, that's its intrinsic purpose. By dismantling the harmful strategies people employ to evade uncomfortable thoughts, emotions, and sensations, we have the potential to revolutionize our mental and physical well-being.

Take a moment to scrutinize these messages; they might come across as subtle, but their impact is unmistakable. "Take care of your mental health," they advocate, "decrease stigma," or consider the incessant stream of advertisements suggesting the key to happiness lies in their product. Moreover, the media's unrelenting fear-mongering continually nudges you towards seeking professional assistance. The hidden agenda behind all these elements is glaringly evident – a deliberate endeavor to direct you towards a particular product or service.

IT’S A TRAP

We require a radical cultural shift, one that cannot materialize if mental health experts persist in adhering to senseless notions that perpetuate fear of our own internal experiences and the dependence on pharmaceuticals. It's high time we reclaim the entire system in the pursuit of truth.

We've been fed lies for far too long.

RESIST