Another reminder :from kuba’s journal and hunterd ‘s journal
Vineeto :
Most feelings which arise are more than habits, after all, feelings and emotions are rooted in the instinctual survival passions and sometimes have to be meticulously taken apart, sorting out fact from fiction.
First, label the trigger and the feeling and gather the facts of the sequence when applicable. After all, sincerity is being “aligned with factuality”.
Then determine if the particular reaction is just a habit from which to ween oneself off, or a deeper-seated worry, fear or aversion having been triggered. It could be a pattern, a concept, a revered moral/ ethical/ spiritual value, a nice self-image, a ‘truth’ or pride, a power-trip, wanting to win a silly battle, to name just a few. What am I afraid to uncover? What will change when I give up this feeling?
If that does not yield any results, look on the ‘good’ side – what are the hoped-for rewards one is afraid to lose? What are the ‘good’ feelings I want to keep? In other words – the most significant question in any mystery – who benefits from having this drama?
Feeling being ‘Vineeto’ sometimes exaggerated a bad feeling until it felt so obviously ridiculous to continue to be that way.
as you observed in previous posts, it is ultimately a matter of intent – do I want to be happy and harmless or not? Do I want to be a friend to myself – “actually want what’s best for yourself, meaning you won’t let yourself ruin your own day”? (2 May 2026) Do I want to free myself from the addiction to suffering and worry (which all human beings have)? (see 8 Jan 2026)
That’s the usual way to deal with unpleasant feelings – “via waiting it out, sleeping it off, or getting distracted somehow”. But as you say, it’s not reliable and certainly is wasting a lot of time which you could spend enjoying and appreciating.it’s a matter of employing your intelligence to see the silliness of feeling bad once you notice that there is a diminishment in feeling good.
Then first you get back to feeling good before you look at what triggered it. Did you take note that I pointed to a possible ‘actualist morality’ which has the result of two aspects of ‘you’ fighting against each other?
knowing that fear is preventing you from getting back to being happy and harmless – your life’s aim – then you can cast it aside, decline going down that futile alley, including all the worries you create out of that fear – and get on with feeling good and enjoying being here. It’s just a matter when you realize that enough worry and fear is enough because it doesn’t lead anywhere. In the end nobody is stopping you but yourself.
James: What about when I find out what happened to end feeling good and I see that it is silly to keep worrying about it yet that doesn’t stop the worrying and I am not back to feeling good?
Richard: Two things immediately leap to mind … (1) you value feeling worry (a feeling of anxious concern) over feeling good (a general sense of well-being) … and (2) you have not really seen it is silly to feel bad (a general sense of ill-being). What I would suggest, at this point, is to feel the silliness of feeling bad (in this case feeling anxiety) … then the seeing (as in a realisation) might very well have the desired effect (as in an actualisation) of once more feeling good.
feeling worried on an ongoing basis is deemed safer to ‘you’ than being happy and harmless.