Notes

HOW TO FEEL LIKE SHIT
WIPE THAT FUCKING SMILE offyour face. Unless, of course, you didn't put it there. If it just happened, great. You can leave it be. But if you did manufacture that smile to try to maintain a sunny, positive attitude, get rid of it. Put your bitter scowl back on. And stop standing up so straight. Instead of trying to alleviate some of the uncomfortable and unpleasant emotions you feel by "trying to be positive," try being negative instead. You can stand in front of your affirmations mirror if that makes you feel better. But this time, name the actual feeling you feel and not the daisy wallpaper version. Even if the sound of these feelings spoken out loud is so ugly to your ears. Even if it takes you a long time to find the words. These can be your new Rosemary's Baby Affirmations. This will help you get in touch with how you actually feel.

feel hopeless and fat and stupid. And like a failure por
feeling this way. And trying to be positive and upbeat makes
me feel angry and feeling angry makes me feel like I am bro-
ken, like it works for everyone else."
If that's how you feel—however you feel—then you have a
baseline, you have established a real solid floor of reference.
Even if sometimes you feel more negative than you want to
admit or more depressed or lonelier, it's important to observe
your feelings instead of trying to manage them or turn away
from them.
You can inspect these feelings, individually.
"So why does trying to be positive make me . . . angry?"
You can investigate why you might feel a certain way. See
if you can trace the feeling all the way back to the first time
you felt it in this context. Anything you learn about your feel-
ings and why you might feel them is potentially useful be-
cause you may end up recognizing what it is you need to
change in order to actually start to feel better and not merely
tell yourself that you feel fine.
Maybe you feel pressure to be positive because so many
people rely on your good, fake-positive energy? If that's the
case, screw everybody else. You're not a bottle of Valium.
You know, sometimes just giving yourself permission to
feel any emotion without judgment or censorship can lessen
the intensity of those negative emotions. Almost like you're
letting them out into the backyard to run around and get rid of
some of that energy. Optimism is pretty much an essential
quality if you want to be a relatively happy, contented person.
But a positive outlook can't be purchased through a few affir-
mations thrown against the mirror.
Optimism sprouts from the knowledge that you are in