Feelings

Good for Me; Bad for Me IV: Discernment of “Bad for Me”

Ron Johnson Discovery, emotional maturity, Feelings, mindfulness, relationships, Self-Awareness

This is the fourth in a series of “Good for Me; Bad for me”, which is a study of how things, people, and situations can, quite simply, good for you or bad for you. In previous blogs I have proposed a system of discernment about things that are good for you or bad for you; in other words, a way to quantify just how good or bad something is on a spectrum:

_____________________________________/________________________________________

Bad for me                                                                   Good for me

(very bad)                                (not so bad)          (pretty good)                                      (very good)

 

I further suggested that the “bad for me” and the “good for me” sides of the spectrum could be sub-categorized as follows:

  • The bad for me spectrum ranges from mild to profound:

Uninteresting      Unpleasant      Aversive                                      Dangerous      Toxic      Lethal

(mild)                                                                      to                                                     (profound)

  • The good for me spectrum also ranges from mild to profound:

Interesting      Pleasant      Exciting                       Enlivening     Life-enhancing     Life-sustaining

(mild)                                                        to                                                                    (profound)

In this blog we will discuss the range of things that can be bad for me exclusively leaving the examination of things that are good for me for the next blog. There are other complexities and possibilities of the good for me and bad for discussion that will become more obvious as we go along. Let’s begin the present discussion with the challenge of discerning the degree something is good for me or bad for me.

Discernment of the degrees of “good for me” or “bad for me”

I must grant the obvious: this is a challenge and the words I have chosen are all murky at best. It may not be terribly important for you to make a distinction between these words. I offer them as examples of how you can discern just how good or bad something is. While I admit to this challenge, I still find it valuable to have an approximate awareness of the intensity of the things that are good for you or bad for you. If you understand how good something is or how bad it is, you have a lot more power in your life. You empower your life with more good things and fewer bad things. But you can’t make appropriate decisions about adding or subtracting things in your life without a good understanding of just how good something is or how bad it is for you.

Once you have determined how good something is, you can then find ways to enhance it in your life or perhaps find other things that are similarly good to enhance your life. Similarly, if you find something that is bad for you, you can find ways of reducing such things in your life and preventing similar bad things from entering your life. Let’s start by looking at things that might be mildly bad for you and move on to things that are more profoundly bad for you. We will discuss degrees of “good for you” in our next blog. As we discuss the range of things that can be bad for you, you might find it profitable to consider a similar range in your own life.

Things that are on the “bad for me” side of the spectrum:

Recall that I have suggested three terms that describe the intensity of something that could be mildly or moderately bad for you and three terms that could be more profoundly bad for you. Thus, something could be:

Uninteresting: I have always liked sports. I currently play basketball three times a week and occasionally play golf, waterski, and cross-country ski. While I very much enjoy engaging in these sports, I am not particularly interested in talking about sports. Much of what I hear from my sports-minded friends talk about is uninteresting to me, like what some NBA player did in last night’s game, current statistics of some quarterback, or who might win the next NCAA basketball title in. I might attend to wins and losses of the Wisconsin Badgers because I went to Wisconsin and currently live in the state, but I care little about who did what in some game in Los Angeles. While sports talk is uninteresting to me for the most part, I don’t think it has ever been even unpleasant for me to hear a friend talk about his favorite team or player, or his hopes for his team’s success in the next season.

My dear wife has a true passion for things green. She has several gardens around our home, reads garden books and magazines voraciously, and has a small green house on our property. Among other things she loves the greenhouse planting and seeding that she does in the winter, and thoroughly enjoys watching the fruits of her labor in the spring, both with vegetables and flowers. Since we have been together for 40-odd years, I have learned to appreciate her passion for such things, much because I have grown in my love for her and enjoy her while she is talking about her gardens. I enjoy her but I do not always enjoy hearing what she is talking about. I must admit that I am largely uninterested in gardens, growing and green. While I am occasionally interested in such things, most of the time I am not. I can patiently listen while she tells me about the various kinds of coreopsis but I am not really interested. My disinterest in gardening used to be quite hurtful to Deb partly because I didn’t know how to listen and she didn’t know how to talk to me as well as we do these days. We will deal with the “good for you but not good for me” in a future blog.

While I might not be interested in what people talk about, like gardens and sports, I am never actually uninterested in people themselves. Due to my natural personality and to my profession I can listen to things that are uninteresting to me without being uninterested in the person talking. This can be a challenge when someone is talking about actors and recent TV comedy shows for which I have no interest and no knowledge, but I am always fascinated by people’s interests because they say so much about the person.

Consider things that are simply uninteresting to you, things that you tend to bore you, or things that you just don’t care about. You will find that the people are not boring even if what they talk about is. Boring or uninteresting is generally a short-lived experience, but a step beyond uninteresting is when something is unpleasant.

Unpleasant. When something is just uninteresting, you do not have any significant physical or emotional reaction to it. you are just uninterested. However, when something becomes unpleasant, you begin to feel a kind of agitation that can come as a mild feeling of being unsettled, a desire to change the situation or the subject, or even a mild irritation.

It is often unpleasant to hear about people talk about their physical and medical problems. I admit that Deb and I are outliers on the use of medicine and medical professionals. We came into the field of psychology through what we might call the back door, namely from “existential therapy,” which roughly means that everything is psychological and most everything is personal. Hence, we think many physical anomalies are psychogenic and all of them are aggravated by psychological factors. So, when people talk about their aches and pains, the cocktails of medicines there on or the myriad of surgeries they have had, I tolerate such conversation but I am never interested and often feel a kind of agitation that I call unpleasant. I know that medical matters are dreadfully interesting to some people, including people who suffer physical maladies and the medical professionals who seek to help them, so I would never challenge someone who speaks about such things. I just experience such conversation as unpleasant, and not terribly “bad for me.” Sports talk and garden talk is uninteresting to me for the most part and it is relatively easy for me to listen with only a mild interest in such things. But when people talk about their medical procedures, I have a visceral reaction to such talk and often an emotional or cognitive reaction as well.

Even though I might not be interested in surgeries and medications, you might think that I would be interested in psychiatric diagnoses given that I am a professional healthcare as a psychologist. Yet, I often find such talk to be beyond uninteresting and into the unpleasant category of “bad for me.” There are professional, ethical, and personal reasons for my antipathy to psychiatric diagnoses, but these reasons are not so important in this discussion as are my visceral reaction to such things. Interestingly, I rather enjoy identifying various personality characteristics that people might have because such an analysis might help me understand a person rather than finding a diagnosis that might tell me what is wrong with him.

It is not only people’s conversation that can be unpleasant. There are places and situations, and sometimes even property that can be unpleasant. Consider a time when you walked into a room, a house, a store, or an office and had a “bad feeling” about this place. I would call such experiences unpleasant, and certainly beyond uninteresting. Likewise, you may have been in some town, countryside, city, state, or country that made you feel uncomfortable when you were there. You couldn’t put your finger on it, but there “was something about the place that didn’t feel right.” You may also have had the experience of not feeling right about a car or a sweater that you had considered buying. Even more interesting are times when an experience is less than good for you for some unknown reason. I don’t particularly like riding on Ferris wheels, much less a tilt-a-whirl that might be exhilarating to someone else. You might have the same reaction to reading, doing homework, riding in a car, or swimming. To note something is unpleasant is to note that the person, place, property, or experience is not to your liking and leaves a residue of unpleasantness when you are around such things. Beyond uninteresting and unpleasant but yet in the mild/moderate range of “bad for me” could be someone or something that is actually aversive.

Aversive. Uninteresting lasts for seconds, or minutes at most and then dissipates, usually because things or people who are uninteresting are easy to endure for a short time. Unpleasant tends to leave the figurative aftertaste in your mouth, or the churning in your stomach that stays with you even after you have left the things that has caused the unpleasant experience. Aversive things, while still in the mild/moderate range of things that are bad for you, are beyond unpleasant; they are things, people, places, or experiences that require you to endure beyond your desire to do so. The verb from which the word aversive derives is avert, which means to avoid or to get away from. Avert derives from the Latin word that means move. So, when something is aversive, you feel the need to move away from something. When something is uninteresting or unpleasant, you might want to find something more interesting or pleasant, but for the most part you are able to endure such things without you inner spirit saying that you have to move away from this aversive thing. When you’re around something aversive, it is hard to endure and takes a certain amount of energy for you to endure it. Aversive, as a “bad for you” element of life, is not as bad as something that is dangerous, which is the next level of “bad for you” things. When something is aversive, you can feel the possibility of some kind of potential danger but not in the present.

You have been in many situations in life where you felt the feeling that you needed to get away from something. More than likely, you had a feeling in the pit of your stomach that felt like “yuck,” or you have had another physical symptom that is more natural to you when you encounter something that is aversive. Things that affect one or more of our physical senses can be aversive, like an odor that begins as simply unpleasant and then becomes aversive the longer you remain in the vicinity. In addition to smells that may be aversive, you might find aversive loud sounds or silence, bright lights or darkness, physical touch or the absence of physical touch, unfamiliar taste or no taste at all.

Aversive reactions to things affect our physical senses are easier to understand, but you can also have aversive reactions to people, places, or experiences. Consider the times when you’ve had an aversive reaction to an individual, perhaps a person you have seen many times or one you have seen only once. You felt like you wanted to get away from this person. The experience of sports, art, music, reading, writing, or talking can all be aversive to people for reasons that may not be clear. When I was teaching my grandson Algebra not long ago, I noticed a distinct aversive reaction that he had to Algebra, which then might have bled into his having an aversive reaction to me. It is notable that I began to have an aversive reaction to my grandson due to his aversive reaction, but this is a discussion that we will delay at this time. It is very likely that certain places cause an aversive reaction to you, like any blue room or any room with a wood floor because your dad used to use his whip on you when you were young, always in your wood floor blue bedroom. However such things might be unpleasant to you, however aversive, such things are not felt to be dangerous. But anything can be dangerous, and the definition of “danger” is largely personal.

Dangerous. Dangerous, along with toxic and lethal are terms I have chosen to describe things that are more profoundly bad for you. These three levels of “bad for you” things in life cause some kind of damage, may cause damage, or nearly cause damage to you. Thus, there is a distinct difference between things that are mildly or moderately bad for you and something that leaves some kind of permanent effect on you. It is also important to note that there tends to be a slippery slope from dangerous through toxic to lethal, a slope that is not always obvious except for the deleterious effects this “bad for you” thing has had on you. As we speak of things that are dangerous, be reminded that we have moved from something that is aversive that you want to get away from to a place where you realize that you can easily or quickly be damaged by something and need to get away from.

Most obviously dangerous, at least for people who tend to be acrophobic, is a cliff or an otherwise unprotected precipice. Such a place is well beyond aversive because it speaks of your impending death. Any of the elements noted under aversive could become dangerous. An aversive smell, like the smell of gas in a house, could be dangerous. A loud sound could be the thunder that accompanies a broken tree in your yard, and a bad taste could suggest poison. These sense-based times of felt danger are easier to deal with because they require immediate action, but places, people, and experiences present a more difficult challenge. You may be “stuck” in a relationship that is dangerous…or worse…and you are looking for a way to get out. You may actually be in the midst of a wedding ceremony and have an important feeling that this impending marriage is dangerous. You may be in a work setting that is more than uninteresting, unpleasant, or aversive because you feel the deleterious effects in your body that speak of danger. You may be under the influence of another authority figure, parent, superior, or political figure whom you sense is putting you in danger. You can tolerate danger or potential danger for a period of time, but you have to keep your eyes and ears open because the potentially dangerous thing could some suddenly or slowly resulting in damage to you in some way, whether physically, relationally, or physically.

As I write these words the world experiencing the Covid-19 pandemic, which suggests that anyone, anything, and any experience can be potentially toxic, but for 99% of people, at least at this writing, the situation that we have is dangerous, not toxic. Toxic is substantially different.

Toxic. Dangerous is potential; toxic is real. Dangerous is something that might come in a minute, a year, or somewhere in between. Toxic is something very much in the present and causing you damage. While you may feel something in your gut that tells you that something (or someone) is aversive or dangerous, the physical feeling that you feel and the emotional feeling that you feel suggests that you are being damaged. When the feeling is physical, you have more than a churning in your stomach: you have an upset stomach. Live long in a toxic environment and could very easily develop ulcers as your body tries to compensate for the toxic thing in your life by creating acid. Your stomach does this in a highly stressful or toxic environment because your brain tells your stomach that you have ingested something dangerous. Neither your brain nor your stomach, however, realizes that the toxicity is probably not poison per se, but something poisonous in another way. You have “ingested” a person, place, experience, or thing that is causing you real damage. Beyond the physical damage that something toxic can bring is emotional, cognitive, and relational damage.

There are no people, places, experiences, or things that are toxic for all people. Too often people describe something or someone as “toxic” believing that that person or thing is, itself toxic. Not so. What is true, however, is that anything can be toxic to anyone depending on the individual’s experiences. We will discuss the “good for you; bad for me” and “bad for me; good for you” in a later blog. A person can be toxic who is a very kind, perhaps intelligent, perhaps well-meaning person who engages you in a way that is toxic. Introverts often find extraverts toxic after a period of time because extraverts tend to talk a lot, often about themselves. Likewise, extraverts can find introverts toxic because they don’t talk or they don’t talk about themselves. I recently had an experience of some duration with an introverted individual who was seemingly unable to express his thoughts or feelings in any way whatsoever. After a period of time with this woman, I felt a certain toxicity in my physical/emotional system, while my introverted wife did not have that serious a reaction, probably due to Deb’s introverted nature. More importantly, people can be toxic who are in your regular environment for a period of time, like years of an unsatisfactory marriage, job, or other relationship. We will defer comments about how to deal with things toxic, as well as dangerous and lethal, to a later blog.

Beyond people who are toxic there exist places, experiences, and physical things that cause damage to your physical/emotional, relational existence. The Covid-19 pandemic is dangerous for all people, but it is toxic for a very small part of the population. There are places for all people, however, that are toxic by their very nature, and this toxicity may not have to do with the physical place but the history an individual has with the situation. I suggested above, that an individual could have an aversive reaction to a blue room. It is also possible for a person to become toxified by living in a blue room for a period of time. Sports can be toxic for someone physically, but it can also be toxic emotionally. Consider the person who is not a natural athlete and feels “dumb” when she is on the basketball court, the person who can’t read well who feels “stupid” because she can’t read out loud in class, or even the farmer’s son who would rather read or play basketball than milk cows and drive a tractor. Forced into situations that are this “bad for you” can easily become toxic and take the physical and emotional blood out of you.

Lethal. There are not many situations, places, experiences, people, and things that are truly lethal, at least for most of us who live in western society. Many people are seriously damaged or permanently damaged because they are somehow compelled to live in a truly lethal situation. We will delay a more in depth discussion of such circumstances because we must deal with real abuse, alleged abuse, felt abuse, or other lethal situations in life. I will defer this discussion at this time because

Next to come:

  • Discernment of the levels of “good for me”
  • Good for me; bad for you, bad for me; good for you, and other possibilities
  • Things that are truly lethal: people, places, experiences, and things
  • Complexities: there are many possibilities
  • How to discern your feelings about something that is good for or bad for you
  • How to think about such things
  • What to do and when to do it

See you soon

Good for Me; Bad for Me III

Ron Johnson appreciation, emotional maturity, Feelings, happiness, mindfulness, morality, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

This is the third in a series of “Good for Me; Bad for me”, which is a study of how things, people, and situations can, quite simply, good for you or bad for you. In previous blogs I have proposed a system of discernment about things that are good or bad for you, in other words, a way to quantify just how good or bad something is.

Review

To begin with I proposed that there is a spectrum that ranges from good to bad or very good to very bad

_____________________________________/________________________________________

Bad for me                                                                   Good for me

(very bad)                                (not so bad)          (pretty good)                                      (very good)

I further suggested that could label things more specifically on both sides of this spectrum. Specifically, I suggested that we could subcategorize the “good for me” side of the spectrum into things that were mildly or moderately good for me from things that were more significantly good for me, i.e.:

In the previous blog we studied the “bad for me” spectrum suggesting that there are mild/moderate things that could be uninteresting through unpleasing to aversive. Things that were more seriously bad would range from dangerous through toxic to lethal. Thus the “bad for me” side of the spectrum ranging from mild to serious would look like:

Uninteresting      Unpleasant      Aversive      Dangerous      Toxic      Lethal

(mild)                                                 to                                             (profound)

In this blog we will be discussing the “good for me” side of the spectrum, namely the range from mild to profound:

Interesting      Pleasant      Exciting      Enlivening     Life-enhancing     Life-sustaining

(mild)                                                  to                                             (profound)

As we did in the previous blog, we will discuss how to deal with the various things that are good for us, namely how to engage the things that are good for us to some degree with an emphasis on how to observe, accept, and enhance such things.

Observing something that is good for you

Here I will replicate what I said in Blog II, namely suggest that observing something, whether good or bad is a feeling process. As we noted in the previous blog, this human feeling is so important that it is undefinable, just like the important things of physics (time, distance, and mass) and the important things in psychological functioning like love and wisdom. Admitting that feeling is undefinable, we can however, note how central it is to human functioning and that feelings are the first (undefinable) expression of one’s central core (another undefinable element, by the way). Feelings evolve quite specifically through a four-step process, namely first physical, then emotional, then cognitive, and then active. So when I experience something that is good for me I will first feel something physical and then experience the other three expressions of feelings subsequently. Notably, however, people tend to “feel” their feelings in one predominant modality or perhaps two even though everyone feels all four expressions. It might be valuable for you to identify which one or ones of these expression is your primary means of feeling expression. Or you might read our book, I Need to Tell You How I Feel.

Feeling something physically usually means that a certain part of your body will “talk to you” as body therapists talk about. You will feel something in one of your extremities, somewhere in or on your head, in your chest, or in your stomach area although there are other areas on the body that people experience feelings, and sometimes it will not be possible for you to actually discern what part of your body feels something because you have a kind of whole-body feeling experience. Regardless of what you feel and how you feel something physically, the feeling will be pleasant to some degree.

Following your physical experience of feeling something good for you, you will have an emotional expression of feeling. This will generally be a joyful feeling. You will notice the joy in some physical expression like a spontaneous smile, but this joy could also show itself in some body movement, like jumping, dancing, or swinging your arms. To the degree that something is good for you, you will feel some kind of excitement. It is also possible that your emotional experience could be milder, something that might be described on the “good for me” spectrum as simply “interesting” or you might experience a more profound sense of pleasure that leads to some outlandish vocal expression. Truly joyous experiences can also lead to tears of joy.

If you are less inclined to feeling expressions that are physical and emotional, you might notice that you are thinking, and that you are thinking about the object, situation, or person that has brought you to a pleasant experience. People who are inclined to this kind of feeling expression are generally less inclined to vocal expressions of joy or excitement, but rather tend to think about how something that is good for them came about and how it has developed.

Finally, there is an expression of feeling of action, or sometimes words that reflects a feeling of “good for me.” If you are inclined towards action, you will feel compelled to do something to enhance this positive experience. If you are more inclined to words, you will tend to talk about what could be done or might be done to enhance the experience.

Once you have experienced these four expressions of feelings, usually primarily preferring one or two of them, you will be at an important time in your day, or perhaps in your life: you will need to accept the “good for me” experience.

Accepting something that is good for you

You might think that this would be natural, i.e. to accept something that is good for you, but that is not always the case. In fact, the better something is for you, the harder it is to allow the process of feelings to move from physical to active. Recall a time, for instance, when you thought something was “just too good to be true.” But before we explore this “too good” phenomenon, let’s look at things that are in the milder range, i.e. something that is just interesting, pleasant, or exciting. Such things tend to occur in the immediate present, short-lived, and not particularly necessary in life. If you’re a sports fan, you might have one of these milder forms of pleasure when you team wins, or perhaps within the game a moment of pleasure when someone scores a goal or achieves some kind of success. If you’re more artistic by nature, you might experience something mildly pleasurable when you visit an art museum, hear a particular piece of music, or enjoy some form of nature. Accepting these simple joys is not very difficult and makes life, well, more pleasurable and joyful. It is easy to accept something that is mildly or moderately good for you because you know that such experiences are generally short-lived however fun they are.

It might not be so easy to accept something that is on the more profound side of the “good for you” spectrum. Note that the three terms I have chosen for these pleasurable experiences all have to do with some lasting effect they have on your life, from enlivening, through life-enhancing, to life-sustaining. Note the centrality of the element of life. Things that might alter your life in some way would include such impossible things of winning the lottery, being hired for that perfect job after a grueling series of interviews, or seeing your new infant taker her first breath. There are many other life-changing events and experiences. A person, or less likely, a group of people, might change your life for the better. We will discuss the great variety of things that are good for you, as well as things that are bad for you, in our next blog.

Before we leave this section of accepting things that are good for you, it behooves me to discuss grace. Grace is defined as “unmerited favor,” or something that you didn’t deserve. Many of the things that are life-changing come to us without our bidding, and often without our having earned the privilege of having such a person, thing, or event. I will not belabor the point, but it is important to note that grace is very hard to accept because of the very element of “not deserving” such a thing. We do not deserve the love that people have for us, this regardless of how important it is to be loved. We do not deserve the other joys of life that come without warning. And we certainly do not deserve to win the lottery, which of course, is much more by luck than by someone’s grace. When these very special…gracious…things come our way, we often come to tears. We might even feel “embarrassed,” which by the way, is repressed joy. Nevertheless, it is a challenge to accept the truly great things that come our way because we do not earn such things nor can we pay for them. They come by grace. Accepting and enhancing good things can be quite hard for people who seem to be in most need some grace from the world, largely because such people may have fallen into a life of felt neediness too long, that they have developed an unfortunate feeling of entitlement.

Whether something is on the mild/moderate side of the “good for me” spectrum or on the more profound side of the spectrum, it is important to move beyond observing and accepting these things to a place where we enhance such things. Before we engage in that discussion, however, let’s look at some of the things, experiences, and people who are good for us:

Things that are good for me

Things:

  • Money
  • Property
  • Nature
  • Art
  • Music
  • Color

Experiences:

  • Nature
  • Play
  • Work
  • Rest
  • Health
  • Forgiveness

People:

  • Parental figure
  • Mentor
  • Good friend
  • Accepting group
  • Reuniting

I invite you to note one or two elements in each category what might have come your way. You will immediately see that many such things have come unexpectedly. You might also note that you did not necessarily truly observe or accept such things as they came. More importantly, you might not have taken the time to find ways to enjoy the moment of the mild/moderate “good for me” experiences or found ways to enhance the more profound things in your life.

Enhancing things that are good for me

The first ingredient in being able to enhance the joyous and pleasurable things in life is to observe them and accept them as well as taking time in each of these steps, each of these processes. There is the simple, “Take time to smell the roses” in life, but enhancement of things that are good for me are not always obvious, like the sight or smell of roses. The group of things that are in the mild/moderate side of the good for me spectrum come usually unbidden and unexpected, and can go unnoticed. It is easier to notice the good things that I have earned, perhaps by some effort. This does take time, but more than time, it takes observation and acceptance. As noted above, it can be much harder to accept things that we have not earned and are truly coming from some part of the gracious universe. You will find that the more you observe and accept the simple pleasures of life, the more your life will be enhanced.

It might seem easy to enhance the joyous and pleasurable things in life, but many people struggle with being able to do so. There are many impediments to accepting and then enhancing things that are good for me:

  • I might be afraid that I will lose this thing that is good for me. Note the key word here: fear. Fear is by far the greatest impediment to enhancement of joy and pleasure.
  • I want more of what I received and thus fall into the trap of thinking that I have earned something that is good for me. You can never earn someone’s love. Neither can you keep it forever, just as the Israelites could not keep manna from heaven from one day to the next
  • You don’t know how to enhance something that is good for you, or it might be costly for you to do so. You might have to give something up in order to enhance your life with something that is truly good for you.

If you choose the path of enhancement of joyous and pleasurable things, you will notice that these things last longer than you expected, that they almost always end sometime, and that they have left an indelible mark on you. This mark is humility: you have recognized that you didn’t earn many of the good things you have, that you can’t pay someone back for the grace they have shown you, and that you can only “pay it forward” to others. So, you might:

  • Simply thank the person who gave you something, whether property, time, or comfort
  • Enjoy the moment however that moment might last, seconds or years. The moment will most surely end but there’s no value in worrying about it ending.
  • Remember what you have enjoyed, what was good for you
  • Make some note of how you can inculcate this “good for you” thing in your life
  • Pay it forward

Next up: Complexities in the Good for Me; Bad for me:

  • Good for Me: Bad for You.
  • Good for You; Bad for Me.
  • Good for Me but I don’t like it.
  • Bad for me but I do like it

Good for Me; Bad for Me: II (corrected)

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, mindfulness, Personality, relationships, Self-Awareness

This is the second of three blogs regarding the concept of something that is, quite simply, “good for me” or “bad for me.” In the first blog on the subject I noted that these terms, while valuable and important, cannot be fully defined. That having been said, you can recognize when something has either been good for you or bad for you. We also discussed the quantification of something that is good or bad for you. In this blog we will discuss primarily (1) things that are bad for you, (2) the quantification of something that is bad for you, (3) how to recognize when something is bad for you, and (5) what you might do about something that is bad for you.

Things that might be “bad for you”

When I use the term “things,” you might think primarily of property or of something that might come into your sphere of life that doesn’t feel right. But there are many things that can be bad for you including:

  • Specific people, groups of people, or an individual person
  • Geographical location
  • Many kinds of food
  • Physical property
  • Weather
  • Smells
  • Sights
  • Physical touch
  • Noise, including people talking
  • Silence, including people not talking
  • Information, whether from individuals or from media
  • Dreams, whether nighttime or daytime
  • Your own thoughts
  • …and many more

It is not necessary that I elaborate on each of these items, but allow me to comment briefly on some of the ones that I deem less important as a precursor to our later discussion of how these things affect our personal and interpersonal lives. You might find it profitable to list, whether in your mind or on paper, things that you think of, that might be bad for you. For instance, some people are very sensitive to one of the five physical senses and have some kind of immediate reaction to, say, something that might be malodorous to them, while other people are more adversely affected by what they read or see on TV. I want to focus on the times when people are bad for you and situations that are bad for you noting that “things that are bad for you” might be people, places, or certain times of you day or life.

Quantification of “bad for you”

In a review of the previous blog on Good for Me; Bad for Me, I proposed that there is a spectrum of such things, namely

Bad for me                   /                     Good for me

(Very bad for me)   (Moderately bad for me)         (Moderately bad for me)     (Very bad for me)

____________________________________  /  ______________________________________

In this blog we will discuss the “bad for me” side of this spectrum. In the next blog we will discuss the “good for me” side of the spectrum. First, a reminder of the words I have chosen to subcategorize the “bad for me” side of the spectrum. In ascending order of “bad for me,” meaning increasingly bad for me with groups that are very bad for me and only moderately bad for me:

Lethal   Toxic   Dangerous                                          Aversive   Unpleasant   Uninteresting

(All in the very bad for me group)                              (All in the moderately bad for me)

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It is important for you to find an approximate place on this spectrum of how bad something might be in your life. This is sometimes a challenge because something might be very bad for you at one time and not so bad at another time. Or, something might be moderately bad for you at one time and then moderately good for you at another. We will delay this discussion for now as I ask you to consider something in the possible list I noted above that is, roughly, “bad for you” in some way. Maybe eating broccoli is in the moderately bad for you category, as it is for my grandson, or potentially toxic as it is for my wife. It might be valuable for you to consider how an individual person might be bad for you in some way, or perhaps an activity of some sort. If you have some trouble in this endeavor, I might be able to render some help in identifying when something is bad for you and to what degree it might be bad for you.

Recognizing when something is bad for you

We have presented a paradigm of recognition of feelings in I Need to Tell You How I Feel. In this book we propose that “feeling,” however central in life is not a definable element of psychology. Rather, we understand feelings by the process that “feeling something” takes and by the effects of feelings. So, feeling that something is bad for you (or good for you) can be understood and valued but that feeling cannot be adequately defined. Instead of defining feelings in general of the feeling that something is bad for you in particular, you do best to understand the feeling process, which flows a distinct pattern: physical, emotional, cognitive, and active. In other words, when I feel something, I first have a physical feeling, then an emotional feeling, thirdly a cognitive feeling, and finally a feeling that shows itself in physical action. Note that the third process in feeling something is what we call “cognitive feeling,” which might seem a contradiction of terms, but we find that cognition is where many people land when they feel something. Additionally, the “action” that is taken is always physical, but it could be some kind of physical movement, some kind of stationary commitment, speaking or choosing not to speak. So, it is with this paradigm that I suggest you understand how to know when something is bad for you: physically, emotionally, cognitively, or actively. You will note that you probably have a preference for one, or possibly two of these expressions of feelings. You might need to read more about this feelings expression in our book. For our current interest, allow me to suggest how you might recognize that something is bad for you:

  • Physically: You feel something in a part of your body, probably determined by your biological heritage and physical awareness. Typical physical symptoms of something that is bad for you include some kind of stomach agitation, chest pain, breathing changes, facial grimaces, or coldness of extremities. Less often people feel actual headaches, or stomachaches, and some people come to tears easily.
  • Emotionally. An emotional experience is one that includes one or more of the four basic emotions: joy, sorrow, fear, and anger. By the way, these emotions come in that order: joy first (you like something); sadness next (you lose something); fear next (you are afraid of losing more), and finally anger (you react against the force that took something away from you). In the “bad for you” category, you will have the last three of these emotions, but note that you have these only because you have loved something. So, when something is bad for you, you will first feel sad, then afraid, and the anger although the transition from sad to fear to anger may take a split second. Note how you feel emotionally.
  • Cognitively. It may seem odd to refer to cognitive action as a “feeling,” but it is, and it is predominant with some people. When something is bad for you, you will usually be in the fear/anger range thinking of what this person did or didn’t do, how some situation is bad for you, or what is wrong with the universe in some way. Then…
  • Actively. In this category of “feelings” you will do something or say something. People tend to be say-ers or doers, but this part of feelings is always the end place of feelings. When something or someone is bad for you in some way, you will want to bark back at that person or throw the hammer at the wall because the hammer hit your finger and not the nail.

Read more about this feeling process in I Want to Tell You How I Feel. After you have recognized the feelings that erupt in you when something is bad for you, you will then see the effects of this thing (or person).

The effects of something that is “bad for me”

There is an important principal in economics that I find helpful in deciding what to do about if and when to do something. This is the concept of marginal utility. Economists use the created denomination of utils in order to formulate an equation for the proper action to take in business. I will not belabor the point of marginal utility and utils at this point, but you might look the terms up and see how economists’ idea of marginal utility to suggest how people should make business decisions. I find it equally valuable to use the concept of marginal utility when deciding “go” or “no go” with something in your life. While it is dreadfully important to “do something,” whether that means stay the course or change course, you have to count the cost of the staying or the leaving. When you do that, you will be looking at the effects of staying or leaving. Then, if you can create a kind of equation according to the principals of marginal utility, you will be able to honestly and fruitfully think clearly to yourself, talk clearly to someone else, and take definitive action. Instead of discussing the equation of marginal utility, I suggest simply that you examine the effects of something in your life in order to know whether you should work to enhance something that is largely good for you, or how you might examine the deleterious effects of something that is largely bad for you.

In order to adequately examine both the “good for you” phenomena (situation, person, or thing) as well as such things that are “bad for you,” you need to see how far you are on the spectrum of good or bad. If for instance, you are on the “bad for you” side of the spectrum, you have to see how bad this thing is, namely whether it is in the:

  • Mild category of uninteresting, unpleasant, aversive or
  • Strong category of dangerous, toxic, or lethal

In making this decision, you will notice that you might want to push something that is not good for you towards the mild side of the spectrum or push it towards the strong side of the spectrum. You will need to be honest with yourself as to how strong the “not good for you” might be. Let me explain how you might make that determination:

  • Roughly speaking, the three categories of mildly not good for you do not cause lasting or permanent harm, whereas the strongly not good for you categories do.
  • You can live with uninteresting pretty easily; unpleasant is…well…unpleasant, and aversive experiences can be tolerated, but not forever
  • Strong “not good for you” things need careful attention because you cannot sustain a life with something in the strong categories, e.g.:
    • If something is dangerous, you live in some kind of fear, which in the long run will be deleterious for you, certainly psychologically and ultimately physically
    • If something is toxic, you can figuratively hold your breath, i.e. survive for a time under toxicity but not for long
    • If something is lethal, you need to move away from it as soon as possible.
  • The problem, as you certainly see, if how to discover where you are on the “bad for you” side of the spectrum. There is a danger of staying too long with something that is dangerous, toxic, or lethal, and there is an equal danger of “pushing” something that is just mildly not good for you into the totally bad for you side of the spectrum.
  • People want this decision of “go” or “no go” to be easy but it is no such thing. It is hard, it is painful, and it is always sad. But sad does not make it wrong.

Once you have discerned that something is bad for you, have determined just how bad it is, noted your feeling reaction, and seen the effects of this thing, you are ready to do something. If something is simply sad, you can profit from the sadness, but if something chronically makes you sad, you might need to do something about it.

Doing something about the “bad for you” element in your life.

There are people who delay doing something about things that are bad for them forever. They tend to get stuck in the previous stages of the process and end up tolerating, complaining, or dreaming of some magic solution to get them out of the “bad for you” situation. There are an equal number of people who jump right into doing something before they have understood how bad the thing is, what they feel, and the actual bad effects this thing has on them. We might call such people “intolerant” and the other folks “tolerating,” but neither operation is sufficient in all circumstances. Making an adjustment to life sometimes means we need to tolerate and sometimes we need to do something that is bad for us. Consider which side of the do something/do nothing spectrum you tend to be on. I suggest the following process, which reflects the process of noting what is bad for you:
1. Note what you feel: physical, emotional, cognitive, or active.

2. Determine the severity of the “bad for you” experience (mild to severe)

3. Note the effects on you, namely how you have been hurt or damaged in some way. You will see that you have lost something that is important to             you and this loss has created sadness in you.

4. Reflect on your feelings, the degree of hurt you have sustained, and the effects that something has had on you.

5. Then take action

Taking action, most importantly, requires that you know the degree of suffering you have encountered by this thing (or person) that has been bad for you. Roughly speaking, you might take the following actions under the following degrees of “bad for you.”

  • Uninterested. Probably take no action. You can’t be interested in everything, and you need to have a life where things that are uninteresting might profit you sometime, some day.
  • Unpleasant. Not much different from uninterested. Note that something is unpleasant and allow this to be bad for you for a short period of time. Don’t jump to action. Don’t complain. Just suffer the unpleasant experience
  • Aversive. While still in the “moderate” realm of “bad for you,” you might just need to be in this aversive condition for a while before you take any kind of action. It depends on how long the aversive element lasts. Roughly speaking, you can do with something aversive for minutes, perhaps for hours, but not for days.
  • Dangerous. This is where you need to be hyper aware of your feelings, namely your physical and emotional feelings. “Dangerous” is theoretical, but not real. You see that the situation or element is potentially harmful to you, possibly permanently. To live with something dangerous is sometimes necessary, but it always takes a toll. So, if you have to live with it, do so realizing the cost on your body, mind, and relationships. Take action after hours or days, not weeks or years.
  • Toxic. This is much worse than dangerous because this element is currently causing damage for you. You feel it in your stomach, in your mind, and in your soul. You need to get out and you need to get out soon. The only thing that keeps you here is your own inability to move quickly enough. But know, the longer you stay with something toxic, the more you will deteriorate.
  • Lethal. Not much option here. Get out, get out immediately. You will die if you don’t. Don’t count the cost of staying with something lethal. Whatever it is, whoever it is, whatever you like about the situation, you are beyond danger. You are dying. Get out and get out now. You can cope with the loss later. If you truly can’t get out of a lethal situation, note the deterioration that occurs to you and plan to find a time of restoration.

An example

Deb and I recently had our 14-year old grandson living with us for three months, an experience I now see as the hardest thing I have ever done. This has been a very interesting experience because it was almost entirely “bad for me” for these three months, and I still have the effects of this experience. Having Gavin here was interesting partly because he is a good kid, a “lover” and “player” by nature, quite bright, and fun to be with. My best connection, perhaps my only real connection was in the realm of play, usually around table games, which he adored. (Deb connected with him on their shared value of nature.) The difficulty I had with him was that his player temperament had been indulged by his parents to such an extent that he had almost no understanding of the care of property. I won’t indulge myself in explaining the challenges that deficiency brought to me but to note that my primary temperament (read the blogs on temperaments) is “caretaker,” namely a person who values property as sacred. So during the months he was with us, I ranged from unpleasant to toxic on the “bad for me” scale. I found myself complaining about his lack of responsibility, and complaining is something that I rarely do. But I found myself caught in the commitment we had made to Gavin’s father to keep him, home school him, and live with him until his dad got settled in their new home in Los Angeles. This put me in a very difficult situation because I started to notice physical changes in my body, most specifically my heart “talking to me” with a mild pain, particularly as I ran. So, here I was in the situation of taking care of someone whom I dearly love, and someone who had only 8 months ago lost his mother, and now had temporarily lost his dad as well. But this person was increasingly “bad for me” despite his need of my care and my love for him. Due to my biological heritage of heart disease, I was aware of the potential lethal nature of my caring for Gavin and I considered ending the time of care within a month of his being here. But there was a cost to me, first the tendency to complain, which I deplore in anyone, particularly me, but also in the feeling that I could die in the process of taking care of someone whom I love. There is a substantial amount of literature related to how people fare in the caretaking of an impaired person, or situations that are otherwise stressful: you die earlier. Such was the case with my brother who died at 59 having cared for my Alzheimer’s impaired mother for 5 years as well as other stressful circumstances. He died of a heart attack. I could feel this potential heart attack during these months with Gavin…this kind, loving, playful, bright kid whom I loved.

Such is the nature of the “bad for me” situations that people have: not all good, not all bad; love and dislike together; sometimes good, sometimes bad; good person bad for you; necessary situation that is potentially lethal. Consider the difficult situations you are in, whether property, person, geography, vocation, interpersonal, or just what you eat or drink. Consider the nature, the effects, what you feel, and what you might do. Take care of yourself first so you can take care of people and property as you need to do.

I look forward to writing about things and people that are “good for me.”