Should we try to feel better?

Written by: Marie Chesaniuk, PhD

Before we even get started with this whole therapy thing, I have one question: Should we try to feel better? Should we try? To feel better? Once again, it depends who you ask.

Exposure with Response Prevention

Exposure with Response Prevention (ERP) is a behavioral approach wherein one faces their fears, working their way up a fear ladder until they face their biggest fear. If you ask ERP if you should try to feel better, it would probably tell you that you should actually try to feel worse…and then you won’t have to try to feel better – you just will.

In ERP, we actually make an effort to increase uncomfortable or even negative feelings – temporarily, but repeatedly in the short term – in order to decrease fear and anxiety in the long term and ultimately ‘feel better.’ When we do an exposure, we face a fear and choose to experience the fear temporarily during the exposure because, if we repeat this process successfully, the fear we experience from the exposure will decrease. Then, when we confront that trigger in our everyday lives, it doesn’t actually scare us as much anymore. So, indirectly you will likely feel better, but not by trying to feel better per se. 

ERP verdict: You should not try to feel better, you should actually try to feel worse temporarily so that you can feel better permanently without trying.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) functions around the idea that your thoughts and beliefs are important intermediaries between events and your feelings, thus, if you change your thoughts, you can change your feelings…but CBT never explicitly says you can change your feelings to always be better, just more rational and realistic given the situation at hand. So you can try in CBT, but the result won’t necessarily be to feel better.

When we challenge a distorted thought or a false belief, we are trying to bring our thought process and beliefs in accordance with reality as best we can. But reality does not always present to us a feel better situation, just a feel real situation. CBT verdict: You can try, but whether you feel better depends on the specifics of the situation and the most rational response to it – not all situation-thought-feeling combinations end in feeling better.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is a third-wave (more recent) form of CBT that incorporates more mindfulness and values-based thought and action. Due to ACT’s grounding in Buddhist philosophy, pain is considered to be part of the human condition, not a deviation from the human condition. Therefore, pain should not be avoided, but rather felt genuinely alongside feeling better. Pain and feeling better both are transient emotional states that we accept and make space for as part of the human experience. Our willingness to feel both better and pain, and to think and make movements toward our values indirectly allows us maximize feeling better, but not to the exclusion of feeling pain.ACT verdict: You can try, but not directly, to feel better, but not to the exclusion of feeling pain.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is another form of CBT that is based on dialectical philosophy and mindfulness. It emphasizes the coexistence of otherwise conflicting thoughts, emotions, and experiences. The dialectic is the practice of holding more than one thought, feeling, or experience as true in a given moment. DBT is especially relevant as it is most often used to help people who experience severe, intense levels of negative emotion. What if the pain is really bad? Maybe even life-threateningly bad? Surely we should try to feel better in this case?

In the case of severe, intense negative emotions, trying to feel better through using healthy coping skills may be lifesaving. However, when one’s emotions are this severely negative, feeling better does not necessarily mean feeling good. It often means feeling less bad – getting oneself to a place where one can work with their thoughts, feelings, and their situation while still feeling some negative emotions.

In DBT, the dialectic isn’t about trying to feel better. It’s about allowing oneself to feel everything, in all its conflicting glory, at a level that doesn’t threaten one’s safety. Similar to ACT, it is about making space for a multitude of feelings, regardless of valence, so that the individual can work with those feelings. The individual may indirectly feel better after developing this practice and working with their thoughts, feelings, and situation to improve their life, but this is not a direct goal of DBT.

DBT verdict: You can try to use healthy coping skills to regulate emotions and keep them in a safe range, but you cannot directly try to feel better. Feeling better may be an indirect effect of developing a DBT practice, and will not exclude negative feelings along the way.
Across these approaches to treatment, the best you can do is try to do better in terms of coping, allow some NOT feeling good in the mix, and you may eventually, indirectly, feel better.