3. Competition. May people stop fighting their painful emotions and decide too fully indulge in them. Rather than learn the positive message their emotion is trying to give them, they intensify it and make it even worse than it is. It becomes a "badge of courage," and they begin to compete with others, saying "You think you've got it bad? Let me tell you how bad I've got it!" It literally becomes part of their identity, a way of being unique; they begin to pride themselves on being worse off than anyone else.
As you can imagine, this is one of the deadliest traps of all. This approach must be avoided at all costs, because it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where the person ends up having an investment in feeling bad on a regular basis - and they they are truly trapped. A much more powerful and healthy approach to dealing with the emotions that we think are painful is to realize that they serve a positive purpose, and that is...
4. Learning and Using.
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