Why do I Feel Bad?

Objectifying – The reason we feel bad

To begin to understand why we have negative emotions, let us first take the perspective of being a “thing” that determines when a person feels good or bad. In the example, lets say that you control the emotions of a guy by the name of Mike. Being this “thing” that controls Mike’s emotions, why would you make him feel good or bad? For instance, lets say Mike needs to finish some urgent work at home and at the same time he is being told by his friend Ralph that he needs to pickup his other friend Mary from work. However, the real story is that Ralph was asked by Mary to pick her up and Ralph is just telling Mike to pick her up so that he can stay and play video games. Assuming Mike found out about this, how would you make Mike feel? Good or Bad? My guess is that you would make him feel bad because Mike wanted to do something else but Ralph tried to control him by lying to Mike. So because Mike wanted to do something else, the bad feeling you gave Mike was to tell him that if he were to pick up Mary, it would go against what Mike really wanted to do.

Here’s another example: Say you now control the emotions of Jill and lets say that Jill thinks she is fat and ugly. We would assume that you would make her feel bad, but why would you do so? Because you know that Jill doesn’t want to be fat and ugly, so if you made her feel good about thinking she was fat and ugly, then she would feel good about something she doesn’t want, which doesn’t really make sense. You should feel good about something that you want, so you would make someone feel good if it is what they want and you make them feel bad if it is what they don’t want.

You can see that being the “thing” that determines emotion is doing so to help person A. If Mike and Jill felt good in these scenarios, they would think that these scenarios are good and continue doing those actions. So Mike would always be lied too, thus never finishing what he wants to do and Jill would stay fat and ugly. Assuming this is something that Jill and Mike don’t want, it would be safe to assume that negative emotions are there to tell you that you shouldn’t be doing what you are doing and good emotions are telling you to continue what you are doing.

Notice that every bad emotion involves either:

• Someone trying to control you;
• Trying to control someone else;
• Someone judging you;
• Judging yourself; or
• Judging someone else.

To see what I mean, I will list a series of actions that cause negative emotion and each one will relate to being judged or controlled.

• Killing someone - A form of control.
  • The person who dies does not want to die, but the killer did the act against their will

• Lying to someone – A form of control.
  • The person who lies is someone who is trying to say things to get something from the other person without their consent

• Feeling unworthy – A form of judgment
  • The person who is feeling unworthy of anything is judging themselves (or comparing) versus others based on their own idea of what should be worthy

These are but a few of hundreds of different reasons why people feel bad and you will begin to see that every time you feel bad, there is always a form of control or judgment being placed on either yourself or someone else.

If every negative emotion comes from judging and controlling thoughts, then if everybody stopped controlling or judging people in anyway, wouldn’t people stop feeling bad? We’d say so. So why then do people control and judge anything if it just makes themselves and other people feel bad?

Why Do We Have Judging and Controlling Thoughts?

To answer this, lets look at objects. If I were to ask you how you eat your food, you could respond that you use your utensils to pick up your food. If that is the case, then aren’t you controlling something to get what you want? What if you preferred chopsticks to a fork and knife? Aren’t you judging your utensils? Of course you are. However, if you didn’t control or judge those utensils when you wanted to eat, you wouldn’t be able to eat at all. Since you will go hungry if you don’t, you have to control and judge those utensils. So controlling and judging thoughts are to help you get what you want with objects. Without judging and controlling objects, you would never be able to eat your food, drive your car, or read this website, which is something that you want to do.

Therefore, we can conclude that in order to get what you want from objects, you have to judge and control them, which is the reason for judging and controlling thoughts. However, we also know that we shouldn’t judge or control people. This means that negative emotion is coming from the idea that someone is treating either themselves or someone else like an object. It is this confusion of an object and a living being that is causing negative emotion.

Another problem with objectifying is that you are treated like an object. Objects are valued but not loved. Gold is a valued commodity because of its rarity in the world, but it cannot be loved like your parents or children. We will discuss what love is to understand this concept better, but for now understand that objectifying people or yourself will eliminate the humanizing aspect of life, like love, from your life.

What is the difference between an object and a living being?

The reason is because objects don’t change, but we, as the creator of thought, do. Since objects do not change, we can make the judgment that this glass is broken and it can’t be fixed because it will stay that way forever and will not become fixed on its own. However, since living beings change because we change thought, we cannot make the judgment that this person is shy because the person can change into someone who is confident by changing how they view themselves.

UPDATE
In order to control anything, you must first judge what it should be doing. Therefore, the only thoughts that need to be managed properly are your judgments, as they cause controlling thoughts.

Therefore, the reason why you feel bad is because you are judging, or expecting, others or yourself to act in a specific way, just like an object. So when you expect or judge, your body is telling you to stop thinking that way by making you feel bad. The reason why we feel bad is simply because we are confusing what is an object and what isn’t an object.