Enjoying the negative?

This might sound weird or even plainly disturbing, but I’ve increasingly been enjoying my negative feelings for the past few months.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like the feelings themselves. They make me feel as if I want to throw myself out of the window, so it’s not as if I enjoy the negative feeling itself but what I have been enjoying about them is hard to put into words. My best way to put it is that “they are real.” “They are authentic.” and “These feelings are mine.”

(Background long story short: I’ve been in a destructive relationship for about 7 years and currently informally divorced).

I’ve come to the realization that very much of the negative I’ve been feeling has been … fake? Maybe not fake but better put … these negative feelings have been dulled, or superficial. I feel like I’ve very often tried to push down my negative feelings even though I never considered myself stoic or emotionally reserved. There’s acceptance. And the acceptance of the negative feelings have made it possible for me to more fully experience them. To feel them more intensely.

I know it might sound off, because why would anyone want to feel more intensely depressed, sad or lonely? Aren’t we programmed to avoid or reduce the negative? I’m not sure yet why this is happening, I might figure it out along the way. At least part of the answer is that I’m allowing myself to get to know myself more deeply. I know it’s a really Buddhist thing to say when you accept suffering as part of your life. I might go even further and say that right now, at this moment, I need the suffering. Not because I want to suffer, but because the suffering makes everything real.

I still have to read Brené Brown’s “The Gifts of Imperfection”. Maybe there’s some knowledge there for me to put this stuff into more coherent words and sentences.