As I learned from Dr. Laura, when we see other people managing situations that are tough to us, we have a habit of assuming they handled it easily.
She had a caller who said she was always nervous when she entered a room full of strangers. "I'm afraid of rejection," the caller told her.
"Everyone's afraid of rejection!" replied the good doctor. "Honey, you think it's easy for the popular people, just because they can go into a room and you don't see the fear inside? They look confident and act like they can handle it but they're afraid inside, too, and nervous about the new people rejecting them. But they're no different from the rest of us."
I suspect that it's not quite as easy as that; it's more like having a sprained ankle. Even given the same amount of pain, some people will crumple in a heap and moan and cry how much they're in anguish, while others will brush it off as "It's just pain" and keep on going. It's a choice, though. I used to be one of the former, and now I'm one of the "It's just pain, no big deal" people.
In the same way, some people don't handle their emotional pain well. Others can't deal with loneliness. We teach our kids to wait for a good feeling to overcome them, rather than pushing on through the pain and dealing with it.
One student asked me, "How do I feel motivated to do my homework?" I told him not to try to feel motivated at all, because the urge to do it was never going to suddenly wash over him, lighting him on fire to get an odious task done. I suggested he set aside time and commit to making that homework time, and to offer himself a reward at the end of the homework, like ice cream, favorite TV show, guitar practice, going outside to play. Maybe we should be offering ourselves rewards for fixing our mood and behaving happy for our friends.
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