I had a bad day recently. Though I’d been feeling a lot of forward momentum in my life I found myself moping around my house, wanting to venture out and work on projects, but finding myself unwilling to. I just stayed in bed. And I kept thinking about my breakup and going over all the worst details and experiences from that relationship. And, to my horror, I found that I was remembering some of those experiences for the first time. As each bad memory piled up I started to become aware of what I was doing…and I asked myself “Is this healthy?” I know that it is good to go over the events of a relationship at its end, in order to learn from them…but this growing list of grievances was too much! But I took pity on myself and let myself wallow for a day, and, amazingly, the results have been very positive.

In spending time with myself, remembering bad experiences, I was able to feel more gratitude for my new single-ness. And in allowing myself to participate in the process of reflection I learned that I have the capacity to “laugh off” or “brush off” or otherwise ignore personal attacks. For example: I avoided a confrontation by responding to an insult with “that’s ridiculous,” and stopped the exchange there when I should have gone a step further to ask “why did you say that?” and talk over the consequences. These were experiences that I should have remembered and should have sought closure for. Though troubling, I am glad to have discovered this tendency because, now that I am aware of it, I will be able to better take care of myself.

Later, that night, I had the most amazing dreams. I saw whales and sea birds, I ran through the forest and swam in the ocean, and I fell in love. When I woke up I could still feel the inner warmth of that love and I smiled and wrapped myself up in bed. Feeling that emotion course through my veins made me remember that I can fall in love again. A clarity and optimism took over my mind and has remained with me – it is as if a fog has been lifted.

In the nights since, I’ve continued having fun, vivid dreams. It is almost as if my subconscious was doing so much work suppressing and juggling those bad experiences that it didn’t have any energy left to imagine, and my dreams suffered. But since I was able to access, process, and release those bad experiences I have regained my own creative energy as well as a sense of peace.

Wonderfully, all of this coincided with the release of the cover article “Beyond Happiness: The Upside of Feeling Down” in Psychology Today. I’m not a regular reader of the magazine but this article grabbed me. After reading it and having had this experience I’m definitely going to try to stop labeling any emotion “negative,” even if it feels bad.