Over our lifetime, we may have come to dislike or even hate emotions such as fear, sadness, or anger, in ourselves and in others. If we have, for example, been taught not to “be so emotional,” we will have picked up the message that expression of emotion is somewhat unseemly and may have assumed it wasn’t okay to feel emotion either. Or maybe we remember clearly the drawn-out feeling of an emotional experience like grief and now react with dread when a hint of similar feelings arises. When we react negatively—with aversion—to our own negative emotions, treating them as enemies to be overcome,
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