Should You Process Everything?

Is there a lesson in everything? Maybe. Maybe not. But how much time do we need to spend processing it? Do we need to make meaning out of every experience, or can we acknowledge what happened, reflect on it for a limited amount of time, and then let ourselves move on?

As a therapist and an over-thinker, I am extremely good at processing my thoughts and feelings. Probably too good. It’s a strength I have most certainly overworked.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between something that actually needs my attention and something that just… sucks. Something I’m sad about. Something I wish were different. Something I don’t like but nevertheless have to live through.

Because I can process the shit out of anything. I can find the childhood connection, identify the pattern, understand what it’s bringing up, talk about it in therapy, journal about it, find the meaning underneath the meaning. And sometimes that is exactly what I need.

But sometimes I think I’m just giving myself more to do with a feeling that was already hard enough.

I’m trying to get better at knowing when something needs exploration and when it needs tolerance. And by tolerance, I don’t mean white-knuckling my way through pain or pretending I’m fine. I mean letting an experience be painful without immediately turning toward it with a flashlight. I can be sad. I can hate something. I can wish my life looked different in a particular moment. And maybe I don’t need to understand it any more than I already do.

The annoying part is that I don’t have a formula for knowing which is which. I don’t think there is one.

I think this is where I have to trust the knowledge I’ve accumulated over almost 40 years of being alive: my gut, my expertise, my intuition, whatever you want to call it. To know when there’s something here that deserves more of my attention and when I can say, This fucking sucks. I’m sad. I wish it were different. And then continue living my life while I carry the feeling with me.

I’ve spent so much of my life believing that understanding myself is the way through. And it has been, a lot of the time.

But I’m starting to think that sometimes there is no “through.” There is just feeling what I feel, doing what I can, and continuing to live.

So…Do we need to turn everything into a lesson? Does everything that happens to us need to have some grand purpose? And regardless of the answer, what is the process of finding meaning actually for? What are we doing when we decide something “happened for a reason”?

What is the process of processing? Lol. It sounds silly, but I actually think it’s an important question.

And because I know you probably want an answer and not just the philosophical ramblings that make up most of my internal life, I’ll try to give you some kind of formula.