Better

The Rabbit was not afraid of feelings.
Not at first.
Children rarely are.

A feeling arrives.
A child feels it.
Then the feeling leaves.
It is adults who tend to become concerned.

The Rabbit noticed something curious as it grew older.
Whenever the Rabbit was upset, people immediately wanted to help.
This seemed kind.
Because it was kind.

The Rabbit was loved.
The Rabbit never doubted that.
But help often arrived in a particular form.
A solution.
A distraction.
A reassurance.
An explanation.
A reason the feeling should not be there.

The Rabbit would be sad.
Someone would try to make the sadness smaller.
The Rabbit would be worried.
Someone would explain why there was nothing to worry about.
The Rabbit would be frustrated.
Someone would encourage the Rabbit to calm down.

Nobody meant any harm by this.
Quite the opposite.
The people who loved the Rabbit wanted the Rabbit to feel better.

The difficulty was that the Rabbit slowly began to notice a pattern.
Feelings seemed welcome when they were pleasant.
Unpleasant feelings always appeared to need fixing.

The Rabbit did not learn this as a lesson.
Children rarely learn lessons directly.
The Rabbit learned it the way children learn most things.
By observation.

The Rabbit began helping.
At least the Rabbit thought it was helping.
The Rabbit learned to make feelings smaller before anyone else had to.
To recover quickly.
To smile sooner.
To reassure people that everything was fine.

The Rabbit became surprisingly good at this.
So good, in fact, that many people stopped noticing when the Rabbit was struggling at all.

The Rabbit considered this a success.
For a very long time.