Next steps. # 1 Feeling Your Feelings!

We're all in the process of learning who we are. Feelings are a huge part of that. Check out an article I wrote just about feeling your feelings.

These are unprecedented times. Our mental health is like a roller coaster. With our privileged position in history the struggle for survival is 'back seat' to the thrills of life and enjoying fun things. On paper, it would seem we’re ahead of the game – yet we’re more likely to suffer from dissatisfaction. Some struggle to find meaning or joy and fail to thrive, others turn to vices.

The key to this issue is not just what activities we engage in, but how we are engaging in activities; what parts of ourselves are we experiencing when we spend our time.

The problems are emotional ones, and the cure lies in the way we experience our emotions to begin with. We have to relearn how to feel. Much of our emotion travels beneath our awareness without being identified or initially felt but then they’re stopped-up and prevented from expression. The key to emotional health is to identify emotion and allow it to flow freely and be felt; not necessarily acted upon, but felt. Whereas Dr. Sarno, in The Divided Mind, sets out his theory of the body producing symptoms to distract us from emotional pain, I think it's just the opposite. Our bodies, so intelligent, try to inform, not distract, to unmask the deeper and more identifying feelings we have inside. Just feeling our visceral self can be liberating and empowering, we don't have to be afraid of who we are, just to know that the hiss of the snake doesn't always demand a bite; we can feel and observe our dark parts. The alternative is to deny who we are – how we experience life.

There really is no way to stop feeling, but we do chance being controlled by the underlying current within us unless we face our image. Awareness of our feeling is like having someone in front of us instead of behind us. While they're with us in either case, when we see the company we’re in, that awareness of presence informs our conscious choices. We can decide how we will think, speak and act while we are feeling the emotion (all hissing allowed!). Otherwise, the emotion may act on us and through us. If someone is angry about something, for example, but doesn’t know it, it’s likely still going to come across to his loved ones. They may be the ones to feel an undertone of conflict or irritation in casual conversation which would discourage a spontaneous and open chat (one of the precious experiences of living with others) (or of course worse, acting out with violence).

Furthermore, when we learn to feel feelings, we stop making choices because of them, and the decision-making process returns back to our minds and our free choice instead of being coerced by our own feelings.

Rogerian therapy proves that what largely makes the therapeutic relationship worthwhile is the therapist’s relationship with the client; the feeling of being understood invites safety and further self-exploration. Human connection relieves stress and empowers people with self-knowledge and the courage to take chances with their skills and affect the world around them. A doctor has a scalpel, a baseball player has a bat, and a good therapist has their awareness. In session, my heart and mind are the sources of my interventions; I am my own tool.

Humanity is so deep. The more we are aimed at identifying our own feelings and how others feel, the faster we move in the process of getting to an even better world (and on an individual level, stop walking around exclusively with Freud's label of the aggressive cauldron of our instinctual selves). Our friends, family, and acquaintances all benefit from us being emotionally attuned, and consciously or sub-consciously we all are being inspired to get there. This doesn’t mean that I never feel sad, angry, ashamed, or depressed; it means that I know when I'm feeling something, and even if I can't vocalize it, I can take the time to understand and then share my insights with others in the right time.

Feelings are a vital part of who I am, so I integrate experience back into my whole self through acceptance of those parts with self-compassion and find the purpose of its voice rather than take at face value the disruption it causes When we do this, we enhance our personal power and become more comfortable with any feeling, and can enable others through example to do the same.

All feelings have a power, a message, that helps us prepare or process our experiences. It’s the feelings that aren’t recognized for what they are that become distorted and aggressively expressed, and that is the confusion that gets us to lose control.

In therapy, we get into details and history of your experiences to help identify hard to see feelings, the many shades and multiple layers of feelings that are surely in any of the complex situations in our busy world.  Just like a river bustles with life, the movement of feelings through us are meant to enter and exit. Unprocessed feelings live in our nerves and muscles, waiting to be remembered felt, processed, and then let go.

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The high holidays were approaching. As a first-year student in yeshiva, and my first year of observance, I asked my rabbi what I should focus on in repairing my history, during prayer on Yom Kippur. His reply was "whatever comes to mind". That’s exactly right: things that come to mind are unfinished business, either for the good or the bad. If an exciting time is recollected, I revel and bask in it, as I hadn’t fully yet; if it’s an embarrassing mistake made, I search for self-empathy and self-forgiveness; and if it’s hurt caused to another, it is remorse that I want to look for in myself. Whatever comes to mind…but how to address each memory, in its intensity or subtlety, requires finesse. It requires real skill to navigate those memories and resolve them.