Feel your feelings : accept the reality

Life so often throws us curve balls. When we are born, too we don’t have much control at all over what happens to us in those first early years of life. As babies we float in a sea of energy and are attuned to our bodies and inner selves and signals, over the course of time conditioning can act to block these messages or we can be downloaded with ‘stuff’ from outside of us that has nothing at all to do with us, ‘stuff’ that we are left to make sense of with a small child’s brain that often does not have the capacity to regulate emotions or understand the deeper nuances or influences. It is any wonder that so many of us struggle both within ourselves and with the impact of the past, while trying too to express our selves in the world?

Some of us had to endure a shit load of frustration from the environment. Some of us don’t know what it is to have certain needs met or to be responded to in a meaningful way and many of us were also super sensitive when young. A few years back therapist Elaine Aaron coined the term ‘highly sensitive person’ to describe those who pick up emotions, energies and unspoken ‘cues’ from the environment. I just read a very interesting article on the Highly Sensitive Person Refuge website which addressed the issue of how HSP’s tend to be extra hard on themselves when they make mistakes or fall short of ideals or others expectations, the article got me wondering whether lack of support and validation when we were young, or having tended to be blamed a lot or told we are in the wrong, for being ourselves or not having certain answers may cause these kind of traits. We may struggle with an inferiority complex too, when we find it harder to blow off insensitive comments or criticisms of us.

Add to this the impact for those of us who were unmothered or unfathered. Some of us may be more deeply affected by this, I am just not sure. Certainly those of us from addictive backgrounds struggle in trying to grow, we must turn either away from those who are hurtful, or towards those who don’t seem to see us in an effort to be seen. Some of us may have to twist ourselves out of shape and some of us witness so much trauma.

We should probably not be so down on ourselves when we consider in life all we have had to deal with and we should not judge ourselves for certain reactions or feelings but never the less we need to question them at times and also there are certain realities we need to live within. For example if we are sensitive and highly triggered we need to understand not all will understand this or accept it. We must also not use it as an ‘excuse’ for what for others may find difficult. And yet we also have a right not to have to change in order to be loved if that is just the way we react due to out temperament or ‘style’. And we can also always open to learn more about ourselves, feelings, others and relationships as well as ways of relating.

The reality is we got what we got growing up. What we make of it may involve for many of us a great deal of introspection in later years and an exploration of exactly what it is that makes us feel as we do.

For myself I am never sure if some of us are born more highly sensitive. Are some of us born as ‘older souls’ who see more deeply into the nature of life and experience? Or does our sensitivity relate to other factors to do with trauma? In the end I guess the answer may not be found but we can still learn to understand how we feel and what the realities are of life around us so that we do not have to struggle as much with reactions to those realities that are not up for debate and may only end up hurting us more if we cannot learn ways to make our peace with them.