Being open to feelings

At times our traumatic feelings can be so strong and so over powering that we forget others may struggle too. At times our early attachment issues or abandonment trauma may eclipse attempts to connect with others, or make conflicts experienced in relationships in the present moment feel confusing, painful or overwhelming, especially as we struggle to learn about our own unmet needs and find ways to feel more deeply and inwardly in touch in kind way with our own wounds without making demands of those who may not understand, nor have an idea of why connecting can feel as overwhelming as it does. And one emotion that we may particularly struggle with in this situation is anger, since many of us were raised in homes where it may not have felt safe to have strong feelings of pain, anger or disappointment.

The truth is that when we learn ways to show up for our past self and its hurts without projecting or blaming others we are more likely to find freedom. I was particularly struck last week by something Matt Haig wrote about in one of his books under a list of 10 things that will not make us happy.. expecting others to understand us when they do not even often understand themselves. And who is it that is the best position to know what we have suffered and validate that past trauma, only someone who does understand such as a therapist who can give us tools to work with while at the same time performing the function of validating our past pain.

Our ability to escape depression where it comes to repressed feeling also comes as we begin to separate out past experiences and present reactions. Doing this allows us to provide comfort and self support to ourselves as we struggle, as opposed to denying, avoiding, denigrating or negating the self and its feeling and emotions.

The truth is that OUR FEELINGS MATTER AND MAKE SENSE, AS DO THE FEELINGS OF OTHERS (ALTHOUGH AT TIMES WE CANNOT TAKE THE FEELINGS OF OTHERS ON BOARD NOR EXPECT OTHERS TO UNDERSTAND OURS SINCE WE ALL EXPERIENCE LIFE IN A UNIQUE WAY. This is why I believe that in healthy relationships we need to develop an ability to be open to learn about how others feel and experience their own reality, or develop the capacity to wonder why someone may feel or act as they do, as opposed to being closed, cold or judgmental. When we have a capacity for empathy, this allows us to be open but not so open that we take on as our own these aspects of another person’s reality.

Not feeling alone also means showing up for ourselves in what we feel while not always having to react to those feelings. Reactions may lead to avoidance or even projection of our own pain onto others, where as developing the capacity to respond instead enables us to keep an open heart and not close down due to fear.

The following extracts on feelings are taken from Edith Egar’s book The Gift and they resonate becaus sadly when growing up many of us were not taught to stay open and be present to our painful feelings and often we had parents who also lacked this abililty, a situation which she addresses in the chapter in her book on emotional avoidance.

We disable our children when we take away their suffering. We teach them that feelings are wrong or scary. But a feeling is only a feeling. There’s no right or wrong. There is just my feeling and yours. We are wiser not to try to reason others out of their feelings, or try to cheer them up. It’s better to allow their feelings and keep company, to say “tell me more.” To resist saying what I used to tell my children when they were upset that someone had teased or excluded them: “I know how you feel.” It’s a lie. You can’t ever know how someone else feels. It’s not happening to you. To be empathic and supportive, don’t take others inner life as if ot is your own. That’s just another way of robbing others of their experience – and of keeping them stuck.

I like to remind my patients: the opposite of depression is expression.

What comes out of you doesn’t make you sick: what stays there does….

By allowing our access to feelings we make a pathway in that allows the energy of feelings to flow in and out and round about if you will. And when we become attuned to and less judgmental of our own feelings then it follows by extension that are more likely to offer the same degree of attunement and compassion to others.