discovering our feelings

I think I feel mad.

I do not know what I am feeling.

I am not sure how I am supposed to feel about this.

Wading through our inner world of feelings can be daunting. It can feel muddled and messy. It does not help, either, if we do not know what emotions we will uncover. Add irritation and antagonism to this start-up mixture, and we may walk away defeated.

So how do we wrestle with unearthing our feelings? If we knew all our feelings were positive; we would jump right in. No questions asked. If we sense some of our experiences will be difficult, we hesitate. And with good reasons. A common fear is what if our emotion is more than we can handle? This fear is a typical problem with initiating our journey into the complex world of feelings.

So where do we turn for guidance? Let us think for a few minutes about how the human body handles our emotions. Our bodies have been holding our feelings all our lives. It does not judge if our feelings are good or bad. The human body does recognize some feelings are harder on our bodies than others. That is why taking some time to learn how to step into our world of feelings is useful.

First, we need to feel ambivalent with exploring our emotions. We may resent what we find out and wished we had never preceded. We may experience surprise, shock, or disgust with what we encounter. Or we may argue this is a wrong feeling to have — for example, rage. We want to forget we even have this feeling and move away from this forbidden feeling.

All these reactions to having these feelings are okay. Take time to process these reactions first. Remember, it is our mind that judges our emotions, not the feeling itself. When we finish reacting, then it is time to deal with our feelings. We provide the same type of guidance our bodies offer us. We hold the space without judgment and allow the feelings to be — nothing more and nothing less.

Until next time,

Joan