Feeling
your feelings and emotions is an important step in breaking free from the Troll
of Shame. Is there a difference between feelings and emotions?
Often feelings or even the word feeling, is a very difficult word for
people. Almost any outward display of
emotion is ridiculed, made fun of in the press, and punctuated as something
negative. Client’s come into my office and pay really good money but spend all
of their energy not to feel anything, especially sad or mad. Once a client has spent enough time with me
to understand the phenomena of shame beneath their feelings, then it seems to
be especially hard to let feelings come forward. Shame is a very uncomfortable feeling and
often more intense than sadness or anger.
Shame carries intense biology often punctuating itself with physical
sensations of nausea and angst.
Donald
Nathanson (1992) in his book Shame and Pride helpfully describes for us
the vocabulary of Emotion. There he
describes affect, feeling, emotion, mood and disorder. His descriptions help delineate the subtle
differences in and between them. Affect,
which is the biology of emotion which I have addressed in early parts of this
workbook, is the automatic physiological responses our bodies make when any of
the nine identified affects have been triggered. Feeling is described as an
awareness of the affect, emotion is the biographical history of the feeling,
mood is the persistent state of the emotion, and disorder is when the
persistent state of emotion interferes with daily functions of life, or the
person’s “norm.”
From
my perspective, disorders are created by a sense of overwhelm from the scripts
and beliefs that are not identified and ferreted out from other internal chaos
that is going on. The more we learn
about the brain, the more we realize how much we don’t know. It is the not knowing that leads us back to
discussion of feeling.
Because
feelings are so difficult to experience and express perhaps you are
“feeling-phobic.” Most people are perfectly content if all of their feelings
stay in the closet. When a feeling dares
express itself or come out of the closet, the environmental reaction is often
so harsh that the feeling runs back to the closet vowing never to be sad, mad,
afraid, or expressive again. Often young children are socialized to hold
their feelings close to their chest with minimal or no outlet of their
expression. As a result, we have more
child violence than ever reported before, and we have many adults that are
completely incapable of establishing and maintaining relationships because they
are too emotionally impaired to participate fully in the type of true
vulnerability required in an adult relationship. Many people find it difficult to be in an
emotionally demanding relationship when their feelings are stuck in the
darkness of the closet. Let’s stop here
and do a couple of feeling exercises to see if you can identify what is going
on underneath the surface of your psyche right now.
Feeling Awareness Exercise:
Allow yourself to find
a quiet place and a comfortable way of sitting.
As you sit, take a look around and really notice your environment. Allow yourself to identify by naming the
colors, objects, scents, and sounds in the room you have chosen. Then allow
yourself to gently close your eyes and breathe in. At first, just notice your body as you
breathe in and then out. Notice, where
you are tight, the depth or shallowness of your breath and then allow yourself
to inhale deeply and slowly. Hold the
breath for a moment and gently release it fully back into the room. Allow yourself to develop your own rhythm to
your breath. Once you are aware of your
rhythm and it feels comfortable to you, ask yourself the following questions.
As you answer the following questions, remember this is an awareness exercise,
so spend some time with each question or with the question that resonates most
with you at this time.
What am I feeling right now? What am I paying attention to? From there, allow yourself to turn back the
pages of your daily life and ask “What
has been happening in my life and how am I feeling about it?”
Allow
the faces of your family members, friends, and colleagues that are currently in
your day-to-day life to come into your mind’s eye. Just scan their faces as if you were looking
at a photo album. While you are going from page to page, notice what you feel
as each face appears. Who do you feel good about? Who brings you joy and laughter? Which face makes you recoil as if you have
done something wrong or bad? Which face
stirs up angry feelings inside of you or sad feelings? For example, suppose you come across the
face of a co‑worker and you find yourself feeling a bit agitated and your
breath naturally shortens. What is the
story with that co‑worker? What has been
going on inside of your head about him/her?
Allow yourself to flip back through the pages of that story rather
quickly until you come to the beginning of the story, the time when you first
noticed something going on inside of your body that you did not feel good about
when you were around this colleague. You
may find that now it is hard for you to stay with that situation, you may find
that it is difficult for you to focus on whatever uncomfortable feeling that is
there. You may start becoming fidgety, and your mind may try to escape to your
“to do” list. Take a deep breath and see
if you can allow yourself to stay with that “first story” for just a moment
longer. Refocus your attention to
you. Notice what happened inside of your
body when that bad feeling started coming up.
Notice your facial expression.
What was going on? Drop down into
just one more level of consciousness and ask yourself what did I need right
then? What do I wish I would have done differently? What did I want to say but became too afraid,
intimidated, or embarrassed to say?
