Feelings* – #59

This wasn’t a totally new strategy on my part. The defense mechanism of denial has kept me away from painful feelings for years. 

Denial, as a protective strategy, probably seemed like a good idea initially. Warnings not to feel “that way” were  issued to me even as a young child and have continued to this day.

To complicate matters, somewhere the idea that if you paid attention to your feelings, let’s say you identified one, this feeling was then The Truth. Feelings were “right” and you let them determine your course of action. You had no choice – if you knew how you felt -you had to take action whether it made sense or not. 

And lastly,I got the idea that you could only feel one feeling at a time. If you were sad, you were sad – there was no room for other feelings.

These rules affirmed my penchant to keep feelings at a distance. 

Eight weeks ago I determined to stop distancing from my feelings. Then the question arose: what are options for dealing with feelings?

This is when I enlisted you in the search.

It has been quite a journey. It helped me to know you were in the passenger seat.

During this exploration, in addition to the suggestions of posts 51-58, I unearthed three new ideas: 

1. Feelings are what makes us human, therefore it is imperative that we don’t automatically distance from them. Being in solidarity with others by feeling our feelings is how we feel connected to the web of human kind. It is healthy for our sense of well being to feel connected.

2. No matter how powerful the feeling we discover, we are not duty bound to rush right out and take action. When we stay with feelings, we will learn that there are layers and layers of feelings included in one feeling. Staying with a feeling is going to take lots of patience and time. Eventually you will know what to do. 

3. There isn’t really any feeling that doesn’t have tinges of another feeling. So while this post is mostly serious in nature, be sure to look at what the * offers.  

How do you work with your feelings? I’d love to know.

*To listen to Engelbert Humperdinck’s 4:21 minute rendition of Feelings – supposedly the last song Elvis sang – just google Engelbert Humperdinck Feelings. (Disclosure – I only made it to 3:33 minutes of the YouTube video)

Next week we will close this series with the last item on Dr. Wyatt’s list. You won’t want to miss it.

Thanks for exploring the mystery – Nicky Mendenhall