“Understanding one’s emotions is seldom taught at any level.”
“You cannot get it from a book.”
“One of the techniques I created in a workshop was to tell the students that we are going to do a chocolate mediation. I pass around a box of Sees chocolates and have every person take a piece and hold it in their hand.”
“I then have them close their eyes and visualize what it might be like to eat it.”
“After a short visualization of how the chocolate is going to make them feel better I surprisingly tell them to take the chocolate and throw it in the trash.”
“Now the emotions begin. Many people are sad. Some are angry at me for taking away their joy.”
“We now have a chance to process their emotions. In order to learn about your emotions you have to have practice feeling them and not just analyzing them.”*
Remember that to heal our feelings, we need to feel them – not act them out.
Dysfunctional families teach us to disregard the complexity of our feelings. It takes time to really get to know our feelings.
Let me know if you would throw away your See’s chocolate. What feelings would bubble up if you did? Is it difficult for you to know what you are feeling?
Thanks for exploring the mystery – Nicky Mendenhall
*The first seven paragraphs are from an email message I received from Jon Burras, January 9, 2016. Thanks Jon.
8 comments
Wow…just READING about being told to throw away the chocolate gave me a visceral response!
“What!??? Throw away a delicious piece of chocolate???”
Feelings: sadness, anger, disappointment, loss, being duped, betrayed, feeling as though I would be doing something wasteful, which flies in the face of everything I’ve grown up believing about what we do or do not do with food…and that brings up shame.
Hmmm…
Very enlightening, revealing and thought provoking.
Blessings to you in the New Year,
Stacy 🙂
Stacy – so good to hear your reaction. Wastefulness pushes my shame button too. YOu named all my other emotional feelings too – sadness, anger, disappointment, loss, being duped, betrayed.
It is not fun to stay with any of those. But staying with the feeling is how we learn how much power they have and how to work with them. It is hard being an adult!
Thanks again – your words are powerful too!
No way I'm throwing away my chocolate! I feel like a rebel!
Whoa!
What a gangbuster post from you this morning!
At first I didn't open it. I just savored the subject line. Which just made me smile as I imagined meditating on chocolate. What fun!
Then, after checking other emails I cycled around to actually opening yours. And Wham! What a brilliant exercise. I am impressed.
I guess I would want to round out that point of needing to "feel the emotions" to be more like "feeling the emotions and observing how they work". That seems to me to be where the learning occurs. Feeling AND observing. Both together.
With feeling alone I think there is benefit. But not as much as feeling and observing together.
I like your point. To observe how the feelings work in our lives and to feel them is where the growth happens –
Very astute observation,
I have a terrible time feeling my feelings. I'd like more exercises like the one in which you toss your chocolate. Would there be a book with more exercises? I DO try to find everything in books!
You are not alone!
One suggestion: The Language of Emotions: What your feelings are trying to tell you by Karla McLaren.
Here's a quick quote from page 5: "We catch on very quickly to the fact that most people are inauthentic with one another- that they lie about their feelings, leave important words unsaid, and trample unheedingly over each other's obvious emotional cues."
Does that sound like a reason you might have trouble identifying your feelings?
Thanks for sharing your comment!
Yep, that sounds familiar! I'll check on the McLaren book. Thanks!
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