Feelings and Emotions

Lessons

Introduction

Lesson 1

Lesson 2

Lesson 3

Lesson 4

Intimacy Zone

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"Feeling" Defined:

feel·ing
['filzi] n., adj., v. -n.
1 the sense of touch: By feeling we can distinguish between something hard and something soft.
2 a sensation experienced through this sense: a feeling of pain.
3 the ability or power to experience physical sensation: She had no feeling in her left hand.
4 emotion: Joy, sorrow, fear, and anger are feelings.
5 the capacity for emotion; sensibility; the emotional nature: She was guided by feeling rather than thought.
6 sensitivity to the higher or more refined emotions: His work shows both feeling and taste.
7 pity; sympathy.
8 an opinion; sentiment: Her feeling was that right would win.
9 the quality felt to belong to anything: There is a weird feeling about the place.
10 feelings, pl. susceptibilities: You hurt her feelings with that remark.
11 a vaguely perceived forewarning; hunch: I had a feeling this would happen.
-adj.
full of feeling; sensitive; emotional.
-v.
ppr. of feel.
-'feel·ing·ly, adv.
Syn. n. 4. Feeling, emotion, passion = a pleasant or painful mental state produced in a person in reaction to a stimulus of some kind. Feeling is the general word: He had a vague feeling of hope. Emotion = a strong and moving feeling, such as love, fear, sorrow, joy, etc.: She was so overwhelmed with emotion that she couldn't speak for a moment. Passion = violent emotion, usually overcoming the power to think clearly and taking complete possession of a person: In a passion of rage he smashed the watch.
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The 1998 Canadian & World Encyclopedia, copyright © 1997 by McClelland & Stewart Inc.
Gage Canadian Dictionary. Copyright © 1997 by Gage Educational Publishing Company.

In the last paragraph of the definition I found for the word "feeling", I notice the confusion and troubling relationship that we seem to have with the word. I really do not think that the concept of feelings or emotions needs to be so complicated.

I experience my emotions or feelings as waves of inner awareness that constantly wash over me. I give them as much or as little attention as the situation, particularly the relationship context, warrants.

The great confusion is that we often use the word feeling to describe behaviour. We do this because we can't see feelings. No one knows what you are feeling until you tell them. However, often people conclude they know what we feel from an observation of our behaviour. We can make the same mistake ourselves about our own feelings. For example, we may be pacing and raising our voice. Others watching and even ourselves might conclude "I am really angry." Yet it is not unusual that in therapy, as a person begins to unravel their experience, what they were really feeling was fear. A behaviour pattern gets attached to the fear. The behaviour pattern is associated with anger, so the person concludes "I am angry."

Another, perhaps even more disruptive pattern occurs with feelings or emotions. We attach a thought or constellation of thoughts to the emotion. As a result we often lose touch completely with the emotion. A common example occurs when one's child returns home after the pre-arranged time or curfew. Many parents experiencing this situation describe how worried they are waiting. Some pace the floor while others make frantic calls to find out if anything tragic has occurred. When the youth returns, all too often they are greeted with an explosive "where the hell have you been? Don't you have any consideration?" I am not criticizing this reaction. However, many parents never get to the point of expressing their worry and consequent relief that their child is safe. They are too attached to their belief that their child did something wrong. They don't bring to awareness their other feelings. In therapy, I have seen how healing it is for the parents to finally tell their young adult children how most of the energy that they were expressing wasn't really anger it was relief and even joy that nothing untoward had happened to them.

I have an exercise that helps me deal with the thoughts that are attached to feelings so that I can become aware of the full range of feelings I may be experiencing.

Before I share it with you, I want to make another very important statement about feelings. There are no "bad" feelings. Feelings simply are. What can be "bad" to ourselves and others is what we choose to do to express our feelings. In other words, what I do is what can hurt myself or someone else. What I feel, or what I think, for that matter, cannot hurt someone else. No one can know what I feel or think unless I act them out in some way: behaviour. What can hurt me with respect to my thoughts and feelings is how I become attached to them. Do I allow them to be or do I make more out of them. Medicine now knows that stress, if not managed properly, can contribute to the physical degradation of the body. Most of us have experienced how improperly managed stress degrades our sense of well being, out happiness. It is no wonder that stress is a multi-million dollar industry now.

Allowing Feelings Exercise

1. Sit yourself in a comfortable chair. Some people like soothing music in the background. If you haven't done this sort of thing before, choose music without lyrics. If there are words, you may become more focused on the words than on the steps of this exercise.
2. Loosen any tight clothing.
3. Close your eyes.
4. Notice what you are feeling or what emotion you are experiencing now.
5. Imagine that above your head there is a balloon filled with helium gas. The balloon is also attached to the feeling or emotion you are aware of by a strong cord.
6. The task is to paint on the surface of the balloon any thoughts you have that are associated with the feeling you are noticing. Any thought that comes to mind, whether it seems relevant or not, paint on the balloon.Go wild with colours if you like! The balloon is of unlimited size so you can continue to paint thoughts on it until you have no more.
7. Cut the cord with whatever implement or tool you need. You can make it absolutely strong and sharp enough to cut any cord.
8. Notice the balloon soar off into the universe, never to be seen again.

At this point, you may notice the emotion or feeling is gone or rather replaced by another feeling. You can repeat this process as often as you like whenever you are experiencing a feeling you would rather be without. When we manage our so-called "negative" feelings this way, we can become aware of deeper or core feelings that have been camouflaged by our thoughts, the major developer of our menu. The goal is not to be without feelings. There is a close relationship between feeling and breathing! The goal is to become aware of the full range of feelings we have in our moment to moment experience: the meal.

To be responsible for your feelings, you need to be aware of them. The building block of intimacy that this lesson is concerned with is claiming personal responsibility: for our thoughts, our feelings and our behaviour.

The last aspect of responsibility for self that we shall explore concerns our

behaviour.