Maybe this can help your outlook out side of society for a minute..
Charles C. Kearse, co.Ph.D. / Empowering People
This essay is on Feeling
The spring and summer season is here and it is a time that elicits a great deal of feeling, whether it is being resigned to another "command performance," excited about sharing it with friends and loved-ones, or sad about not having someone with whom to connect that way.
What does it mean to feel? From the first moments of our lives, we all want. We want to be held, touched, burped, loved, to rest, get warm, lose weight, make money, scratch an itch, etc. It matters to us whether or not we accomplish what we want and it is this mattering which is the basis of feeling: To feel is to spontaneously evaluate how successfully we are fulfilling our wants, satisfying our appetites. Sometimes we are thematically aware of (that is, are focused on, "conscious" of) how we're affected and sometimes we are not. What we desire, the degree to which we desire it and how we are affected by our perceived successes and failures always arise from the fabric of our entire life history and are inseparable from it.
Feeling is our constant companion. We continuously evaluate—most often, without thinking about it—how things are going for us. Yet many people believe that they feel only sometimes. Such people tend to be aware of how they feel only when intensely affected. Although often subtly affected, they are out of touch with, "blind" to the many shades of gray between their intense pleasure and intense distress: As a result, they rob themselves of the greater richness, joy and sense of adequacy and worth that would grace their lives given a more intimate awareness of their affected selves.
Contrary to the popular view—perpetuated explicitly or implicitly in numerous self-help books—we do not will, do not choose how we feel. (If we really could choose how to feel, all of us would surely have already chosen to be happy, which, by any stretch of the imagination, is not the case.) We are free only to discover how we feel as it is made manifest to us through our affected bodies (e.g., while waiting for an interview for a job which I really want but for which I am unprepared, I discover that I am anxious through my sweaty palms and rapidly beating heart.) We are who we feel, no matter how we attempt to stop or deny it, and cannot be otherwise.
Those who believe that they choose how they feel view "feelings" as nouns, as things that they have. For them, if feelings are things they have, then it follows that when they are unpleasant feelings, they're things to be gotten rid of. But this is impossible, since to feel is actually a verb, a way of being, not a noun:
To feel is to be affected, an un-choosable way of being.
One result of viewing feeling as a thing believes that a feeling is something ethereal, unsubstantial; that is, that we have neutral bodies through which we choose to experience, or not experience, intangible feeling. However, to feel is always visceral, incarnate; it always involves our whole selves. Our troubled bodies are the very means through which our distressed being becomes manifest (and, therefore, remediable); to subdue feeling is to subdue ourselves.
People often come into therapy confused by how they are feeling. They believe that their being distressed means that something is wrong with them, that in some way they are defective, inadequate. As a result, they search—often desperately—for some way to keep from feeling as they do. Since this effort is inevitably futile, it is self-defeating. It can provide short-lived relief, at best, but is more likely to lead, in a vicious cycle, to diminishing confidence about being able to gain lasting relief, and increasing fear and anxiety about failing.
If how we feel is an un-choosable fact of life, then how we feel can never be wrong (no more than blue eyes or blond hair can be wrong)—even though we have been blamed, shamed and threatened for feeling as we do (that is, for being who we are). And, if we are to achieve more abiding relief, increasing confidence and diminishing fear and anxiety, we must risk acknowledging/experiencing/expressing the way in which we are affected; we must dwell with, focus on, be present to, let in, even celebrate the ways in which we are affected.
Attending in this way to how we feel can be extremely valuable; it can instruct us about what we are trying to accomplish, how important it is to us and the extent of our success or failure. Consequently, it can help us discover how to minister to ourselves most effectively. So, rather than try to deny, ignore, distract ourselves from, or choke down how we feel (which, ultimately, must fail), it is in our best interest to live out, live through how we're affected, perhaps most especially when we are distressed.
Although we do not choose how we feel, we are not helpless; we can choose how—and how well—we will take care of our affected selves. For example, if we discover that we are anxious about the possibility of failing a course, we can hire a tutor, study longer, study with a friend, drop the course, take an incomplete, ask the teacher for help, and so on.
We use the verb 'to feel' in a number of distinctly different, yet related, ways:
1. We frequently use it to describe a conclusion we have drawn about someone else (e.g., "I feel that she is rude." The word "that" immediately following the word "feel" clearly shows that this is how it is being used.).
2. Sometimes, we use it to describe something someone else does to us (e.g., "I feel rejected"). Here, we are implying, instead of actually stating, how we feel ("I feel hurt," "I feel scared") when, for instance, someone rejects us.
3. We also use the word "feel" to indicate how we are affected, although we are actually stifling how we feel (e.g., "I feel angry," spoken through a clenched jaw). The clenched jaw says, "I'm so angry with you that I have to hold myself back; in reality, the clenched jaw conceals; it attempts to insinuate strong feeling to the other person while avoiding actually being as fully angry/hurt/scared as is true.
4. There are times when what we say we feel is dissonant with how we appear: Sometimes what we say we feel is contradicted by our appearance (e.g., "I feel angry," spoken with a smile); or, is accompanied by our appearing to be unaffected; at other times, we appear to feel a particular way, even while denying it.
Most of us don't realize that there is a great deal amiss in these situations: In all of them, we are both fleeing and pretending so as to keep from realizing, experiencing and expressing how and how much we are affected, as though we can get beyond our distresses through force of will.
All feeling occurs in relationship to someone else. Thus, our pretenses are also deceits. As a result, in misinforming or not informing others, we alienate ourselves from them, as well as make their journeys (and our own) more confusing and difficult.
We seem to believe that if we can keep from experiencing and expressing how we feel then we are finished with it. Unfortunately for us, whenever emotional expression is aborted (e.g., for fear of hurting someone or of being punished or abandoned), it continuously "strives" to be realized. As a result, it must be actively and concretely withheld (e.g., with a frozen smile, or held breath). Such holdings-back will continue endlessly, even for many decades or a whole lifetime, unless and until the interrupted "movement" is completed.
Choking things back exacts further costs which are directly proportional to the extent of one's withholding: Doing so is painful, consumes a great deal of "energy" and compels considerable attention, which are then no longer available for creating our lives. This renders us anxious, because we are moved to act at the same time that we see ourselves as neither having a right to act, nor being adequate to do so.
To be intensely affected is often described pejoratively: It is called childish, immature, weak, sissyish, an indication of inadequacy, a "breaking down," or being "out-of-control," "emotional," or "too sensitive." In fact, recognizing, acknowledging and honestly expressing how we are affected is human. It demonstrates strength and maturity, especially in a culture as anti- feeling as ours, which regards it as dangerous (when, in fact, only its suppression is harmful).
Feeling is reputed to be irrational, too. In reality, it is the most rational of experiences. For example, being sad, scared or anxious bespeaks failure or loss with regard to something or someone which one values: Being sad is a response to loss which has already occurred (e.g., of a hope, a friend or, even, a favorite sweater), while being scared is an anticipation of loss (e.g., my fear as I am falling and anticipate being harmed) and being anxious expresses anticipated loss of worth in another's eyes (e.g., when I hand in a hastily written report which 1 imagine may define me as inept in my boss' eyes). Conversely, being excited and joyful acknowledges success and desired gain (e.g., excitement expresses anticipated gain and joy is a realization of important and previously uncertain success).
These experiencings/expressings are fundamentally neither flights nor pretenses, neither immature nor irrational, neither excessive nor dangerous. Here, one's being affected is lived-through, lived-out, fully articulated (without reserve or self-abasement, which are strategies for magically fleeing from fearful possibilities). This is a true surrender to, and acceptance of the way things are. As such, it is a transcendent, arresting experience for participant and witness alike, which heals both.
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©1998 Charles C. Kearse Ph.D. • Empowering People
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