How To Feel
Hello there.
As I've said before,
we are smack dab in the middle of the emotional Dark age.
We all have emotions.
We don't understand them.
This is kind of a problem.
Why?
Because the heart of our experience here on Earth is,
the way we feel.
When we first come into this life,
we experience the world entirely through felt perception.
We feel the world before we think about the world.
So, obviously, there's a serious problem
if we can't feel.
It's almost like we're not alive.
Our relationship with our own emotions,
and our relationship with other people's emotions,
begins in childhood.
But we are being raised currently and have been raised,
by parents who don't have any idea,
how to deal with their own emotions,
much less parent a child's emotional being.
So what do parents do?
They listen to the mainstream advice,
which has nothing to do with emotionally parenting children,
and has everything to do with discipline.
it has everything to do with creating a good kid.
In other words, most parenting advice
focuses on how to correct misbehavior,
whilst disregarding the feelings that underlie
and cause the misbehavior.
Regardless of how far we've progressed,
the goal of parenting is still to have a compliant and obedient child,
not to raise a healthy adult.
The goal is to raise a child that is good.
And our justice system takes the exact same approach
with regards to misbehavior.
We're concerned with correcting misbehavior and creating good citizens,
whilst being unconcerned with the feelings that motivate such behavior.
Good parenting Involves emotion.
Good relationships involve emotion.
Today most parents make three crucial mistakes.
And yep, you can pretty much guarantee,
they're the very same mistakes your parents made with you
Step 1. They disapprove of their child's emotions.
Number 2. They dismiss their child's emotions.
Number 3. They give no guidance relative to their child's emotions.
The parent who disapproves of their child's emotions,
is critical of their children's display of negative emotion,
and reprimand or punish for emotional expression.
The parent who dismisses their child's emotions,
disregards them as important,
ignores their child's emotions,
or worse, trivializes their child's emotions.
And the parent who offers no guidance,
may empathize with their child's emotions,
but does not set limits on behavior or assist the child,
in understanding and coping with their emotion.
The most damaging aspect of emotional dismissal and disapproval,
is that when a parent disapproves or dismisses of their child's emotion,
the child begins to accept the parent's estimation of the event,
and learns to doubt his or her own judgment.
As a result, the child loses confidence in themselves.
When emotional dysfunction rules the relationship,
the child learns that they have no right to feel how they feel.
In short, they learn that it's wrong,
to feel the way that they feel.
Now here's the Crux;
the child believes that if it's wrong to feel the way they feel,
but they feel that way, something must be wrong with them.
Because this is how we were taught to treat emotion,
this is how we treat emotion in and of ourselves,
and also with other people in today's world.
What do we do when people come to us with powerful emotion?
We dismiss it, we deny it, we try to bypass it,
we do anything we can to get away from it.
We fail to develop true intimacy with each other.
We have no idea how to emotionally relate to each other.
We have throw patience for the emotional needs of others.
We see emotions and feelings as weakness.
We call people who display emotions "sensitive".
And as a result, our adult relationships,
are completely emotionally unhealthy.
When we learn, one way or the other,
over the course of our lives, that it's not okay to feel the way that we feel,
or to have emotion in general,
we have one particular coping strategy,
that is particularly damaging.
It is, that we reject, deny, disown, suppress and bypass,
our emotion.
To the degree that the subconscious mind
now takes over, for emotion in its entirety.
And as a result, we stopped feeling.
I should say, we stopped being conscious
of the fact that we're feeling.
At a minor level, this is like
a perpetual numbness and/or suppression.
At a more serious level, this is a dissociation.
Your feelings are not only the key
to good relationships with yourself and others,
They're your guidance system in life.
So learning how to feel,
is as critical as learning how to use a compass in the open sea.
The better you are at feeling,
the deeper your connection with life will be.
The better you are at feeling, the more clarity you have
The better you are at feeling, the faster you will heal.
The better you are at feeling, the more aware you are of what you really want.
The better you are at feeling,
the more sensitive your internal navigation system will be,
and thus the easier will be to come into alignment,
and thus experience the kind of life that reflects,
that state of alignment.
So here are some tips,
that will help you start becoming aware of your feeling again.
Step 1. You have to admit to where you are.
You've got to start by saying:
"All right, you know what, I have a real hard time understanding
what I'm feeling, or feeling in general."
"In fact, I feel pretty numb."
You've got to be aware that you're not really aware of how you feel,
in order to turn your awareness deliberately towards feeling,
and begin to feel again.
Reflect back on your childhood, and your life up to this point.
What was it that caused you to shut down to emotion?
To disconnect from your emotion, and to stop feeling?
When did you learn,
that there was some threat,
or risk involved with feeling emotions?
What experiences were you adapting to?
I'll tip you off;
Lack of emotional awareness and connection is most often associated,
with what we call "An Avoidant Attachment Pattern" in children.
Which of course, develops into a "Dismissing Attachment Pattern" in adults.
This situation develops
when a child does not get consistent or reliable emotional support
from care-givers, and adapts,
by emphasizing his or her self-sufficiency.
An avoidant attachment Pattern, does not necessarily imply
that parents were negligent completely,
but it does mean that parents or other significant care-givers,
exhibited a dismissing attachment Pattern themselves.
And that they taught the child that they were not reliable,
specially emotionally, and so relying on them
and depending on that connection and intimacy with them,
was emotionally dangerous.
A child might respond in childhood or early adulthood,
by distancing from that parent.
Adopting a dismissive stance towards the relationship,
and adopting the belief:
"Look, I'm all good. I don't need others."
"They aren't really the most important thing to me,
so I'm pretty fine on my own.
2. Practice coming back into your body.
A lot of times, when we have no access to how we are feeling,
what's happening is that we are disembodied.
We are taught in our fast-paced world,
to always engage with the external world.
That is where our focus is.
And when we are so focused with the external world
that we abandon our internal world, we lose our ability
to understand how we are feeling.
So, what I want you to do, is to imagine that your skin
separates your internal world,
from your external world.
And you are going to imagine bringing your energy,
let's call it your soul, or whatever you want,
your consciousness, back into your body.
I have to note that if you are ever unsafe in your body,
in childhood or during your life,
this motivation to live outside your body,
becomes stronger and stronger
because the body is no longer a safe Zone.
But we need to slow down,
And consciously imagine
that our consciousness is sinking or dropping back into the body.
Massaging or holding your ankles and feet while you do this,
is a good idea, that can ground you back to the physical dimension.
Lying in warm water can assist in this process as well.
And one of my personal favorite techniques is that as you take a breath,
you imagine consciously breathing that breath
sort of implosively
into the body.
~ Deep breath in and out ~
That helps your consciousness settle into the body.
3. It is tempting to think that something within you is so broken
or so very deep within you, these particular emotions,
that there is no access to them.
that something is lost to you.
This is never the case.
You always have access to your emotions.
And they're always giving you perfectly accurate feedback,
regardless of whether you're aware of that feedback or not.
your emotions are always giving you accurate feedback
to your own personal inner and deepest truth
about whatever situation that you are encountering.
So what we have to do is to come back to this inner truth.
Come back to this sensation that is trying to reflect you,
your in truth.
So come back to that idea again,
that your skin separates the internal world
from the external world.
What you've got to do, is to begin checking in with,
your internal world.
Checking in with, how you feel.
Many of us simply bypass how we feel so quickly,
with our mind and actions, that we don't stop long enough
to actually become aware of how we feel.
so the first thing I want you to do, is to buy yourself a little journal
something you can carry with you throughout the day,
and I want you to make sure you have a timer.
This is the technology age,
I'm pretty sure you can figure out how to even do that with your phone.
I want you to set your timer at random intervals throughout the day.
and when that timer goes off,
that's your time to take your awareness to the internal world,
and to see how you feel,
and record how you feel in that journal
at each interval.
These feelings could come with labels
like emotions, such as shame or joy.
Now if you're confused about emotions,
you can print off a sheet of paper that lists
all the various emotions,
and then when the timer goes off,
try to select the one that most represents
your inner state at that time.
Or feelings can just be pure sensations,
like, tightness or swelling or buzzing.
After you get comfortable just reporting
your feelings or your emotions,
you can move to the next step of awareness,
which is to, once you're aware of the feeling,
try to become aware of what that feeling is reflecting.
What that feeling is responding to.
For example, let's say that you checked in with yourself,
and you felt a sensation of shame.
Maybe you would become aware of the fact
that you've been feeling that sensation of shame
ever since your boss put you on the spot,
in the company meeting this morning.
4. Make use of particularly strong emotion reactions that you have
throughout the course of your day and your life.
You want to use those strong emotional reactions,
as if they themselves, were alarm bells saying:
"Hey, pay attention to me."
"Something really important to know here."
Turn your attention inward and sit with the emotion.
give it your undivided attention and unconditional presence,
instead of trying to bypass ignore fix or heal these emotions,
embrace the feelings and emotions entirely,
no matter how painful they may be.
Be with the feelings and emotions instead of trying to change them.
Listen to them and what they need you to know.
Observe the sensations and feelings and emotions in your body.
They will intensify as you focus on them.
I want you to breathe continuously,
without unnecessary pauses between breaths.
Breathe in and out your nose.
Notice the way you feel.
Your entire goal is to be with these feelings.
Which is to fully be with yourself,
the way you truly are right here and now.
For more detailed instructions about how to do this process,
watch my video on YouTube titled:
How To Heal The Emotional Body
5. Go ahead and create feeling experiences for yourself,
both subtle and not so subtle.
The goal of this entire practice, is to figure out how you feel,
in each of these differing situations.
Here are some examples of feeling experiences,
You can engage in,
so that you can become aware of the reaction
within your internal world, to that external experience.
You could ride a ride at an amusement park,
watch different movies that are designed to elicit different feelings within you.
hang out with different people
from different cultures and social groups,
climb a mountain,
have your skin rubbed with something soft,
get into an argument or another emotionally charged situation,
swim in the ocean,
get stuck in traffic,
intentionally try to, or allow yourself to feel someone else's pain,
visit a homeless shelter or a dog pound.
See if you can notice
not just the extreme emotional reactions
you get to these intense experiences,
but also the subtle ones you get for more mundane activities.
6. Watch how your emotion directly responds to thought.
So, I want you to deliberately think a thought
that is absolutely horrible,
and then, watch your emotional reaction to that thought.
Now conversely, I want you to think a thought
that is absolutely wonderful,
and watch how your emotion responds to that thought.
I want you to play around with different thoughts.
Now thoughts can come in the form of images,
things like, I can see in my mind's eye a coral reef,
or they can come In the shape of words,
such as the thought:
"Oh my God, I'm so stupid."
I want you to see your emotional reaction
to all kinds of different thoughts,
especially thoughts that are on polar ends of the spectrum.
7. You've got to address
what you think is going to happen negatively,
if you do start to feel.
You have to unveil the positive intention behind not feeling.
The reality of this life is,
we only do things that ultimately serve us.
so behind every negative experience we're having,
including not being able to feel,
there is a positive intention to continue that state.
We have to expose that positive hidden intention.
Ask yourself:
"What bad thing will happen if I feel?"
The answer may be, I will be out of control.
Then ask yourself:
"What is the hidden positive intention I have for not feeling?"
The answer might be:
"I get to be in control".
You got to make peace with or release resistance to
what you're trying to avoid by not feeling,
in order to feel.
And also, you need to alter your perspective
about getting whatever you're getting out of not feeling,
in order to allow yourself to be conscious of how you feel.
For example, you've got to release resistance the idea
of being out of control.
And/or see that feeling emotions
does not mean you're out of control.
And/or let go of the need to be in control,
in order to start feeling,
if the hidden positive intention of not feeling
is to stay in control.
By discovering the hidden positive intention
behind not feeling,
we can find other ways to fulfill those needs within us,
so that we no longer need to not feel,
in order to for example stay in control.
Or fulfill whatever need we're trying to fulfill,
by not feeling.
8. Let yourself express emotions,
that you are now aware that you feel.
Eventually down the line,
this is not just going to involve you expressing emotions in general.
It's going to involve you expressing emotions
in a meaningful way to other people.
In order to learn how to express your emotions,
feel free to watch my video on YouTube titled:
How to Express Your Emotion
9. I want you to willingly feel for,
and allow yourself to experience the intense despair
which absolutely does exist,
at the basis of your being here on earth.
There's an interesting little fact;
We live in a world where there such a thing as a cover emotion.
Cover of motion is an emotion that exists
to keep you out of a lower vibrational emotion.
You can think of cover emotions a lot like ice
that's on the top or the surface
of a very deep pool of water,
and let's say that you are able to skate on that ice
without falling through.
That's the purpose of a cover emotion.
and it just so happens,
that just like, anger as a cover emotion for fear
Numbness or lack of feeling
is in fact a cover emotion for despair.
Despair is a complete absence or loss of hope.
It is utter powerlessness.
You have to face it.
The willingness to acknowledge feel and experience that despair,
makes it so that there is no longer a purpose
for the numbness to exist.
Anytime the feeling of despair services within you,
treat it like your doorway to freedom.
Freedom from disconnection,
and your doorway to feeling.
Step 10.
Call off the guards.
Now here, I'm about to blow your cover.
If you're the kind of person who has a difficult time feeling,
nothing's really defective within you.
What's actually happening,
is that you are so incredibly good
at cutting emotions off at the pass.
That you don't even let yourself feel them.
You feel them coming,
and you do anything you can,
to not run into them.
So you've got to be aware of this process within yourself.
This is how it goes.
You use mental techniques in a very subconscious way
to remove yourself from any experience,
where you risk feeling
whatever feelings are not okay to feel.
For example,
you may immediately resort to spiritual bypassing
or minimizing events or engaging in a focus or addictive behavior
that gets your mind off of it.
You use your cognitive abilities
and your intense sense for potential emotional trouble,
to escape, before you even run into it.
Guess what?
People like you who are so good at depersonalizing,
or shall we say,
de-emotionalizing experiences,
you are in fact better than the average person,
at feeling and sensing emotion.
You are so good at it in fact,
that you see it coming so far in advance,
that you get out of the way
before it hits you on a physiological level.
You are sensitive to tiny bodily changes.
Changes in light perception,
changes in body language,
changes in skin heat and perspiration and arousal.
You are so quick to avoid the intensity of these experiences,
that you use your mind to intellectualize the experience,
which immediately cuts the charge out of the emotion.
What are you really doing?
You are shutting emotion down before it actualizes.
So what do you have to do?
You've got to do the opposite.
These strategies,
You've got to become aware of them.
You have a sixth sense
for sensing when an emotion is about to occur,
and getting out of the way of it.
So you got to choose, not to get out of the way of it.
Now, I realize what I'm asking you to do is to allow yourself
to get hit by something which scares the crap out of you.
It's a little bit like me saying:
"Look just go stand in front of the train, you're going to be fine."
I realize it's scary,
but if you really want to feel
and you want to have a life, that's the byproduct of really feeling,
you got to let the train hit you.
So see these techniques that you have,
recognized them, for warding off
or escaping from emotion before it actually actualizes,
and "call off the guards".
Instead of employing those thoughts and actions,
let yourself fully feel the hit of emotion
that you were tempted to head off at the pass.
Feeling is the hallmark of being alive.
And a life without feeling,
is no life at all.
So allow yourself
to let the feeling experience of life
flow through you completely.
And if you're scared to death to do that,
let the fear of doing that move through you completely,
and soon you will feel yourself come back to life.
Have a good week
Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte
Subtitles by the Amara.org community