THE GIFT OF FEELING

Oh, how exited I was to see a movie address the importance of our Feelings! I have spent much of my lifetime, helping clients understand the importance of emotional intelligence and learning to have a relationship with their feelings. We come into this world with the ability to feel. We were created with tear ducts which implies crying is a good and important thing. To feel means we are alive. So many are afraid of their feelings and certainly afraid to express them, and then they wonder why no one understands them.
In the movie Inside Out, which you need to see if you have not, the importance of our feelings is so amazingly demonstrated through the eyes of a young girl who is experiencing a major life transition.
Of course everyone in the audience begins to see themselves and we remember our own childhoods when we were just longing for someone to understand what we were feeling and dealing with and simply hear us and validate those feelings.
Here is the deal, our feelings are our greatest teachers and help us to navigate life.
Joy is the foundation for we are all pure joy when we are born. It keeps us moving forward and grounded in all that matters to us. Fear helps us to protect ourselves. It tells us to beware and to not walk in front of the train. It keeps us safe. Sadness helps us remember and honor that which we love and that which matters to us. It is the feeling we must feel in order to move on. Anger is the self esteem feeling that says it is not ok to hurt me or devalue me. It helps us to walk away and to set boundaries. Guilt tells us we aren't God and that we do and will make mistakes but it also tells us to change things that we feel bad about doing. Infants are all about feelings. They laugh and cry and scream and yell and smile again in a 30 minute time span. Somewhere along the way adults start telling kids in verbal and non verbal ways to "not feel". When a parent tells a child to not cry, they are basically saying please stop making me feel bad. When we tell any child or adult that they shouldn't feel a certain way, we have stopped the communication flow and have totally invalidated that person's experience. When feelings are expressed in their natural way, they will not be stuffed and shoved away. When we don't express our feelings in a natural and normal way we create anxiety and depression and rage, because at some point those repressed feelings will come out and they will probably come out sideways and inappropriately. Intimacy is about telling our greatest joys and our greatest fears. It is how we connect human to human.
Embrace your feelings and trust them and help all those you care for feel emotionally safe to process through life's ups and downs by feeling and honoring their feelings.
Stay well All!