Why do we find it so difficult to feel certain feelings?

It is not enough to think about feelings. It is essential to feel them so as to gain the ability to feel. Feelings are our humanity ~ Arthur Janov

Why do we find it so difficult to feel certain feelings? We hang onto the “good” ones for dear life and avoid the “bad” ones for dear life!! Neither approach creates ease and flow, the first creates stagnation and the latter, blockages. When we feel good, others usually don't have an issue with it, but if we feel less than good, others can find it hard to handle and we can feel judged or criticised. We think this is about us because of our baggage, but most likely they are being triggered by our feelings, usually because they have disowned those very feelings. We, on the other hand are triggered by their judgements and criticisms and feel bad and wrong for feeling the way we do, which most likely is a pattern that we keep repeating. We will try and distance our self from feelings that feel bad and uncomfortable and feelings that seem to invite criticism from others. What this adds up to is a denial of our humanity and our ability and gift to be able to feel anything and everything.

If, when we were young, certain feelings were not accepted, criticised and shamed, we will suppress them, we will do anything to feel safe within our family so as not to feel/be rejected or abandoned. Many of us carry these fears of feeling certain feelings into adulthood, associating them with the danger of not being loved, accepted or safe. We will find it really hard, if not impossible, to give a voice to these feelings, we'll deny them, bury them, avoid them, distract our self from them, do whatever we have to do to not feel them. But life won't let us get away with this, we'll eventually be called upon to make our true feelings known, even if only to our self. If we refuse to feel our feelings, our bodies will do the talking and feeling for us, our bodies never lie. That unfelt energy has to go somewhere and it's our bodies who usually take it on for us. Without the priceless feedback from our emotions and feelings we would find it very difficult to navigate through life. We wouldn't be able to feel touched by beautiful music and we wouldn't fear going near the edge of a cliff. Feelings give our life meaning and context, how could we attribute meaning to anything without being able to feel?

In his book Ageless Body Timeless Mind, Deepak Chopra describes hurt “as the most basic negative feeling”. He goes on to say that:

Coming to the moment by putting your attention on the pain allows you to release the pain as soon as it occurs. This release occurs naturally- it is what the body wants to do- and attention is the healing power that triggers it. Putting attention on your feelings gets you closer to the state of witnessing; you observe the pain without getting wrapped up in all the secondary blame, avoidance, and denial that usually follows. As you learn to say, "I feel hurt", and really be with that feeling, more openness will develop. the emotions that frighten us are the complex ones, because they overwhelm the natural release mechanism. You cannot simply release guilt or depression. They are secondary formations that arose once you forgot how to release hurt. The more hurt you honestly feel, the more comfortable you will be with pain, because the ability to release it will grow. As this happens, you will feel easier about all your other emotions. (To a blocked mind, feeling 'positive' emotions such as love and trust is often just as difficult as feeling 'negative' emotions such as hate and distrust. Both are elauded by old unresolved hurts). Feeling easy with your emotions means that you won't get entangled in other people's. 

Another fantastic read on the subject of feelings is, Biology of Love, by Arthur Janov, he writes:

Ideas cannot change feelings. Only feelings can. This seemingly simple notion has profound implications. For if we are trying to regain our humanity, we need to regain our feelings; and we cannot do that through the mode of ideas alone. To regain feeling one must fully experience all the hurt blocking it, and bring the pain to conscious awareness. Then an "idea" can make changes, when it flows out of feelings. Conscious awareness strips the unconscious of its power to direct behaviour. Ideas and feelings reside in different places in the brain. We must not try to make one level do the work of another level. We must not attempt to use ideas to replace feelings. The feeling of feeling involves specific structures in the brain such as the hippocampus and amygdala. Ideas about those feelings are processed in the top-level cortex, specifically the left hemisphere, forward part of the brain. If we use the frontal cortex alone to feel, we are in trouble. The most we can expect is a crying "about", an adult looking back at childhood, instead of a child actually feeling her hurts.

Reacting and Responding

When we react we are not in the present moment. We are re-acting/acting again/back or against something. As Albert Einstein said, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." We react when we're triggered, and very often it's a knee jerk reaction where we return to an old conditioned state which needs healing and resolving.

The first step is to be aware. When you're mindful you notice, in the moment, that you are re-acting, which is when you move into responding instead. This brings you immediately into the present moment, where you can act from a position of clarity and authentic power.

A feeling about a feeling

dominos, originally uploaded by greg westfall..

When you have a feeling that leads to another feeling, that leads to another feeling and maybe even another feeling, tap on the feeling(s) you have about the original feelings first. In practice this might look like you experience anger, the minute you feel angry you start to feel guilty and then you start to feel disloyal. This can lead to confusion, overwhelm and not knowing where to start so we end up not tapping at all!!

The feeling to start with, is the last feeling, in this case, disloyalty. Disloyalty will act like a block or a fence around the original feeling that is causing you disturbance. You'll find tapping on disloyalty, and all its aspects, will naturally lead you, like dominoes falling against one another, to the next feeling and the next and so on. This way, you'll be able to collapse and dissolve the energetic charges certain feelings cause you, much more easily.Tapping diagram

Emotional Honesty

Excerpted from In the Meantime by Iyanla Vanzant:

Emotional honesty begins with being able to acknowledge what you feel. It is the way by which we honour the fact that we are emotional beings and that we do have feelings. This is something adults often fail to realise about children, that they are emotional beings. Consequently, as adults, we fail to recognise it about ourselves. It is not always necessary for you to announce to others what you feel. You must, however, allow yourself to feel it. Only through the experience of what you feel are you able to stay in touch with your inner self. Once you are in touch you will realise that all feelings are neutral, and that they derive their meaning from the energy that we give them. In essence, there are no good or bad feelings unless we tell ourselves they are good or bad. The actual conflict or confusion we experience is knowing the difference between acknowledging what we feel and the appropriate expression of that knowledge. Being able to identify and acknowledge what you feel is a sign of emotional health and stability. It empowers you to choose the appropriate response. When, on the other hand, you get stuck judging the right and wrong of your emotional experiences, to the degree that you deny having them, you are painting yourself into a very tight corner, an emotional tight spot that can often lead to inappropriate expressions.

Whether or not you are involved in a love relationship, emotional suppression, which is a form of self-deception, does not honour you, nor does it honour those with whom you interact in any way. Self-deception is failure to acknowledge the truth about yourself or others. If you cannot accept truth, you are in denial. When you are involved in something as powerful as loving yourself and others, the attempt to deny the depths of your experience creates what you know as pain. In the meantime, while you don't have this figured out, you are prone to do everything in your power to deny what you feel, believing that denial will keep you from speaking the painful truth. Important love rule here: acknowledgement and expression are not the same thing! Acknowledgement means having the courage to admit to yourself what you are feeling. Expression means having the presence of mind and the courage to let someone else know. They are two active reminders that love does not strip you of your decision-making faculties or the power to make a choice.

Say the unsayable ...

... even if only to yourself. The very thing you don't want to say, admit to, or face, is one of your greatest healing opportunities. By naming it and tapping on it, you will dissolve the huge disruption it is causing in your energy system. Tapping diagram.

Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships ~ Charles Simic

Momentum

We can lose momentum easily if we don't feed our spirits as well as we feed our bodies. We need to look after what is important to us. Try the tapping script below to keep you connected and tuned in. Tapping diagram.

Enthusiasm is the energy and force that builds literal momentum of the human soul and mind ~ Bryant H. McGill

Even though I lose momentum, I accept myself

Even though I can't seem to stick to things that I really like, I accept where I am

Even though I sometimes forget what's really important to me, I accept myself

TH I'm losing momentum
EB With important things
SE Why?
UE I don't know
UN I need to keep feeding my spirit
UC With things that matter
CB I need to surround myself
UA With reminders

TH Of what's important to me
EB I want to dissolve
SE All resistance
UE To my good
UN I know it's there
UC I just need to connect
CB And stay connected
UA To my source

TH Of energy
EB Because it's who I am
SE I am that
UE I know it
UN I feel it
UC It is me
CB We're connected
UA Even if I forget sometimes

Hear

Excerpted from Until Today by Iyanla Vanzant

If you really want to hear someone when they trust you enough to talk to you, don't listen to the words, hear how the words are spoken. All too often, we cannot hear the words because we come to the conversation with our own ideas about who people are. At the same time, we are determined not to let them see who we are. In order for effective and valued communication to occur, you must believe that you are safe, and you must offer that same safety to the other person.

If you want to communicate with another person, you must hear their fear and not dismiss it. You must hear a person's pain and not overlook it. It is important to hear a person's guilt and not buy into it. You must be ready to hear a person's anger and not fuel it. Most people need to know that they have been heard. Listen to their body. Listen to their eyes. Listen to colours they are wearing, they way they touch their hair. Listen to the volume. Listen to the tempo. If you really want to hear someone, open your heart and listen to their soul.

Until today, you may not have been able to hear what people are saying to you. Just for today, close your eyes when you are in a conversation. Hear every word that is spoken through the centre of your heart.

Conflicted parts

A conflict begins and ends in the hearts and minds of people, not in the hilltops ~ Amos Oz

Conflict is very often at the core of an issue. One part of you wants, feels or does something and another part is in conflict about that. Any conflict has the effect of stalling any progress or resolution of an issue, so it's very useful to ask yourself whether you have any conflict about the issue and tap on the conflict itself. For example, if you learned at 4 years of age that not only was it not acceptable to express anger, but you did not even have the right to feel angry in the first place, you most likely will have conflict about anger later on in life. As a result, you may suppress anger, feel guilty when anger arises which compounds an initially simple issue of being able to feel anger and express it. Learning how to fully feel and express a feeling, engages our natural release mechanism for resolving painful emotions.

Some sample set up statements you could try are:

Even though a part of me feels angry about ... another part feels disloyal for feeling angry and I completely accept how both parts feel

Even though I feel conflicted about ... I accept that's how I feel right now

Even though I don't like the part that feels this way, I choose to understand what is behind that feeling