The Wisdom of Feelings

“I really don‘t like feeling this way.”

This is a comment that therapists hear fairly often.  You may have said this to yourself.  Anger, anxiety, pain, depression, despair, sadness—these feelings can indeed be very difficult and at times can seem acutely unbearable.  Moreover, the statement “I don’t like feeling this way” often signals that you may have a particular relationship with those feelings, a relationship that is built upon deeply held unconscious beliefs about those feelings.  In my experience, those beliefs are embedded in the questions clients ask me when they are having strong uncomfortable feelings:  “Is there a pill I can take for this?”  Or “can’t you do something to help me feel better?”  Many people believe that aversive feelings should be pushed away or resolved as quickly as possible. 

Of course, the therapist can help.  And the process will take time.

 “I really don’t like feeling this way” may signal that there is a story related to the feelings.  The story can often be distilled:  “feelings are bad and are to be gotten rid of as soon as possible.”  Too often, the story about feelings becomes the problem.  If this is what you tell yourself, you may be responding more to the story than the actual situation that gave rise to the feeling.  If the story is negative (which it usually is), attention may be misdirected:  you focus on the story about the feelings and are unable to clearly see the conditions that gave rise to them.  You try to create an ending to the story, but may miss resolving the actual problem. 

Trying to push your feelings away complicates the situation.  When you react to your feelings by pushing them away, those feelings are likely to grow in strength.  While you may temporarily feel better,  you're more likely to end up prolonging and intensifying the pain.  Moreover, the negative story you tell yourself about your feelings will inevitably feed and strengthen the aversion.  You can start to feel overwhelmed, and the impulse to flee or otherwise escape starts to take hold.  There are many escape routes: some people turn to alcohol or pills to feel better while others seek escape in compulsive work, sex or eating.

As counter-intuitive as it seems, it is usually better to lean into your feelings, to accept them as signals that something unsettling has happened.  There is wisdom to be found in your feelings, and strong feelings lead to the deepest insights—when you are able to tolerate and learn from feelings.  And learning from them may mean letting go of the stories you tell yourself about them. 

Instead of impulsively pushing feelings away, it is better to notice that they’ve simply arisen in response to a situation.  And instead of telling yourself a story about your feelings, it is better to ask yourself a few questions: 

·         What is the feeling?  Does the feeling seem to be out of proportion to the situation which gave rise to it?  Sometimes when feelings are especially intense, the intensity may be a signal that the situation is triggering an unconscious memory of an event similar to what you're experiencing now.  Feelings that are out-of-proportion often contain elements of displaced feelings and stories that belong to the past.   

·         What thoughts are associated with the feeling? Paying attention to the thoughts that arise with the feelings may give you a clue about how your beliefs may be contributing to the story.

·         Where in your body do you experience the feeling?  Is there a story about those body sensations?  Memories of old, unhealed traumas are often “stored” in the body.  Those stories must be attended to and processed so that healing can occur. Trauma is best addressed in psychotherapy.

·         What do you believe about your feelings?  Strong, aversive feelings are often associated with negative beliefs:  “I can’t handle this,” “I’m helpless,”  “I’m flawed”  are commonly held beliefs.  Negative beliefs about yourself and your feelings are likely to cloud your perceptions and intensify the impulse to escape.  Negative beliefs may impede effective problem-solving.

Accepting that painful feelings will occasionally arise is a good first step to better managing them.  No one is exempt from emotional discomfort.  However, it is also important to recognize that uncomfortable feelings rise and ebb over time.  This is actually an important point:  Feelings are not permanent.  Although the intensity of your feelings may evoke an unconscious belief that you will have the feeling forever, the reality is that feelings change over time--even from moment to moment.  This is good news.  Knowing that feelings rise and fall can provide the basis for changing your relationship with your feelings and strengthening your ability to cope.

Just noticing your feelings without telling yourself a story about them is not so simple.  Mindfulness and deep self-awareness takes practice.  Becoming aware of the stories you tell yourself takes practice.  Psychotherapy is a very effective process by which to develop awareness and practice those skills. 

A skilled therapist will also help you get to the roots of your suffering in such a way as to help you differentiate past from present and evaluate what is actually happening in the present moment.  A skilled therapist will help you move away from trauma or the negative beliefs about yourself so that you have power to constructively manage your vulnerabilities.  Again, the process takes time. 

Ultimately, psychotherapy will help you change your relationship with your feelings.  In addition to helping you develop strategies for managing your feelings, therapy helps you develop the ability to become aware of the origins of your feelings and the stories you tell yourself about those feelings.  Therapy can help you better evaluate the situations that elicit strong feelings, develop greater clarity about them, and make better choices in response to the situations that evoke intense feelings. 

No one likes feeling aversive feelings.  But your relationship with your feelings need not be averse.  

Hungry for Connection

Over the course of the past several months, I’ve written about self-medication—medicating those uncomfortable feelings that arise in response to life’s challenges. One of the feelings that often arises in psychotherapy, especially in the treatment of depression, is the feeling of emptiness. However, when I ask clients to try to describe their experiences of emptiness, their responses often reflect very different feeling states: numbness, the feeling of being overwhelmed, helplessness, paralysis. Indeed more often than not, the emptiness clients describe is not the absence of feeling. Rather, it is often quite the opposite: at its core, it is a painful hunger for emotional connection and nourishment. Emptiness signals a desire that has been subverted. Responses to emptiness, emotional hunger or deprivation can take many dysfunctional--even destructive--forms: addictions, compulsive behaviors (i.e., compulsive shopping or spending, gambling, compulsive sexual behaviors). Indeed, people with addiction often struggle with acute feelings of hungry emptiness—using substances or other compulsive behaviors to sate the hunger. Unfortunately, filling the emptiness with substances or compulsive behaviors usually fails because the substances (or compulsive behaviors) are poor substitutes for nourishing emotional connections. Indeed, there are never enough drugs (or alcohol, or sex, or money, or material goods) to satisfy the hunger.

The themes of emotional abundance and deprivation thread through psychotherapy sessions. Early family experiences with emotional deprivation reverberate throughout our lives, coloring our experiences of ourselves, our relationships, and the world. How our basic emotional needs were met (or not met) in early childhood form us and inform our beliefs about ourselves, our relationships, and our world. These beliefs are largely unconscious, but exert a powerfully out-sized influence on how we live. These unconscious dynamics inform the decisions we make for ourselves and drive a great deal of our behavior.

Moreover, the experience of deprivation brought about by prolonged confinements, profound losses, isolating illnesses, and other traumas magnifies the experiences of hungry emptiness, especially when the trauma puts you is in a position of having to actively suppress or repress your needs. When these experiences are coupled with earlier experiences of deprivation, the hunger--the need--can seem overwhelming.

One of the goals of therapeutic work is to identify and address unmet emotional needs--those gnawing hungers, the emptiness, the sense of deprivation. And as work on those issues progresses, other issues related to the theme of emotional deprivation emerge. Indeed, a question that will eventually arise: “what will be enough?” What emotional nourishment do I need that will ameliorate the pangs of hunger? How much emotional nourishment do I need? Will the nourishment I receive today be enough? Obviously, figuring out how to meet one’s emotional needs is also important, but the question of adequacy is one that also comes into focus.

Seeking emotional sustenance is really the whole of therapeutic work. And meaningful answers to these questions will vary from person to person and will probably emerge only over a long period of time.

It seems reasonable to start with the here-and-now. What can I do to meet my needs today? What will it look like to have my emotional needs met? How will it feel to have my needs met? To whom do I turn to meet my needs? Who do I trust with my needs? How can I meet my needs without engaging in an addictive or compulsive behavior, without getting hurt or without being betrayed? How can I manage when my needs are not met?

However at some point, the therapeutic work must turn to the past, looking at the origins of the addictive/compulsive behaviors and the feelings of emptiness/hunger that drive them. Approaching the search for origins with curiosity with a therapist can yield surprising insights, lead to the ability to accept your emotional needs, and even find new ways of addressing and satisfying them. Indeed, the connections made in therapy with the therapist and with yourself may open paths on to new connections that sate those hungers.