Inner knowledge: how to learn to feel? Live in the present or how to start feeling life.
In my work, I often encounter clients who are completely incapable of feeling. Guys and girls, very young and older, they just never thought about the fact that they have feelings. They paid no attention to their bodily sensations. Naturally, they sometimes still notice them, but rather do not consider them. Such clients simply do not understand what it means to feel. My question is "How do you feel right now?" makes them smile or even laugh, they ask me several times what I mean, and, sort of understanding, they begin to answer the question, describing their thoughts or telling a story from life.
For such "insensitive" clients, I often suggest an experiment: close your eyes, focus on the sensations in your body, and tell me everything they feel. This experiment tends to be difficult: "I don't feel anything," clients tell me. And so when I start asking questions more specifically (are you comfortable sitting? are your hands warm or cold? Do you notice how you breathe?), it becomes possible for the client to answer me something.
The lack of sensitivity in many people is caused by the peculiarities of their upbringing. In order for a child to learn to deal with his feelings, he needs the support of his parents. However, often parents ignore the feelings of their child, as if they are giving him a signal that his feelings are not important, they should not be taken into account and rely on them.
In addition, the emotional education of boys and girls also has its own characteristics. As you know, many parents do not welcome when their sons are too sensitive - "they will not grow out of a real man". And, conversely, in other families, boys should not feel anger and show aggression, because then "a bandit will grow out of a child." For girls, anger and anger are also forbidden, but they must be friendly, sweet and friendly even with those people who may be unpleasant to them. Many children are basically not allowed to be angry with their parents because "it's bad."
Often parents are overprotective, not allowing their children to make choices based on their own feelings and desires, even where this could well be the case. "Which doll do you want: in a red dress or in a yellow one?" “Which fairy tale do you want to hear: about a bunny or about a hedgehog?” What cartoon do you want to watch? Depriving children of the opportunity to choose and making it for the child, an adult deprives him of the opportunity to learn to be sensitive to himself, to listen to his desires, to notice his interest. And now, having matured, such a “person insensitive to himself” cannot even answer such a simple question as “What movie do you want to see?” There is no way to hear yourself and feel your desire: a person is faced with a feeling of emptiness. That’s why it’s important that parents pay attention to the child’s feelings, help him clarify his feelings by asking about them (“Are you cold?” “Are you comfortable”), and also describe what is happening to him (“I understand, that you are offended”, “It looks like you are angry”, “I see that you are scared”) and with others (“Your dad was upset”).
A person who has lost contact with his feelings cannot rely on himself. He does not hear the signals of his body or, hearing, does not trust them. He does not know what gives him pleasure or displeasure, he does not understand whether he is doing something of his own accord, or because it is necessary.
The life of “insensitive” people is filled with various things that they do automatically, sometimes without feeling at all whether they need it. Yes, they find a rational justification for everything, logically and consistently describing all the benefits that they will receive as a result. But these descriptions, made from the head, are not at all filled with pleasant feelings: excitement, interest, excitement. Having achieved their goals, they do not feel satisfaction and pleasure from the result.
Skimming our sensitivity, we may one day face backfire: we bought a thing that we didn’t need at all, took on a project that we weren’t interested in at all, or we communicate with people who are unpleasant to us.
We may forbid ourselves from feeling strong emotions, simply because we are afraid that they will overwhelm us, that we will not cope with them. Having once smashed the phone against the wall in a fit of rage, we are afraid that we will not be able to stop contact with another person in time, causing him harm. Or, having failed once in love and left with a broken heart, we simply cannot afford to love again, so as not to experience more pain. That is, a person consciously chooses to give up feelings that are unbearable for him.
Very often there is a substitution of feelings bad habits or by some actions: a person seizes, drinks down or lights up his anxiety, or, trying not to notice loneliness, fills his life with various “important” things, etc.
Every day we experience a huge number of feelings, good and bad: joy, sadness, interest, disappointment, fear, anxiety, irritation ... Pleasant feelings go unnoticed by us, they are simply lost in the cycle of various events. Unpleasant feelings get stuck in us, accumulate inside, if we do not notice them or suppress them, do not allow ourselves to experience them, controlling them. Finding no way out, feelings begin to corrode from the inside, coloring the world for us with a certain unnatural color.
One of the causes of insensitivity is the lack of training. The ability to understand your feelings, to address your feelings, is a skill that can be developed.
The first thing I would recommend to you is to focus more often on the sensations of your own body: just be aware of whether you are warm or cold, you are hungry or full, you are in a comfortable or uncomfortable position, etc. Going to bed in the evening, take a mental look around your whole body, note the sensations in different parts bodies, try to strengthen each of them, to be in it.
The second is a variety of activities that allow you to turn on and feel the body: sports, stretching, massage, swimming - all that will give you the opportunity to strengthen body signals.
Third, try to slow down the pace of your life, make more stops, give yourself the opportunity to feel every moment, take your time, live each state, and not just alternate activities automatically. Take a leisurely walk home after work, enjoy the evening, fresh air, chill.
Fourth, watch the children. Behind how they make discoveries, how they rejoice and are surprised at some simple things, with what interest and enthusiasm they make new discoveries. Try to remember yourself as a child. What did you like to do that caused a lot of pleasure and excitement? For example, you really liked to draw, or to collect puzzles. Might be worth trying again?
Fifth, get to know feelings in theory. What they are, how they are called, when they most often occur, how they are expressed and respond in the body. try
recall situations when you could feel them, how strongly these feelings were expressed in you at that moment. I am sure that if you devote enough time to this, you will discover for yourself that large quantity feelings you know.
As you begin to observe your thoughts, their flow will begin to decrease. Before, I didn’t think about anything, I just didn’t think about anything. For example, you need to call a person, I prepared for a very long time and thought and thought ... And now I don’t allow myself to waste my energy so thoughtlessly. If I’m not ready, I don’t call, without regrets and without criticizing myself. If I feel ready, I dial the number. It's the same with things, I don't think about them. I give time to "infuse" the process, appear necessary people, events begin to line up as needed. If something does not add up, for me this is a sure sign not to start thinking, but to postpone decisions and actions for now. After all, a woman should make everything easy and simple.
Stop dreaming and flying in the clouds, as everything could be. I'm talking about fruitless dreams that only take energy, but lead nowhere. You need to dream, I would say wish, but in a special state - harmony and fullness. You need to release your desire into the world, and it will come true very easily. Right desires fill you, make your eyes glow, fruitless dreams empty you. But this is a topic for a separate discussion. Subscribe to the newsletter so you don't miss out.
What will the principle "Live in the present" give?
When we are aware of our body, concentrate on our movements, our mind calms down. The female mind today is very restless. It does not allow you to relax and get real pleasure from life.
When you begin to use your body, your sensitivity and the sensations you receive will become fuller and brighter. This means that life will become happier and more diverse. Do not look for sensations on the side, they are in your body.
When you live in the present and are aware of what is happening, you are really involved in the process of communication, for example, with your child. How often our communication is reduced to feed, put to sleep, control. We seem to be nearby, but energetically very far away, therefore children get sick and behave badly, because they do not receive life-giving subtle vital energy from their mother. The fullness of communication and happiness from communication with a child can be felt if only you are fully involved in the process, your whole body, all your senses.
By using all your senses, you will be able to feel and the world, look at it, interact with it differently, getting incredible pleasure. You will begin to truly see, hear, feel everything that happens in life.
You will be able to truly experience the beauty of the world around you. How many emotions, how many new positive moments nature or animals can give. By by and large we are blind and deaf, our sight is blurred, and our ears hear only our own mental musings. We have forgotten how to be observant, attentive, to enjoy the rays of the sun, from the singing of birds, from the variety of shades, shapes, and beauty that exists in this world.
By living in the present, you will be able to enjoy and enjoy the simplest things. Notice that our life consists of simple and ordinary things, holidays, vacations and vacations take up a very small part of ordinary life.
Our mood is determined by our feelings. When we are not aware of how we feel, we are addicted to uncertainty. Start choosing feelings and your mood will improve significantly. Nothing prevents you from replacing disappointment with curiosity, anger with attention and kindness.
The process of life in the present is very creative. The more we pay attention to the good, the more it becomes in our lives.
The more you begin to be aware of your actions, deeds, motivation, feelings, thoughts, the faster you will free yourself from various mental trash which makes your life miserable and drains your energy.
“I began to return myself to reality and there was more energy. Moreover, I did not need to do this for a long time. I felt much better on the second day. It turned out that my, at first glance, harmless wandering in the clouds takes a lot of energy.
Fill your every step with meaning and positive manifestations. Do not just go out into the street, getting annoyed, but start mentally wishing good things to people. Good deeds increase your awareness, and you begin to live in the present with those people who already exist, and not sometime later, when everything changes and everyone becomes ideal and loving.
If you start feeling life, then your life will become calm, unhurried. I am not saying that there will be no movement in it, there will simply be no unnecessary fuss and haste in it. Life will become beautiful, joyful, happy, harmonious and conscious.
Only you can change your life by starting to just live it! The content and fullness of everyday life depends on you, paint it with new sensations, new feelings, colors and your female life will become perfect. It will never be boring, sad and lonely, you will not expect something special from life, understanding and feeling that your life is already special, you just need to learn to feel it, savor every moment and live from the heart every minute.
Tatyana Dzutseva.In contact with
Our therapist Margarita Shanova gives recommendations on how to invent your own language for communicating with the body, clear "emotional blockages" and start real change. We publish the transcript of the live broadcast dated January 25, 2018.
We talked a lot about how the desire to follow standards affects us, to look after the visible body, the external one. We had conversation with a makeup artist. Now let's talk about feelings from the inside.
Let's imagine that there is such a scale. At one of its poles there are people for whom the appearance is much more important than other sensations. Or are they people for whom it is not very important appearance, but in principle, physicality is not important to them - they "live in the head." This pole is well known to many.
The other pole is when appearance, “beauty” are not important at all, nothing depends on them. What will remain in the perception of the body if the external image leaves? Let's imagine this extreme. Let's do a thought experiment. If how I look doesn't matter, then what will you think about, care about? What will bring inner comfort?
When I answered these questions myself, this is what came to mind. Sleep, delicious food in the quantities the body needs, clothes (not the style, not the way she sits, but how comfortable she is). If the significance of the body seems to disappear, then we “close” the visual channel and “open” others. These are impressions for the body: sounds, smells, touches, movements.
Body Dictionary
But here we run into a problem. To feel your body, you need to have the skill not only to listen to yourself, but also call happening. And we usually do not have a vocabulary that we could use for internal sensations. Usually the set is meager: “it hurts, it doesn’t hurt”, “pleasant-unpleasant”, “warm-cold”, and most often just “normal”.
When it comes to emotions, we also often have to first find out what they are. Match specific feelings with the word that denotes them. Often people come to our Center who say that they are “bad”, but cannot specify what exactly is bad, how much. We gradually teach a person to understand himself better. The same is true with bodily sensations.
Often, analogs of external actions are used for this. For example, talking about pain: pressing, sharp, dull, twisting. All these descriptions are derived from verbs, from what can happen outside: to press, twist, etc.
Sometimes we use metaphors: it presses like a brick, lightness, as if there is light and air inside.
"Non-contact" with the body
If we do not have a "dictionary" and we ignore the signals of the body, then it becomes a warehouse of our needs, unspoken desires, uncommunicated emotions. And when the body, like a basement, is filled up for many years, it is stuffy and cramped to be in it.
Many who begin to practice meditation notice that what I find in myself is far from always pleasant. You can find pain muscle clamps. It happens that the first contact with the body reveals that something is not right with it, but we are used to ignoring this. So there is a temptation to focus even more on the external or devalue the body, so as not to encounter something unpleasant.
A common situation of "non-contact" with the body can manifest itself in words. The person says: I understand everything with my head, what I need to do, how, but I do something completely different. This signal is about the mismatch between our mental sphere and our emotionality. The body with its impulses and the head with its thoughts live by themselves.
In this case, by describing our bodily sensations, we can draw a bridge between thoughts and the body. I can imagine as much as I want that my partner is the best man in the world, but in his presence I feel stiffness. This is a signal that there is a catch, and the body reports it.
This is a rather intimate process - how I live myself through the body, I feel myself with it.
From point A to point B
After you begin to feel the body, it remains to admit: you got it this way - this shape, this size. You, with your experience, past, experienced physical and emotional traumas in this body. All this lives in the body. What signals it gives - about its well-being, relaxation or SOS signals - a reflection of how you lived in it. Not by itself "the terrible body corroded", but something happened in life that led to this. And now we need to soberly look into the eyes of the situation and understand that the body is not without reason. Because life wasn't easy.
You understand: what happens to me is me. We describe point A, where we are now, and set goals on how to get to point B. For example, feel signals, improve our personal decoding dictionary, understand early fatigue.
It might seem that listening to the body is one continuous discomfort. But that's not the case, of course. Everyone, I think, can remember pleasant moments caused either by some events or at the moment of physical actions: skiing, skating, walking.
By examining the body, we can gradually clear away the blockages that have accumulated inside. The body will tell you what you want, what food to choose, how comfortable you are with certain people. The body will become a huge channel of information.
Now let's move on to the questions.
"I hate my body"
My question is this: All my life my mother, and then I myself, limited myself. There were many diets. Now I'm finally tired of them and the very thought of a diet is hateful. I allowed myself to eat what I want, when I want. I went up two sizes. And now I seem to be calmer, but sometimes I am visited by a state in which I just hate my hips, stomach. Your body. It is a lot for me, it is heavy. Panic sets in and I don't know what to do. Overeating due to anxiety.
The first thing I want to say is that you have already come a long way. I can imagine how much effort you put in to get off the diet road.
What is happening to you now is a natural step on the path to recovery from an eating disorder. When the topic of nutrition lets go, thoughts about food stop attacking us in the morning, afternoon and evening, then the next step is to work with the image of the body, with the perception and attitude towards who I am.
I can assume that if your mother and you have a lot of dietary experience, then criticism of your body, constant evaluation, dissatisfaction is something that is deeply rooted in you. Change, like nutrition, takes time. This is the first thing I want to say: what is happening is natural, you are on the right track, give yourself time.
You describe that sometimes you "have a state where you hate your body." I want to draw your attention to the fact that the level of hatred for the body is not a constant, but a value that changes. Sometimes less, sometimes more, sometimes you are satisfied with yourself or almost satisfied, and sometimes you dislike yourself so much that it causes panic.
I suggest that you observe what causes hatred of the body, where are the triggers that actualize these well-known states of self-rejection. In what situations is this value minimal, and when do you not think about the body at all? That is, make a scale for yourself and ask yourself a couple of times a day: where am I now?
For example, one of my triggers was tight clothing. I always tried to buy the smallest possible size. Then, in the process of wearing, moving, the fabric wrinkled, folds were visible, the strap pressed. And the feeling of tight clothes was my trigger, causing the feeling of "I'm fat" and chronic dissatisfaction with myself. When I began to adjust clothes for myself, and not myself for clothes, it became much calmer and more pleasant.
After you observe this scale, it may become clearer what to do next, these states will no longer be incomprehensible, uncontrollable.
We have in the center body image group, where we very carefully and in detail analyze the reasons for not accepting the body, we do a variety of exercises in order to better understand ourselves, learn at the first stage to treat ourselves neutrally and be able to withstand those strong emotions that are sometimes associated with the body.
You might also like mindful eating group to gain a foothold in a new style of eating, non-dietary. On the one hand, you write that you have gained two sizes, and I don’t know at all, maybe this is your norm. But if you have any doubts about this, then in the conscious eating group, having formed and honed the skill of mindful and conscious eating, you will notice that the weight gradually disappears if it was superfluous.
And the ideal thing is to go in two directions: to refine your nutrition, and to take steps towards exploring the body.
Intuitive eating and antidepressants
I have a question about antidepressants and sedatives. How difficult is it to understand body signals? And what if you take AD for depression and at the same time want to learn how to intuitively eat?
The question is very specific, thanks for that. Specifically, I answer: the body signals and their understanding of taking antidepressants does not violate. It is true that some antidepressants increase appetite, and it is worth asking your doctor if this drug has such an effect. We have experience working with clients who started learning Intuitive Eating without medical support, and then added it if necessary. In my opinion, it became easier for them, because they gained strength, less emotional storm, there were some internal opportunities to devote time not only to their condition, but also to nutrition.
Boredom and overeating
Hello! First of all, I want to say thank you for introducing intuitive eating into my life! Now I am facing this problem. I have learned to respond to hunger that comes from strong emotions, but I can't recognize "boring" hunger, when I'm haunted by an overwhelming desire to eat something when I'm at rest. As a result, my day turns into waiting for meals. It makes me a little tense and pulls me down. Please give me advice on how to work in the direction of "not thinking for a day". Thanks!
Thank you for your words of gratitude, we are glad that our ranks are replenished. Boredom is like a lid on a saucepan, there is always something else under it. Some thoughts, emotions, needs that you obviously do not feel, but feel that you are just bored. For example, it may be the need to change activities in this moment, in some new impression. If you are sitting at home or in the office and there is not enough stimulus, something invigorating, then food becomes that.
Behind the boredom may be the feeling that what I am doing does not make sense, is not valuable to me, I would like something else. But deciding what to do is quite difficult, and eating and being distracted is always at hand. Therefore, look for what is there, behind this boredom.
The last question for you to think about: what do you think, if you didn’t constantly think about food, if you didn’t have to constantly be in this dilemma: eat - not eat and what to eat, then what else would you think about? What other difficulties are there in your life? I hope my comment will move you forward. And you can always seek advice from the Center, where a specialist will help you find what exactly is hidden behind the feeling of boredom.
"I don't deserve to be skinny?"
Hello Margarita. Thank you for highlighting this important topic! I try not to limit my food, to be guided by bodily signals of hunger and satiety. However, when I eat like this for a while, I begin to notice that my body becomes smaller, thinner. And immediately it becomes a cause of great anxiety, and a trigger for immediate overeating! A thinner body for me is still something insanely desired and important. So much so that it seems like I'm not worthy of it, that it's TOO much of a luxury for me. A thin body is associated with attractiveness, femininity, joy, lightness and success.
How to break these stereotypes? How can I ease this anxiety and calmly allow my body to change?
Perhaps this is some kind of feeling of my “badness”: I am so bad that I cannot get what I want. You write that this is too much luxury. And then I suppose that there is a belief that you are the one who must be on a starvation diet all the time, for whom excesses are impossible.
Where does it come from? Do these attitudes manifest themselves only in the field of nutrition and attitude towards your body, or do you generally think that you are not worthy in many places?
Or maybe you have a fear that you, having lost weight, may not live up to expectations? Even their own. If all the thin ones seem attractive and successful, then this seems to impose responsibility. It’s like once I lose weight, I have to be problem-free and always enjoy life. But this is not so, this is an illusion that can slow you down.
In other words, I suggest that you identify the beliefs that you have about yourself or about "thin people." And then be skeptical about them.
A good strategy along the way is meditation practice. There are a lot of them on the net, during this practice you just watch the thoughts, emotions, states that appear. Not merging with them, but simply noticing: now there is panic. But if she appeared, this does not automatically mean that you need to go eat. You can watch what will happen next, and if at this moment you resist the impulse to go to the refrigerator, then you will notice that this is just an emotion that, like a wave, comes, peaks and leaves.
I recommend to separate from your thoughts and states, learn to look at them from the outside. And in parallel, on your own or in therapy, I advise you to look for the roots of beliefs. This can be done in a group or individually.
A happy person is a conscious person
Good but controversial article. This is to the question of what you choose: comfort or achievement (=success?). Although, this question can also be looked at from a different angle: you choose yourself or the approval of the environment. Sometimes you just want to be recognized. It seems that this can be tolerated.
This comment is related to my colleague's article "What is bodily comfort?". There is no question as such, so I will share a metaphor example that came to my mind. I have a colleague, she is the owner of a mop of red curly hair. And she once said that perhaps she would like to become a member of a group of black-haired women with straight hair. To be accepted there, she would have to straighten her hair every day, dye her hair black and tint her roots regularly. If for some reason it is very important for her to be in this group, then you can weigh: is it worth it? If not, you can look for a group of redheads. Or one in which hair of any length, color and curly hair is acceptable.
A happy person, in my opinion, is one who knows his values and can follow them. If the value of being in a group, of being successful, outweighs the value of being yourself, then that's it now. It's just important that it's a conscious choice.
Once again I invite you to the group body image, which I lead as a therapist!
Broadcast video:
Feel like feel/feel 1. Experience certain physical sensations (about the state of health). From noun. with meaning faces: sick, wounded, father… how does he feel? good, excellent, healthy, sick, broken ...
I feel unwell only when I climb a mountain or stairs. (A. Chekhov.)
I feel very physically stronger ... (A. Blok.)
The events of recent months made themselves felt, I felt as if beaten ... (M. Bulgakov.)
2. To experience certain mental sensations (about the moral state). From noun. with meaning faces: student, artist… how does it feel? calmly, confidently, a person, guilty, happy, out of sorts.
I will always thank God for the real happiness that I feel thanks to you - to feel better, and higher, and more honest. (L. Tolstoy.)
I walked beside her, trying to keep pace and, to my surprise, did not feel at all constrained. (M. Bulgakov.)
In the calm days that followed, Blok felt so good that he was able to get back to work. (S. Alyansky.)
Educational phraseological dictionary. - M.: AST. E. A. Bystrova, A. P. Okuneva, N. M. Shansky. 1997 .
See what "feel" means in other dictionaries:
Feel like- FEEL, yours, yours; this; nesov. that. Dictionary Ozhegov. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 ... Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov
feel cheap- see plate ... Dictionary of many expressions
Feel cheap- embarrassed, embarrassed, shy. FSVChiE ... Terms of psychology
no longer feel confident- adj., number of synonyms: 1 losing ground (5) ASIS Synonym Dictionary. V.N. Trishin. 2013 ... Synonym dictionary
FEEL- feel, feel, nesov. (to feel). 1. what. Experience what. feeling (see feeling in 4th and 5th values). Feel hungry. Feel warm. Feel love. Feel anger. "Strizhin felt an irresistible desire to drink." Chekhov ... Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov
FEEL- FEEL, yours, yours; this; inconsistent, that. 1. Experience what n. feeling (in 1, 3 and 4 meanings), to feel. Ch. hunger. Ch. on himself whose n. sight. Ch. excitement. Ch. your responsibility. 2. Be able to perceive, understand. Ch. music. Ch. painting. … … Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov
FEEL- what, to feel, a little, to smell with oneself, to hear, to touch, to know with bodily, carnal abilities, means. | To know morally, inwardly, to understand, to realize spiritually, responding to this with impressions. The deceased felt everything that was around him ... ... Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary
feel- To feel like and who to have, to experience certain sensations (physical or mental). I felt unwell and unwell. Chekhov. How are you feeling? (health question) ... Phrasebook Russian language
feel- vb., nsv., use. max. often Morphology: I feel, you feel, he/she/it feels, we feel, you feel, they feel, feel, feel, felt, felt, felt, felt, feeling, felt, ... ... Dictionary of Dmitriev
feel- [at / stv], I’m moving, you’re moving, you’re not; feel / feel, owls. 1) (what) To experience what l. physical sensation, state, etc. Feel pain. Feel fear. Feel tired. Feel thirsty. It was said that Emperor Nicholas, ... ... Popular dictionary of the Russian language
Books
- At its best. 30 stories of people who proved that after fifty you can not only look great, but also feel much more confident than ever in life, Yakovlev V .. What is this book about: For some reason, it is believed that you can only be beautiful Youth, and after fifty comes the time “you can’t”: you can’t dress stylishly, you can’t feel your attractiveness ...
We lose sight of who we really are. We limit our capacity for self-knowledge and narrow the field of experience. The methods we use to detach ourselves from pain and other emotions are firmly ingrained in us by the age of five - just at the time when we begin to understand the concepts of loss and death.
This way psychological protection exists to keep consciousness in stressful situations. However, it can harm us in adulthood. Apparently, the question is acute: is it worth experiencing emotions or should they be suppressed?
TaylorHerring/Flickr.comWhen we suppress emotions, we become tougher in general, we lose the feeling of the fullness of life, the connection with desires. We often turn to our past, looking for recipes happy life in childhood memories.
In order to find meaning in our daily actions, we must understand and study emotions well. They can be healthy or unhealthy, primary or secondary.
- Primary emotions are healthy emotions, they help us to function, survive and develop.
- Secondary emotions are considered unhealthy. We feel them as a result of making decisions, developing beliefs, in the process of growing up. If we try to suppress emotions instead of learning from them and working with them, we only increase their negative impact.
Although some emotions hinder us, we can use them for self-development. Many people are afraid own feelings but they are not as scary as it might seem. We can learn to let them out and do it safely for ourselves.
Not the antonym of rationality. They complement the cold and prudent mind, help guide its work.
TaylorHerring/Flickr.com By allowing ourselves to experience feelings to the fullest, we begin to better understand what we really want and think about, modeling behavior according to this new knowledge.
Feeling emotions is not the same as letting them control our behavior. If you learn to experience even the most unhealthy emotions in a safe and healthy way, you can minimize their destructive effect. For example, you will learn to feel pain, but not become a victim at the same time, or experience anger without aggression.
This problem is especially relevant for men who are taught from childhood not only to suppress emotions, but also to separate feelings "for girls" from feelings "for boys". Because of this, men often have a distorted understanding and perception of emotions. Psychologists note the following features:
- Men tend to "convert" one sensation into another. Stereotypical female feelings, such as sadness, they transform into anger or pride, because they believe that the manifestation of such emotions will make them worthy members of society.
- Men show their emotions where it is considered acceptable. For example, they may hug after scoring a goal on the football field. Unfortunately, in other situations, men are less likely to show positive feelings, fearing that society will perceive them incorrectly.
- Men can experience feelings physically. Most often this is expressed in a headache or back pain.
- Men limit themselves twice in the expression of emotions. First, they fear public disapproval. Secondly, even when a man is ready to experience his emotions openly, for example, to open up to a partner, he does not always know how to do it right. As a result, even close person may negatively perceive the manifestation of feelings and be afraid of a storm of emotions. In such a situation, the need to correctly express, experience, regulate and interpret emotions becomes obvious.
But none of us are born with the ability to manage emotions. This needs to be learned (preferably with early years) and never stop there.
TaylorHerring/Flickr.com The practice of emotional therapy can help us understand and accept emotions and transform them in a positive way. Its meaning is to constantly remember feelings without trying to suppress them, increase tolerance for spontaneous emotions and live in harmony with them.
When emotions take over, start breathing deeply.
One of the most common practices that is often used by people with chronic pain. Don't suppress your emotions, instead relax and allow yourself to feel and accept everything to the fullest. Feeling anger, sadness, pain, or desire is normal. You just need to learn how to live with these feelings without discomfort. And for this, start experiencing emotions.
Don't judge your own emotions
There are no bad emotions. This is a specific kind of adaptation that shows how you coped with difficult situations at the beginning of your life. Emotion is not a rational response to the current situation, but shows that you are aware of similar circumstances and the feeling reaction to them. Remembering and reproducing emotions makes us more open to the world around us, because now we know what exactly causes this or that reaction in us, and we do not seek to evaluate it.
Find a way to calm your emotions, not feed them
In other words, you need to find a way to experience the feeling without activating or feeding it. If you're hurt or angry, don't waste time mentally simulating the situation. Feel the pain and just wait for this wave of feelings to subside, and then let go. Don't try to identify with that emotion, don't focus on that state. Even negative emotions are important: they nurture in us a natural reaction of adaptation to the situation. This will lead to a feeling of self-compassion. This means that there has been a significant shift in self-perception, which, in fact, is quite difficult to achieve.
Remember, we can learn to experience all emotions while remaining rational enough to analyze or make decisions. To learn to live with feelings, you need to understand them. In this way, you will gain the ability to process and regulate your emotions. This is essential if you ever want to truly build and improve your life.
