Dealing with Feelings
Our upbringing has a powerful impact on how we think about and handle feelings, our own and the feelings of others. We may or may not have been taught to treat our feelings with curiosity, care and compassion. In adulthood, the way we treat our feelings and the feelings of others is largely determined by how we learned to treat ourselves and our important feelings during our youth. In general, people tend to minimize the importance of how they (and their feelings) were treated as children. Many of us have been trained by our elders or our culture to rationalize self-neglecting behavior and to devalue the importance of paying careful attention to our feelings. Our feelings are complex and ALL of them are vitally important to recognize, understand and manage for optimal mental health.
People who habitually dismiss, ignore, or bury their own feelings, i.e., who do not allow themselves to feel and deal with their anger or sadness or love and joy are at a greater risk of developing chronic anxiety, mood, addictive disorders. In addition to anxiety, this disconnect from feelings can lead to the development or worsening of self-destructive habits and patterns (defense mechanisms) that ultimately lead to or exacerbate psychological suffering. Once the defense mechanisms are in play, people who ignore their feelings tend to make their own lives, and the lives of others, unpleasant despite any good intentions they have to behave well.
What I help my patients understand is...
Without taking your feelings and anxiety seriously, you cannot process your feelings in a healthy way to achieve:
Freedom from bad habits
Immediate and long-term relief
Comfort Comes From Feeling your Feelings— Even the Painful Ones. Especially the Painful Ones.
Even if you are a highly intelligent and well-informed person, you still may routinely ignore, neglect, minimize or deny the important (feeling) information inside of you that would help you feel better and more fully understand yourself, your reality, your options and your dreams.
Why is this ability to access, regulate and process feelings so important? Your ability to adequately process your feelings helps you to avoid crippling states of anxiety and depression. Your feelings provide information so you can make conscious choices about what you like and want to continue, or what you don’t like and want to put an end to. You can then effectively plan and make the sound choices that will allow you to realize your goals and dreams.
Effective psychotherapy provided by an expert can help you begin to resolve your unprocessed feelings and break the maladaptive cycles that are keeping you symptomatic, disappointed or living beneath your potential. In turn, you'll be able to change your way of treating yourself and the important others in your life. Where children are involved, you can maximize the likelihood that you will not traumatize your children. In other words, by dealing with your feelings properly, you can avoid creating or repeating an inter-generational transmission of trauma (trauma handed down from parent to child which gets repeated in each successive generation). The outcome of effective psychotherapy will positively impact your life and the lives of future generations.
