Accepting Our Emotions
Hi @Phoenix_Rising and others who may be reading 🙂
Phoenix_Rising you asked,
@Phoenix_Rising wrote:
I wonder if anyone else has any examples of how sitting with feelings and accepting them as they are, has created a different experience compared to if you feel guilty, ashamed etc. for having those feelings?
In response, I wanted to share my experience of being supported to accept my emotions (this has been a different experience to what I have had a lot of in the past)
When I think of what it was like during my time in a refuge, I remember experiencing a huge range of intense emotions. I think my "primary emotions" at the time were grief, fear and anger. For a wide range of reasons, I was not particularly well supported through this time by certain people playing significant roles in the process. I recieved direct messages along the lines of:
"Focus on the positives"
"It could have been worse"
"At least you still have...."
"This was your choice"
"I don't understand why you are so...."
"You just have to let it go"
"Just don't worry about..."
As well as indirect messages including ignoring, dimissing, and even laughing about (yep that really happened) what was going on.
All of these reponses, whether direct/indirect, well-intentioned/malicious, understandable/incomprehensible etc. had the effect of adding "secondary emotions" of shame, guilt, mistrust, rage, confusion, and humiliation to the already very hard to work through mess of things I was experiencing. I think these feelings came about from what I percieved the underlying message of these direct and indirect messages were - that what I was feeling was wrong (and therefore that I should change them/not accept them).
In contrast, when I experience/d these in a supportive understanding environment, I have been able to also experience the natural process of working through it (sitting with and accepting that this is how it is right now).
As an example, here in forumland I feel safe and supported. Here I believe that people are genuinely caring and empathic, and willing to sit with me while I work through things. The messages I have recieved here have been along the lines of:
I can understand why you are feeling like this. I hear you. I am with you while you feel this way. I have felt a similar way/experienced a similar thing. I don't have any experience with what that might be like, but I can hear and feel that it is this way for you right now. It is ok to feel this way.
My counsellor is also someone really supportive. I believe that she wants to understand what it is like for me and that she believes "I've got this" (sometimes I just need someone to remind me of that and help me figure out how). She asks about my feelings including where and how I experience them in my body, what they look like, how I work through them, what they mean about who I am/what I value, and when I have felt like this before. She doesn't try and change them, instead she helps me to accept that this is what is happening, and trust that it is ok that it is.
These responses feel validating. They come from people who I believe are genuine and who I trust. They facilitate rather than hinder, the natural process I need to go through of coming to terms with my emotions and resolving them. They don't add to my challenges. Instead of fighting myself to not feel a certain way, my energy can be put into working it out.
In addition to feeling as if my feelings are "ok", another benefit of accepting my feelings at the time, is that I have also experienced that in doing so, they do change themselves. I have felt afraid that if I may never, ever, EVER stop feeling a certain way before (perhaps because fighting feelings can take from working through them). Through recent experiences with support through my emotions, I can really feel that they will pass and change and that they do not stay forever.
While I do believe there can be a place and time for supporting people with a gentle lift out of their 'muddle' (which can look like a whole lot of different things and there are different levels of "lift"), the danger in approaching it with a lack of sensitivity and without awareness of your how your own emotions at the time (frustration/impatience/fear etc) may come into play is that the message can be percieved as "there is something wrong with how you are feeling". As you said Phoenix_Rising, feelings are not wrong or bad. They might need some working out, but there is nothing wrong with feeling a certain way.
That's it from me today 🙂
