Feeling Your Feelings Appropriately
We learn from our feelings and take their wisdom to help us make good decisions. We never act on our feelings unless we are in danger. Three are rules to feeling your feeling safely and appropriately:
- Can’t hurt yourself.
No cutting, hurting, or self-harm in any way.
- Can’t hurt something alive – plants, animals, and or people.
No hitting, yelling at, or put-downs of people, animals, or plants. You can pull weeds, LOL.
- Can’t destroy property you don’t want to destroy. Children get you can’t destroy property, or as authority people permit them.
We will have some fear if we haven’t felt your feelings and/or numbed them. With trauma, we often believe our feelings are something to be feared. This lie usually comes from what was done to us or others feeling their feelings. For example, their anger was out of control, and we suffered from it.
Start slowly. Ask yourself, “What am I feeling?” The question can be simple, like – ‘What am I feeling when eating something you like?’ Allow yourself to feel those feelings. It is okay not to know the name of the feeling, just feel it. Anger is often a rough feeling because of the trauma connected to it. It is easy to release. It contains physical energy and adrenalin, which must be appropriately physically released to get it out of our bodies. Follow the three rules. I will talk more about it next posting.
- Ask yourself, “What was it like to feel it?” did you feel fear with it? If so, feel the fear too.
- What were feelings like in the family?
- When you were traumatized, what did you do with your feelings? Avoid? Act out? Social anxiety?