Why We Have to Feel Original Feelings

The best way out is always through

We live in a culture that does not place any value on pain. If we feel pain, we rush to numb it with painkillers or antidepressants but not ask why it’s there and what it’s attempting to communicate. We see the dangerous consequences of this most in people who have neuropathy, such as many diabetics, who no longer have feeling in their feet. What’s dangerous is they lose the ability to feel pain and pressure when they walk, so they are far more apt to injure, and continually re-injure, their feet without knowing it. The injury is then prone to infection and can cause gangrene, which often ends in limb amputation.

Pain isn’t enjoyable, but it serves a vital purpose, both physically and mentally. It’s there to give us wisdom and illuminate truth.

When we anesthetize ourselves by not feeling our feelings, something similar happens, and we lose touch with reality. It blinds us when we’re doing something that can cause more pain, to others or ourselves. We can’t empathize with others when we don’t allow ourselves to feel, b/c empathy requires fully feeling our own feelings.

Unfortunately, even if we resolve to feel our feelings in the present, if we haven’t allowed ourselves to process childhood feelings, it won’t fully work. Everything is connected, including past to present. If we haven’t attuned to our inner child’s experience, we will be cut off from her wisdom in the present, which illuminates truth. We will continue to be desensitized to the world around us, not understanding how it’s affecting us, or how we’re affecting others. We will be confused about why our partner or children are upset with us, and be inclined to label them oversensitive, having no idea that it’s our own insensitivity that is the problem.

Original feelings of shame, guilt and anger are trapped in our bodies, waiting for us to liberate them. We do this by allowing ourselves to see the truth: how the shame isn’t ours, but our attachment figure’s, and the guilt results from being conditioned to believe we’re responsible for her feelings.

The anger is valid.

If we haven’t consciously allowed ourselves to feel original anger, it will be blocked w/in us, and we won’t be able to feel appropriate anger in the present, at someone who echoes our parents. If we haven’t dislodged childhood shame we won’t be able to recognize people who scapegoat us, and we’ll continue to absorb deflected shame as a result. Unless we rescue our inner child by seeing the truth of what happened, and feel anger with her, we will continue to betray her in perpetuity.

Let’s talk about The Wall.

There’s a wall we create from childhood neglect and shame - where we wall off all our feelings. It helps us survive our childhood, but if it isn’t broken down, it distorts how we see others’ feelings b/c we can’t relate to them. Instead of having empathy, we view the anger and pain of others as manipulative – as the wall keeps us from identifying with them. We need to destroy this wall in order to heal ourselves and our relationships with others.

I find this wall exists in many men in particular. When a woman cries or exhibits emotions, many men sincerely believe she’s being manipulative due to this wall they’ve built, keeping them from resonating w/ similar feelings they had as children.

My mom used to believe my tears were manipulative, and she called them Crocodile tears. I never understood why she didn’t have empathy until now – but I see she had to shut down her own feelings of hopelessness when she was the same age, walling off all tender feelings.

Codependency is another reason for the wall.

If we’ve been conditioned to believe we’re responsible for other peoples’ feelings, we won’t be able to abide their unhappiness. Instead of having empathy for them, we’ll see it as a reflection of our own failure – feeling guilt and shame. Instead of attuning to their feelings, we’re caught up in our own, which are rooted in a lie.

In an effort to avoid our feelings we find ourselves dismissing their feelings altogether. We unwittingly make it all about our feelings. It’s what makes codependents somewhat narcissistic.

Feeling our pain is necessary, yet unfortunately, the therapeutic community reinforces its avoidance.

Message to therapists: we’ve all been taught that when clients get activated in session, feeling painful feelings – our job is to help them be grounded, such as by breathing, feeling their body, and guided imagery, but this isn’t actually beneficial. Contrary to popular belief, humans do not get “retraumatized” when talking about their pain – even though they may become highly uncomfortable. Expressing feelings into words and feeling understood is what grounds us, but continuing to hold feelings inside is what traumatizes. What’s shareable is bearable, and we therapists need to learn to move toward the pain of our clients – which is often the real problem, as many of us never allowed ourselves to feel our own original feelings and therefore find theirs too evocative.

If we therapists are not willing to feel our original feelings we should consider working in another profession, b/c we will unconsciously prohibit clients from connecting with and moving through their pain. I’m speaking as someone who learned this firsthand, as I was a shit-therapist until I was forced to address the pain of my childhood and work through it. That’s the power of denial. Yet the deeper I dove into my original pain, the more I was able to understand what my clients experience and name it. Therapists, our job demands we do our own work, and even if you think you have, consider if you’ve allowed yourself to truly plummet the depths, b/c few of us have.

It’s ludicrous to think our clients shouldn’t get activated in session. When the hell are they supposed to feel their pain, if not with us? But in order to do this, we need to have confidence that we can help bring resolution to their pain. When they feel heard and validated by us, no longer feeling alone in their feelings, it brings closure. We can believe this, even if we’ve never experienced it.

Here’s the paradox: as much as we humans are inclined to avoid pain, it’s where the treasure lies. All the wisdom and truth, like buried treasure, is found in the heart of the abyss. The depths are dark and frightening, but those who make the journey resurface with gold. The old maxim, “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is true, and even though you think you will die, the truth is, you will be reborn. Poets and sages know this principle, such as Robert Frost, who famously wrote, “the best way out is always through.”

He’s right, and I, and many of my clients, are living testimonies of this. It’s the Hero’s Journey, and the treasure we find is ourselves. Won’t you join us?