Touch My Feelings!

Awareness of feelings is a concept that many people have not been introduced to because the field of psychology is only just over 100 years old. Sociologically that is relatively young. Think about this: Sigmund Freud, considered to be the father of "the talking cure" published his first book in 1900. I'm sure his ideas did not spread like wild fire, since his hypothesis were a bit peculiar. Just to give you an example, the word "hysteria" which today implies excessive or uncontrollable emotions, comes from Freud. The greek word for uterus is "hustera" and it was Freud's theory was that a hysterical women (who came to him seeking help via his talking cure) suffered from a wandering uterus! I find that hilarious, since it was Freud who set the precedent for the general opinion that mental health professionals seek out their profession so they can work through their own issues! He was working through his own and I think this example illustrates that he needed to work out his feelings about women! So although Freud had some ideas that we laugh at today, he was the first to begin to think about improving people's well-being from a mental/emotional point of view by talking about their problems.

Now if we look at the timing of Freud's work and place it within the context of family and societal history, we come upon a telling revelation. Think of it. My grandmother was born in 1914. She grew up on a farm. For Americans who relied on agriculture and livestock for subsistence, feelings were irrelevant to the realities of daily survival. My great-grandfather got up at the crack of dawn to go out and plow and harvest his fields without regard to how he felt that day. My great-grandmother milked the cow and gathered eggs from the chickens before dawn without stopping to pay attention to her feelings about doing those essential daily chores. Daily life moved forward and people survived by working hard without regard to the ideas Freud had been exploring.

Next, World War II began in 1939 and lasted until 1945 and between 1940 and 1946, 10 million men between the ages of 18 and 45 were drafted for military service. While the men were gone to war, American women took up the manufacturing efforts that supported the production requirements of war. I'm sure that Rosie the Riveter wasn't sitting around for very long paying attention to her feelings of fear, concern and worry. Instead, she focused on patriotism and team spirit to support the war efforts.

Something else to take into consideration is that television did not become widely available in the United States until the early 1950's. Today, we think of television as one opportunity to spread information. No so in the 1950's. Most people were ready for a distraction from the worries of the day, so entertainment was the focus. For example, on Sunday nights, The Ed Sullivan show brought variety and talent to American's seeking distraction from work. Other popular shows included I Love Lucy and Gunsmoke. So, Freud (who had already died in 1939) did not have the opportunity to spread knowledge about his new ideas via television. Besides, I don't think he would have been entertaining enough for Ed Sullivan!

To put all of this history into a family history perspective, my grandmother spent the first 30 years of her life either living the life sustainable by farm living or concerned about the war. Then, after she married my grandfather, the two of them moved from Utah to California, where they bought an empty lot and proceeded to live in a tent for a year while they built the home they spent the entire rest of their lives in! Grandma said that living in a tent was better than living in the snow in Utah, but I'm sure she didn't sit around in her tent focusing on her feelings about it. She was focused and goal-oriented and that's what got the job done.

So from a sociological perspective, the focus of many of our grandparents and great-grandparents was goal-oriented and focused on the basics of survival. Now I ask you . . . . what, then, did our grandparents teach our parents about how to deal with feelings? Most likely, our parents were taught by example to "swallow" their feelings and go get something done! So what is the frame of reference your parents had to teach you about how to deal with your feelings? Probably a relatively small cache of experience, practice and knowledge!

However, thanks to the hard work and perseverance of our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, we have the opportunity to turn some of our focus away from basic survival and toward overall health and wellness -- which require an integration of our feeling selves into our daily lives.

Since most of us have not received education about what to do with our feelings, we stored them, following the example of our parents and grand parents. But storing our feelings is a habit that causes problems. I believe that the attempts we make at stowing our feelings and the efforts we make at repressing them is responsible for the health crisis in our country. Why else would a person who is under a lot of stress break out in hives when she is attempting to keep the emotions out of the way and just keep going during an intensely emotional season of her life? High blood pressure, over-eating, compulsive shopping, alcoholism, ulcers, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and insomnia are just a few examples of symptoms of the epidemic in this country of ignoring our feelings. I believe that all of what ails us is, at least, partially caused by our attempts to avoid the feeling part of ourselves.

Here's why. There is a law of physics called the Conservation of Energy. It states that energy does not disappear, it just gets converted into new forms of energy. So, boiling water doesn't disappear just because the water level in the pot goes down. Instead, the water turns to vapor and floats around in the air. In a similar way, your emotions are energy. Try to put them away and they will not disappear, they simply convert into another form of energy -- the kind that gets you to do things you would rather not do or causes you to experience illness.

Another way to think of this is to think of a pressure cooker. A pressure cooker is a tool for cooking that uses high pressure to quickly cook foods that would ordinarily take much longer to prepare. Another concept from physics is that heat results from the rapid movement of molecules. So a pressure cooker uses a sealed environment to make the best use of movement. The more heat, the more movement, the more pressure builds inside the cooker. Since the cooker is made of steel and is well-sealed, the movement has nowhere to go except into the food, where the movement creates the heat that cooks the food. Now everyone who uses a pressure cooker knows that you cannot open a pressure cooker until all of the pressure is released through the release valve. I tried opening the lid without letting all of the pressure return to normal levels once. As soon as the seal on the lid was broken, a shower of hot beef stew covered me and my kitchen.

Something similar occurs when we try to store our feelings away. Since feelings are energy, the pressure builds up more and more until it something has to give! Then comes the explosion in the form of anger, tears, anxiety, depression, out of control behaviors or physical illness.

If you have guessed that I'm making the case for consistent awareness of and interaction with your feelings, you are correct. But feelings can sometimes be quite uncomfortable! I am aware of that! I've experienced many uncomfortable feelings in my own lifetime. Some women who have been introduced to this idea say: "Well, okay. I'll feel my feelings but I'll just feel the feelings that are comfortable." Unfortunately, it is impossible to feel some feelings while avoiding others. Either you experience your feelings or you don't. Either you learn the process of paying attention to your feelings and understanding what they have to offer you toward healing and growth or you suffer the consequences of storing them away that I have already identified today.

Here's another way to think about the whole concept of your feeling self. Even though we think of feelings as non-physical events, they are actually connected to two physical systems in your body: your limbic system and your autonomic nervous system. Your limbic system is a network of structures in your brain and your autonomic nervous system is the relay system that causes the physical symptoms associated with your emotions. So even though you cannot see or touch feelings, they arise from very real structures inside your body.

So let me ask you this: Could you live without your liver? Or if your liver was causing symptoms in the rest of your body indicating that you needed to pay attention to it, would you ignore it? Probably not. But when we ignore our feelings, we are ignoring our emotional system, which is a real, active and essential part of us as whole people. If you cannot live healthfully without your liver, what makes you believe that you can live healthfully without your emotional system? It doesn't make sense, does it?

If you have been in the practice of storing your feelings away, this discussion leading up to another invitation for you to feel may be causing you to feel afraid. That is normal. But let me explain something to you. When feelings have been stored for a long time, the energy they build up feels like a raging storm behind a dam. It takes all of your energy and strength to hold that wall up that keeps the emotions at bay. But I am here to tell you that unlike a storm waiting to break through and cause complete destruction, your feelings are more like the waves of the sea.

When you stand at the shore of the ocean and look off to the horizon, you see the beginning of a wave. It is a subtle bump in the surface of the water. It doesn't have much energy or look very threatening. Then as the wave grows while coming closer to the shore, it builds momentum and energy. Finally, it is an overwhelming energy that crashes on the shore. At its most overwhelming point, it has the power to tumble you, head-over-heel, in a way that causes you confusion because you cannot tell which end is up! But then, just as it began, the wave quietly and gently recedes.

What it leaves behind is peace. Stillness. Calm.

Think of experiencing your feelings in this way and the urge to cry will become natural and even welcome. Crying releases the bottled up energy in your system and leads to healing. Once per month, I will continue to provide you with education about how to reclaim and heal your feeling self. It really is essential to your happiness.