I teach people to feel their feelings, that it’s good and healthy to acknowledge what’s going on for them and feel them, so they can be dealt with and released. It’s the cornerstone to almost all talking therapies.
I hit a bit of a wall with this a few weeks ago. I did something stupid and it hurt someone I didn’t intent for it to. That’s an understatement. I had hoped it would never turn out that way but was betrayed by someone I trusted. So all in all it was a big crappy mess.
I should have felt hurt, stupid, betrayed, naive, angry and sad. In reality, I felt understanding, forgiving, compassionate, calm, and slightly stupid. The trouble with a counsellor’s brain? It’s WAY too understanding. It’s main purpose is to accept people and understand them as they are, worts and all, and that means I often carry that understanding into my personal life. Perhaps that’s not a bad thing, but when it prevents you from accessing negative emotions that you know should be there, it becomes a tad annoying!
So, I did what I always do; I meditated, I did EFT, I did Ho’oponopono, I did yoga, I worked with my counsellor and I still couldn’t find those missing emotions.
Finally, I was so frustrated with myself for not being able to do what I teach all my clients to do, I reached back to my trusty text, A Course in Miracles and hit on a bit of a miracle moment. My study of the text is teaching me to slowly and surely, with huge ups and downs, turn from fear to love. I realised that perhaps, just perhaps, I’d been witness to my own miracle with this situation. For some reason, maybe I’d managed to skip the fear part (the negative emotions) all together and instead gone straight to love.
The Course teaches us that we are all connected, so by feeling badly towards someone, you’re really only projecting those hateful feelings back on to yourself. Recently I’ve been really conscious of the thoughts I’ve been thinking about others. Anything ‘judgey’, you know like, ‘What IS that girl wearing?!’ I immediately pick up on and ask for a different perspective on it instead.
Maybe it worked?!
Now, all this may just be an elaborate ruse on the part of my mind to trick me into thinking I’m more ‘spiritually evolved’ and therefore, more special than everyone else. I can’t tell you, but if the negative feelings really aren’t there, I’m happy about it. It’s certainly not the case for all the situations I face and I’m sure there’ll be plenty more where all those negative emotions come flooding up, but at least I know what it’s like to not feel them at all.
