Most of us have difficulty being present with our emotions, simply allowing them to exist as they are. Instead, we use various strategies to try to change and avoid our feelings, oftentimes without even being aware we are doing it. Some of these strategies developed automatically, to help us survive painful, overwhelming situations, especially as children. We also try to regulate our emotions according to beliefs about what we should and shouldn’t feel, which were taught to us by the family and culture we grew up in.
Our difficulty accepting our real feelings has significant costs. When we lose touch with what is going on inside of us, hidden feelings and needs shape our lives without our knowing it. We get stuck in unconscious patterns, which limit our potential and lead to difficulties in our relationships. Trying not to feel, we become tense and lose touch with our bodies, which contributes to disease and lack of physical pleasure.
In order to become healthier – psychologically, spiritually, and physically – we must develop a new relationship with our inner experience. The work that is required of us is both simple and difficult: to learn how to allow our feelings to be whatever they are. Rather than avoiding, rejecting, and controlling what we feel, we must develop the capacity to mindfully experience it in a non-judgmental and curious way.
Normally, we try to control our inner experience, believing we know which emotions we should and shouldn’t have. We admonish ourselves to “Be positive. Don’t be upset” etc. We might think that we should never be angry, or that allowing ourselves to feel hurt would mean that we are weak.
The form that this inner pressure takes reflects the particular ways we were conditioned to relate to our emotions during our childhood. Perhaps a parent’s anger or depression conveyed to us that we always needed to be cheerful, for example. Or maybe we are a man who was brought up to believe that boys shouldn’t show any feelings at all. If we grew up religious, we may have been told that parts of us needed to be repressed because they are sinful, and now we feel shame if we go near certain feelings.
However, when we judge our feelings and try to control them, we are rejecting ourselves and creating conflict inside of us. Emotions are natural reactions that need to occur. Trying to deny them creates unresolved tension, which builds up underneath the surface, often finding expression in unconscious ways.
Uncontrolled emotional reactions can be harmful if we act on them, but mindfully experiencing our feelings doesn’t mean letting ourselves be taken over by them, or allowing them to control our behavior. We can observe our emotions and feel them fully, without acting them out or believing that they are the truth. When people’s feeling make them unreasonable or cause them to act impulsively, they are not being mindful of what is happening inside of them.
When we are present with our inner experience, it makes us more aware, not less. It is the only way we can come to understand what our feelings are really about. Our emotions have meaning and are often related to deeper issues, including difficult experiences from our past. Bringing awareness to our feelings, and recognizing their true significance, can help us have more control over how we act. Acknowledging the origins of our emotional pain allows us to heal old emotional injuries, instead of avoiding them or inflicting them on each other.
People usually decide to start therapy because they want to feel better. Obviously this is valid, and it’s a way we often measure whether a therapy has been successful or not. Paradoxically, however, being able to feel better usually involves becoming more in touch with our emotional pain. We often need to process buried feelings, such as grief over an important loss, or anger towards an abusive parent, which was not possible before. And the gateway into these unprocessed feelings is simply being present with whatever we are experiencing now.
The healing and growth offered by therapy requires developing a healthy relationship with our emotions in which we don’t reject them, but nor do we act them out, or assume that our reactions are the truth. We must learn to welcome all of our feelings with curiosity and compassion, and use them as a gateway into deeper understanding of ourselves.
This approach is captured by the Guest House, a poem written by the 13th century Sufi mystic, Rumi:
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
-Rumi (translation by Coleman Barks).
