Most of us have difficulty accepting our authentic feelings, simply allowing them to be what they are. We try to control our inner experience based on our preferences and our ideas about what we should and shouldn’t feel. We also have unconscious psychological defenses and automatic patterns of avoiding certain feelings.
This means that we aren’t fully present with ourselves; we aren’t in touch with what is going on inside of us. However, feelings that we avoid don’t go away – they just get pushed out of our awareness. They unconsciously shape our relationships and many of the decisions we make in our lives. Our bodies become tense because they hold repressed emotions, which can contribute to physical problems, such as disease and chronic pain.
In order to become healthier – psychologically, spiritually, and physically – we must develop a new way of relating to our inner experience. The work that is required of us is both simple and difficult: to learn to accept our feelings, whatever they are, while being a conscious observer of them. Rather than avoiding, rejecting, and controlling what we feel, we must allow it and mindfully experience it. We need to put aside our judgment and approach our inner life with curiosity.
We usually have lots of ideas about what we are supposed to feel. We admonish ourselves to be positive, or to not let ourselves be affected by something. We might think that it’s wrong to be angry, or that allowing ourselves to be hurt would mean that we are weak. We believe that feeling a certain way will make us a good person, and another way a bad person. Even many “self-help” programs are based on the idea that we need to control what we feel, so that we can be confident and happy.
Our deepest beliefs about what we should and shouldn’t feel stem from the conditioning we received in our childhood. For example, maybe we had a parent who needed us to always be cheerful, so we feel compelled to appear happy. Or perhaps we believe that we have to be stoic because we were shamed for having emotions. A religion may have instilled the message that certain feelings need to be repressed because they are sinful.
However, whenever we judge our feelings and try to control them, we are rejecting our actual experience. We are interfering with natural reactions that need to occur, creating tension inside of us. It’s true that acting on our emotions without awareness can be harmful, so we don’t want to let them control us or our behavior. However, we can observe our emotions and feel them fully, without acting them out or believing that they are the truth. When people become irrational or impulsive, they are actually unaware of what’s happening inside them, and are trying to avoid being with their experience.
When we are present with our feelings, we don’t act them out or lose our awareness, we turn inwards to understand what is happening. Fueled by curiosity, we become explorers of ourselves, seeking to learn the meaning of what we are feeling. Inquiring into our emotions can reveal their connection to past experiences, and how our past continues to influence the way we think and feel. This gives us more control over our behavior because we understand more about our reactions, so we are less likely to express our feelings in harmful ways.
People decide to start therapy because they want to feel better. However, paradoxically, being able to feel better often requires becoming uncomfortable by getting more in touch with difficult feelings. Turning towards our feelings helps us understand their origins, and allows us to heal from events in our past.
True healing and growth doesn’t occur by trying to make ourselves feel good all the time, or by by trying to control our inner experience; it requires developing an accepting and mindful relationship with our authentic feelings. 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 attitude of inner openness is expressed in a poem called The Guest House, written by the 13th century 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).
