We don’t usually accept our authentic feelings, allowing them to simply be whatever they are. Instead, we try to control our inner experience based on our preferences and our beliefs about what we should and shouldn’t feel. We may admonish ourselves to be positive, or to not be affected by a difficult experience. In fact, many “self-help” programs revolve around the idea that we need to control what we feel, so that we can always be confident and happy. 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 makes us a good person, and feeling another way makes us a bad or unlovable person.
Our most deeply-held beliefs about what we should and shouldn’t feel stem from the conditioning we received in our childhood. For example, if we had a parent who needed us to be cheerful, we may feel compelled to always appear happy. If we were shamed for having emotions, we might believe that we have to be stoic. A religion may have taught us that certain feelings need to be repressed in order for us to be accepted by God. Whatever the specific experiences were, at the core of them was a sense that we had to be different than how we were, in order to please others and get the love we needed. This created a deep unconscious belief that we can’t just be ourselves.
Furthermore, it’s completely natural to want to feel good and to avoid discomfort. So we automatically develop patterns of avoiding painful feelings. The truth is, much of our society revolves around helping people avoid these feelings.
Unfortunately, the result of rejecting, avoiding, and controlling our feelings is that we become disconnected from ourselves. We lose touch with our bodies and with what is going on inside of us; our awareness gets limited and we become less present. And even though difficult feelings may be pushed out of our awareness, they unconsciously shape our lives because we never deal with them.
A much more helpful way of relating to our inner experience is simply to accept our feelings, no matter what they are. Rather than avoiding, rejecting, and controlling what we feel, we let it be what it is and we mindfully experience it. We approach it with curiosity instead of judgement.
What I’m describing is completely different from letting our emotions control our behavior or dominate our perspective. Being present with our emotions and interested in understanding them, doesn’t mean acting them out or believing that they are the truth. When people’s feelings control them, causing them to behave irrationally or impulsively, they are not really present with themselves, consciously observing their feelings.
When we mindfully experience our feelings, as I’m suggesting, we don’t act them out. Instead, we turn inwards, using curiosity and awareness to understand what is happening for us. We become explorers of ourselves, seeking to learn the meaning of what we are feeling. For example, we may recognize that our emotions are connected to past experiences, which continue to influence the way we think and feel. This awareness provides the best basis for consciously choosing how we respond, making us less likely to express our feelings in harmful ways.
However, we can’t understand the meaning of our feelings when we aren’t open to them. Whenever we judge them as bad or wrong, or try to avoid having them, we are rejecting our actual experience, and we can’t learn anything from it. By trying to control what we feel, we are limiting our self-awareness and disconnecting from our bodies.
Healing and growth don’t occur by trying to make ourselves feel good all the time, or by trying to control our inner experience based upon our beliefs about what we are supposed to feel. Authentic personal development can only come from an accepting and mindful relationship with our real feelings. We must learn to welcome all of them 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).
