We don’t usually accept our authentic feelings and just allow them to be what 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. A lot of this happens unconsciously, through automatic patterns of avoidance.
Unfortunately, when we avoid our feelings we are not present with ourselves; we lose touch with our bodies and with what is going on inside of us. If our feelings reside outside of our conscious awareness, they haven’t been resolved and haven’t gone away. Hidden feelings play a powerful role in human life, unconsciously shaping much of our experience. These rejected emotions may also take a toll on our bodies, creating tension which can contribute to pain and disease.
A healthier way of relating to our inner experience is simply accepting our feelings, no matter what they are. Rather than avoiding, rejecting, and controlling what we feel, we can mindfully experience it. Instead of relating to our inner life through judgment, we can approach it with curiosity.
This is different from letting our emotions 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 feelings dominate their perspective, causing them to behave irrationally or impulsively, they are actually unaware of what’s happening inside of them, and they are not really present with their emotions.
When we mindfully experience our feelings, on the other hand, we don’t act them out unconsciously. 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 learn that our emotions are connected to past experiences, which continue to influence the way we think and feel. This understanding allows to see past our immediate reactions, giving us more control over our behavior and making us less likely to express our feelings in harmful ways.
However, we can’t learn about the meaning of our emotions when we aren’t open to experiencing them. We limit our understanding of ourselves by trying to control what we 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.
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 and limiting our self awareness. The solution is to cultivate openness and curiosity towards all of our feelings.
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 painful feelings, in order to understand their origins and process unfinished business from our past.
True healing and growth doesn’t occur by trying to make ourselves feel good all the time, or 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).
