Recently, a friend sent me a link to an HBR article That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief. According to this article, we all felt a number of griefs during the pandemic. It went on to explain that acknowledging and naming what we are feeling as grief is a powerful first step to help us feel what’s inside of us.
I thought the article was insightful but was initially confused as to why my friend thought this old article was so tremendous and powerful that she printed it and taped it on her wall. When I asked, she explained that prior to the article, she was suppressing her feelings of anger, thinking they were unwarranted and, therefore, not allowed. The article gave her a respected peer’s permission to feel!
Judgment
That need for permission to feel resonated with me. How many times had I not judged my own feelings as either good or bad, acceptable or non-acceptable? Most of the time my judgement was based on deeply ingrained beliefs about what it takes to be “a strong woman”. A strong woman has to perform at all times and, therefore, cannot feel fear. A strong woman is always in control and thus cannot feel anger. But there were also those times when my judgment was not my own but rather based on the experiences and expectations of those around me whose opinions mattered to me. A boss’ expectation that a stress counselor cannot feel overwhelmed. A church member’s expectation that a Christian cannot feel fear.
Whatever the underlying reason (values, beliefs, environment), the end result was the same—passing judgment on my feelings rather than just allowing them to happen.
Consequences
Judging in itself is neither good nor bad; the issue for me was always in the consequences of my judgment. If I judged a feeling to be bad or unacceptable, I would do my utmost to ignore or suppress it. Since my body had already produced the feeling, I was basically struggling against reality. I was wasting energy and, in the process, exhausting myself.
Still, I would persist because if I was not fooling myself, at least I was fooling those around me. Or was I? My inner conflict and struggle were often noticeable to others in various ways. I would become anxious, depressed, or short-tempered. Trying to hide the behavior and/or denying to others that anything was wrong just made the internal struggle worse. Worse because now I was adding a new level of fear: maybe I was a weak woman, maybe I was indeed out of control, maybe I wasn’t a good stress counselor, and I definitely was not a good Christian.
You can imagine what this mental gymnastics does to a body—the stress and the tension it causes. As hard as this aspect is, in time, I realized that there was an even more important consequence. By not allowing myself to process feelings completely and without judgment, I was missing the opportunity to learn the related lesson!
Lesson Learned
I firmly believe that especially the feelings we judge as bad or unacceptable are there to teach us something, to shed a spotlight on a need that we have that is not being met, and/or to help us identify beliefs or coping mechanisms that are no longer working for us.
Through trial and error and with the support of dear friends, I have cultivated the following process for learning the lessons inherent in my feelings:
- Tapping (I use the Tapping Solution App ). It allows me to let the feeling move through my body instead of building up into stress and tension.
- Investigating the feeling behind the feeling and acknowledging it. For example, feeling insecure boils down to feeling fear.
- Investigating where the feeling is coming from. Most of the time, it will be linked to a human need priority that I have.
Sometimes the above exploration provides me with insight into proactive actions that I can take to prevent my body from producing the feeling in the same way/by the same trigger. In these cases, I look for critical behaviors that I can either change or incorporate.
In the HBR article that started all this introspection, David Kessler says, “One unfortunate byproduct of the self-help movement is we’re the first generation to have feelings about our feelings.” If you need permission from peers to allow yourself to combat these feelings about your feelings, then go ahead and actively seek it whenever you sense the need arise.
If you are open to considering other possibilities, then I would encourage you to experiment with the above-mentioned process to craft your own unique antidote to the judgmental chatter in your head. Remember that I am here to help.
Either way, the important goal is for you to allow yourself permission to feel!
