Step On Your Throat. About Blocked Feelings

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Author: Elena Mitina Source: elenamitina.com.ua

We treat ourselves the way our parents treated us in childhood. If they shamed us for our natural spontaneity, we will shame and stop ourselves in activity. If they blamed, resenting us, we will blame ourselves every time something goes wrong. We will be afraid to feel toxic shame and toxic guilt, so we will suppress our own aggression, become comfortable with others. We will rob ourselves of spontaneity and step on our throats. Every day, committing violence against yourself

And the experience of happiness, in fact, is the opposite. The more we allow ourselves live, sincere and spontaneous manifestations, the more fulfilling, diverse and rich our life becomes. Moreover, these are not only manifestations of joy and delight. It is important to give the right to life to the so-called “negative experiences” among the people - anger, rage, resentment …

It is in the experience of these "bad" emotions that we are often stopped. As a result, we have less access to pleasant experiences. After all, restrained feelings accumulate and, as a result, fill all others with themselves. It is difficult to find in yourself, for example, tenderness for another person, if you accumulate irritation towards him for a long time.

Experiencing anger or resentment is often blocked by shame. It's a shame to be angry and offended - you need to be kind and strong! Always! As you know, shame is an experience that stops life processes. At the bodily level, impairing breathing, paralyzing activity. This is the feeling of muscle "freezing". From shame I want to "sink into the ground" or stop being.

While experiencing toxic, all-encompassing shame, it is impossible to feel anything else. There is no access to healthy aggression. The state is experienced as isolation, as if you are “behind glass”.

If there is too much shame and it arises too often, aggression stops in expression and builds up. And like water, overfilling the bucket, begins to overflow without permission or look for cracks to exit. This can manifest itself, for example, in uncontrollable outbursts of irritation and anger on various small occasions, or simply in a constant diffuse state of irritation - when the whole world is annoying! In many cases, aggression, which does not find a way out in any way, is suppressed, turning into a persistent depressive state.

This means that energy is not directed towards satisfying the true needs of a person. Its flow is blocked by a "dam" of shame or fear of being guilty.

And then a person simply cannot feel happy and fulfilled. His needs remain unmet, he is hungry in every sense.

For example, shame prevents warmth or acceptance in a relationship. And the fear of feeling guilty prevents you from doing something personally for yourself, forcing you to work for others all the time.

And in these moments we, in fact, do not live in full force, as we could live. Physiologically, of course, we live, but morally, psychologically, we survive, we endure.

In Gestalt therapy, we support the experience of all the emotions and feelings that arise, regardless of whether they are "good" or "bad." In the process of therapy, it is possible to gain a different experience - the experience of accepting oneself as one is expected to be. And it's worth a lot. If we can a priori allow ourselves different feelings, we have a conscious choice - which of them to manifest and which form to choose for this. We can choose - to be ashamed or not ashamed, to accept some obligations or not. Having a choice in your emotional reactions is that desired feeling of freedom.