Feelings - To Express Or To Contain?

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

Recently, I have often come across the opinion that emotions must be expressed, otherwise it will be difficult for a person, psychosomatics will appear, etc. This is part of the truth, but not all. Under this sauce, many begin to actively express their feelings, being afraid to hold them a little to themselves, as if scalded. And then we meet with the other pole from extreme suppression, restraint and non-expression of emotions to the expression of everything, always and everywhere. And the truth, as always, is somewhere in between.

Our way of dealing with emotions and feelings comes, of course, from childhood. We are more familiar with some feelings, we know what to do with them. We have learned to feel them, manifest, express, support ourselves in these moments. And we do not know how to deal with individual feelings (most often these are the feelings that were forbidden in childhood). But they still arise (this is how they are arranged), but we do something with them, and these feelings or emotions do not become our helpers, but rather enemies.

How is it possible to deal with feelings? This is most easily seen in a feeling like joy. Some events take place about which a person feels joy. He experiences it, expresses it in different ways - through body movements, through voice and intonation, through facial expressions, can directly say that he is happy. Sometimes he tries to prolong the joy and pleasure. At the same time, if our hero feels joy, but its manifestation and expression is not appropriate in a given place and time, then he can keep it inside himself and express it a little later in another place. And this is also about the ability to deal with feeling - to choose its form of expression, intensity, time and place. He remains the master of his feeling and owns it, not it. He experiences this feeling, and it gradually subsides. That is, the ability to be in contact with our feeling gives us the opportunity to both express it and keep it in ourselves for some time, that is, consciously choose what to do with it, but at the same time feel. And this skill is called containment - it is like the ability to create space within oneself (container) and keep a feeling there for as long as necessary, until a person decides to manifest it.

The same thing happens or can happen with any other feeling or emotion. We are most often afraid to experience only other feelings, and then we do something with them so that they do not arise, we are not in contact with them and are not aware of our feelings. We try not to notice them, suppress them, ignore them and do a lot of other things until they become super-powerful. At this moment, a super-strong feeling or emotion is very difficult to restrain, it becomes the master of the situation. Then the feeling becomes even more painful and unpleasant than if we were in contact with it from the very beginning.

We treat them like a mountain stream. The snow has melted, and the water in the stream flows down and gradually its flow subsides and leaves. And instead of letting this natural process develop, we block the channel, deepen it, expand it - we do everything so that the stream does not flow. But at some point, the water becomes so much that we can no longer control the process, and then we are carried away. This process is called emotional response. When this happens to us, we are overwhelmed by emotion and almost not in contact with thinking, we lose the opportunity to really look at the situation and at ourselves.

Can we learn to be in touch with feeling when it first appears? Feel what it wants to tell us about? Fear - to warn about danger, anger - to report the violation of personal boundaries, sadness - about the loss of something important and valuable, about the possibility of surviving and burning out. Use this message to help yourself? Of course yes. It is important to do this slowly and carefully. Give yourself time to notice the first shoots of feelings or emotions, name them to yourself and only after that decide what to do next - to show or do it a little later, in what form to express, with what strength and intensity, etc. It is this conscious treatment of feelings that turns them into our helpers and friends.