Listening to Your Feelings
Can you remember a time when for all intents and purposes things in your life were going fairly well, yet you had a vague sense that something unpleasant was nagging at you? Maybe you told yourself that you shouldn’t be feeling bad because things in your life were running smoothly. Or perhaps you simply tried to ignore what you were feeling. All of us have had this experience at some time or another, as it is natural to want to avoid painful feelings. However, the price we pay for this method of coping is greater than its value in the long run, because our feelings end up coming out in much more problematic ways, such as through depression, displacement, or illness. Furthermore, when we do not integrate our feelings into our experience, our psyche becomes fragmented whether we are consciously aware of it or not. Consequently, it is in our best interest to listen to what our feelings are trying to say.
In order to become fully functioning people and to develop a sense of inner wholeness, we need to integrate all the parts of ourselves, including the aspects we don’t like. One place to begin this process is to listen to our feelings. By paying attention to our feelings we validate them, which is the first step in their integration. Then once we experience our feelings we have an opportunity to respond to them with compassion. Only as a result of compassion can we truly lay to rest our painful feelings. Nothing short of this will do. This is not to say that once we respond to a feeling with empathy, the same feeling will never again occur. It means that this particular experience has been integrated into the psyche and we are free to pursue other interests, not wasting energy trying to suppress painful feelings.
If you have spent many years disregarding many of your feelings, it will take some time before this kind of self-care feels natural. Just remember that it is a process that will develop over time.
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