Living is feeling

 If you stop feeling, you stop living, even if you are still breathing. This is my perspective.

Have you ever had an experience where observing and sharing someone else's experience helps you to clearly define your own belief?  A fellow blogger was sent a letter that informed her that she needed to stop feeling hurt by the bad behavior of someone else.  Now I have been to the place of stopping all feeling.  It's gray and heartless.  No pain ~ No joy.  Dissociation is disconnecting from your feelings.  True you feel no pain, but you don't feel anything else either.  When I started counseling, my only wish was to be able to communicate with others.  It never occurred to me that in order to communicate you need to connect.  To connect you need to feel.  When you feel, you are open to being hurt.  The 'feel good' people think that the only feeling you should have is to be happy.  One emotion.  How sad.  There is a whole array of feelings that can be felt, processed, acted upon or ignored.  Acknowledging that you feel sad, mad, frustrated, hurt, or any of the painful emotions doesn't mean that you are stuck there.  Often when I express some less pleasant feeling, it is to acknowledge that the feeling is there.  Then I go on my merry way quite content at acknowledgment.  Sometimes I feel a need to do something about what I feel.  Sometimes I recognize that there is nothing I can do about what I feel.  I have learned from new counselor that sometimes if I 'sit' with a feeling long enough, I can feel it morph into something else.  To go from feeling very little to trying to catch up on life time of feelings has been a bit overwhelming from time to time.  Now I am starting to get the hang of this feeling thing.  I am fascinated that new counselor separates emotions from feelings where other people use the words interchangeably.  So many perspectives.  Like 31 Flavors, I think I am working out what my belief about feelings constitute.  I believe it is important to feel emotions and feelings.  I believe it is important to control my reaction to my feelings and emotions.  I believe I am responsible for consequences of acting on my feelings and emotions.  Most of all, I like feelings and emotions.  I can read something sad and feel empathy for the other person.  I can remember how I was hurt and feel outrage that I was treated poorly. It is really awesome to think about something or someone I love and have this wonderful warm buzzy feeling.  Too often, I believe, we look at a sliver of something and declare this is the whole thing.  Kind of like the blind men feeling the different parts of an elephant.  Depending on which part they grab influences the perception of the whole.  I have experienced some horrible feelings and emotions so vicious that stopping them at all cost was reasonable at the time.  Now I am stronger.  I have learned more from KavinCoach and new counselor and I am coming to a better understanding that life is for living and feeling. 

If you are interested in checking out the blog that triggered this post head on over to upsi with

You Don't Have to Dance for Them