Those “inappropriate” feelings

“You shouldn’t be so angry (hurt, sad, depressed, crazy, whatever you “shouldn’t feel).” “You’re overreacting.” “It’s not that bad.”

It’s quite dehumanizing being told that your feelings are wrong. And it’s a lie. You feel what you feel. There’s nothing wrong with it. Even when it doesn’t really have anything to do with the situation you find yourself in right now (because current events may remind you of past injustices, whether or not you consciously realize it).

This has come up with me recently because of a book I’ve been listening to called The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain. The basic premise of the book is that the pain we feel (like back pain or headaches) often comes from unconscious suppressed rage or other strong “negative” feelings. Your unconscious mind is creating socially acceptable pain in the body to distract you from your rage. IMHO, it’s a good premise because just reading it is helping me with chronic headaches, amongst a range of maladies.

But I think that it doesn’t quite get to the root of the problem. My conclusion is that the problem is not that we feel anger, but that at some early point in our lives we were told that “nice girls don’t get angry” or that what we feel is somehow wrong. We learn to suppress our feelings because the are invalidated as wrong, inappropriate, or otherwise unacceptable and that invalidation leads to rage at both ourselves for having those feelings and at those who make us feel wrong. Instead of being taught how to express our feelings in an appropriate manner, we are told not to feel them. That it is not nice to feel angry. That feeling sad makes others uncomfortable. To just “get over it”.

Here’s the thing – whatever you feel is valid. It is ok. There is nothing wrong with you if you get angry or sad or anything else. You’re not a bad person. If that’s how you feel, that’s how you feel. So feel it. That doesn’t mean that you have to spew it all over the place or direct it aggressively at another person. But you should go ahead and feel what you feel.

In my next post, I’ll discuss the method I’ve developed to work with my own feelings – Name it, Claim it, and Reframe it.