Feelings are orienting signals, particularly negative ones. They are supposed to cause us to move.
Growing up, many of us are terrorized into doing things we don’t want to do, and a common outcome of this is learning to lie to yourself about what you are feeling. “Of course I am fine with this. Why wouldn’t I be?”
And I think for the rich world a complicating addition to this is the sheer volume of noise, pace of life, and countless distractions that it sometimes seems to me amount to our main cultural product. If you are never in silence, and stillness, you never learn to feel. If you never learn to feel, you watch other people and do what they do.
That is why it has been so easy to induce Stockholm Syndrome in so many people. Their instincts are kaput. Their senses have the nuance of leather, and their minds are most comfortable with black and white. Being told what to do by “respectable” authorities actually decreases their anxiety, even if the commands are ludicrous, as now in much of the world.
This is what you get when you never learn to consult your own feelings, to never take the time to ask basic questions and listen long enough to hear the answers.
And of course most of us like to think of ourselves as good people. I would hazard a guess that if Goodness could be measured–and I would assume some psychological proxy could be and probably has been created, although I doubt they called the trait “Goodness”–95% of us would honestly believe we are above average.
You know, like 95% of men are better fighters and lovers than average.
Much of this of, I will hazard a guess, stems from the insulting belief that we are inferior. That word insulting popped into my head. I had intended to go another direction, but will now try and work into something that makes sense.
Most of us are mashed up, aren’t we? Crushed, emotionally? Our feelings as children not consulted, not cared about, and the demand made that we feel on demand whatever we are TOLD to feel.
Does that match anything in your experience? It certainly does with me.
With my own kids I did a LOT of mirroring, in that when they were very, very little I would imitate the little noises they made. As they got older, I would often match them emotionally in various ways. I think explicit acknowledgement of inner states, without attempting to control them, by parents helps the feelings grow in a healthy way. Each child is an individual seed that will grow in his or her own way, IF ALLOWED TO.
They are like little art works that build themselves. It’s a pleasure to watch, not least because I have no ego stake in the outcomes. I want them to be happy and have self respect, but the details I leave fully in their hands. If they want advice, I give it. If they don’t, I still give it sometimes and they tell me to stop, and I mostly do. Some work needed there on my side, but not desperately.
There have to be boundaries, obviously, but there also needs to be respect. I think this respect is missing from most cultures. The parents beat their kids into conformity, and those kids do the same with their own. It’s a pattern for a stable culture, and it’s not intrinsically bad, but there is a happier middle somewhere in most cases.
In our own culture, of course, we have gone much too far in the other direction, to the point where I think many parents want to be friends with their kids in unhealthy ways, and the kids do not hear NO a fraction of the number of times they need to to build up resistance through use to the difficulties of life. No is an immunization of sorts, no? Rich kids act one way, poor kids another.
But for myself, one current work is watching the flitter of feelings when it comes to my work. I will often make lists, then find myself doing something else completely. Not infrequently, it is blogging.
But just in the past week or so, I have noticed this shadow that flits over my mind every time I look at a task. There is a sadness that flits through me, and a fear. It is those feelings, not the task, that I am avoiding. I’m not weak or lazy. It’s just that I’m pulling much more weight than what is in the physical room.
So I’m going to try and spend an extra moment, when making my list, and when beginning each task, to allow those feelings to come up consciously, so I can learn to live with them. It will be a bit like learning to walk a different way, but I am sanguine it can be done. I’m ready.