F is for feeling. Something we all know quite a lot about – right? Well, you’d think so, but my experience is that quite a lot of us don’t. We find feelings hard to identify, hard to name, hard to stay with, hard to rely on.
It’s partly a language problem. In English, we get used to putting ‘that’ after ‘I’m feeling’ which turns ‘I feel’ into ‘I think”. Thinking isn’t the same as feeling. Thinking happens in the mind, feeling happens in the body.
It’s partly that we’re not educated to believe feelings are important. What does it matter if I feel sad or joyful; the important question is what am I going to do about it – right?
Wrong.
Healing will not happen so long as you stay in the mind. Poring over events, analysing the whys and wherefores, is not going to get you home. Noticing how you feel, naming the pure emotion that is struggling to be recognised, that’s where you’re going to find the answers.
Don’t believe me?
Try this: think of a time when your head gave you a solution (mind based rational answer), and your heart (gut, instinct, emotion) told you different.
Did you follow your head or your heart?
Head?
Was it the right thing to do?
Heart?
Did you regret it?
No to both?
I thought so.
