If you read my last post then you know that I picked the word, feel, to focus on throughout 2018. I’m a little over one week into this year and I’ve already had a lot of insights come to me as I’ve tried to be curious and get to know my emotional state better and what I’m really trying to accomplish with this focus this year.
As I have been pondering on all of this throughout this past week, I have been thinking about the importance of feeling. My vision for this focus on feeling has expanded and I’ve had some insights into why this focus is so important and how it affects my entire life.
At first, I thought that focusing on learning how to deepen my feelings would just increase my level of happiness and improve my relationships. And that is all good and definitely something that will be a result of this focus on feelings. But I’m realizing more and more that learning how to really feel is the most important skill in life. My life -mortal, yes, but especially, eternal- actually depends on it.
Let me explain what I mean by that…
Why is it important to be able to really tune into my feelings and to feel deeply?
The overarching answer is that the whole point of this life is to learn how to hear and obey the voice of the Lord. The voice of the Lord will guide me and protect me and lead me to the greatest fulfillment and growth. Learning to hear and obey His voice is the answer to everything.
I may not know what I’m supposed to do in any given moment, but God does. I can’t see the whole picture, but God does. And I can ask Him for help and guidance. Asking is the easy part (if I remember to ask… still working on that one). Hearing the answer is the tricky part.
“Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell in your heart. Now, behold, this is the spirit of revelation.” (Doctrine and Covenants 8:2-3)
In order to hear the voice of the Lord, through the Holy Ghost, I have to be able to think clearly and to feel – and not just surface level feeling, but deep feeling.
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My biggest objective with this intentional focus is to increase my depth of feeling – both positive and negative emotions. This particular post is going to focus on my thoughts on why I want to increase the my ability to process and feel negative emotions more deeply.
First, let me clarify what I mean when I talk about wanting to feel negative emotions more deeply…
I view negative emotions in 2 different categories: damaging/unproductive and cleansing/productive.
When I say damaging and unproductive, I mean emotions like anger, fear, hate, jealousy, etc.
So when I say “I want to feel negative emotions more deeply”, I’m not referring to the damaging/unproductive category of negative emotions. I’m not saying “I want to feel anger more.” or “I want to feel fear more.” That’s not what I mean. It would be great if I didn’t experience this category of negative emotions at all. But I’m still human, and I’m still learning, so I know that I will continue to have moments (long or short) where I feel anger, jealousy, fear, hate, etc.
I’m working towards minimizing the times that I allow those emotions into my heart, but when they do happen and when it comes to experiencing this category of negative emotion, I want to get better at processing them. Meaning, getting out of my head (where I’m stuck in rumination) and getting into my body (observing how the emotion feels in my body) – and then into my clear head and heart (figuring out what is really going on and what can be learned from the experience).
Photo by Jad Limcaco on Unsplash
What to do with damaging/unproductive negative emotions:
This is the process that I have pieced together from a couple of different sources (my life coach, Jody Moore, and Brene Brown’s Book, Rising Strong):
When the negative emotion comes up:
Step 1. Get out of my head (where its easy to go into a negative spiral and ruminate) and get into my body. Feel the physical response that my body is having to the emotion (emotion is caused by a chemical reaction in my brain). Get curious and ask questions like:
- Where do I feel it in my body? Is my heart racing? Are my palms sweating? Are my shoulders tense? etc.
- What does it feel like?
- What color is it?
- Is it fast or slow?
- Is it hot or cold?
Step 2: Stay present in my body and ride the wave until the feeling calms down and subsides. This usually doesn’t take much time.
Step 3: When I’m calmed down and have come back to my senses, I’m ready to go back to my head, and also into my heart, and get curious about what is really going on under the surface. Ask Brene Brown’s questions…
- What more do I need to learn and understand about the situation?
- What do I know objectively?
- What assumptions am I making?
- What more do I need to learn and understand about the other people in the story (that I’m making up)?
- What additional information do I need?
- What questions or clarifications might help?
- What more do I need to learn and understand about myself?
- What’s underneath my response?
- What am I really feeling?
- What part did I play?
Step 4: Repeat this process if/when the negative emotional response comes up again.
I think that throughout the process of the first two steps, my heart is being softened and I am being prepared to allow the Holy Ghost back into my heart so that during step 3, He can correct, humble, and cleanse me -probably not all at once, but at least to a certain degree. It often requires multiple experiences with the process to complete the learning and growth.
Photo by Jad Limcaco on Unsplash
Now when it comes to the other type of “negative” emotion, I’m referring to sadness, sorrow, discomfort, disappointment, regret, etc. I think that the emotions in this category, if used correctly, are cleansing and productive. I view them as negative because I don’t seek them out and they don’t usually feel pleasant, but this kind of negative emotion is often combined with a positive emotion, like love (ex. sadness for someone is combined with love for them). If I open my heart and allow the emotion to work through me, it can end with a positive result.
Being able to really feel is important when the Holy Ghost is trying to prick my heart and persuade me to repent.
My ability to really feel deeply is heavily related to the state of my heart. In the Book of Mormon, there are several examples of people who were “hard in their hearts”. Another phrase that is used to convey the same idea is “past feeling”.
“Ye are swift to do iniquity but slow to remember the Lord your God. Ye have seen an angel, and he spake unto you; yea, ye have heard his voice from time to time; and he hath spoken unto you in a still small voice, but ye were past feeling, that ye could not feel his words; wherefore, he has spoken unto you like unto the voice of thunder, which did cause the earth to shake as if it were to divide asunder.” (1 Nephi 17:45)
This is pretty powerful. The Holy Ghost usually speaks in a still small voice. But yet, in this verse, it says that He spake unto them like the voice of thunder, and yet they still didn’t hear Him. They were so past feeling that they didn’t hear the voice of the Lord, even when He was figuratively shouting.
Sometimes, the spirit tells us something but it’s not what we want to hear, so we just push it away. And over time, we’ve pushed those promptings away so many times that we don’t even hear – or rather, feel, them at all anymore. We are past feeling.
I want to open my heart up to be able to really feel the negative emotions when the Holy Ghost is pricking my heart and prompting me to repent. When I’ve done something wrong, I want to feel pain and anguish and heartache. Those feelings will motivate me to change and repent.
Another reason why I want to feel productive/cleansing negative emotions more deeply is because I want to feel a deeper gratitude for Jesus Christ and what He has done for me. The other day, the words to the hymn, More Holiness Give Me, popped into my mind, particularly these few phrases:
More sorrow for sin.
More tears for his sorrows.
More pain at his grief.
These particular phrases of this hymn really apply to increasing the depth of feeling cleansing/productive negative emotions. The rest of this hymn is filled with phrases that point to increasing the depth of positive emotions, which I’ll be focusing on more in my next post.
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“And now, as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light; Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort,” (Mosiah 18:8-9)
I would really like to improve my ability to feel empathy with others. This doesn’t come very naturally to me. I feel like strengthening this ability will bring me closer to God, and to the people that I am mourning with.
These are the thoughts and insights that I have had so far about the importance of processing and feeling negative emotion. I have some thoughts that I’ll share about positive emotion in my next post.
One thing that I will say here though, is that negative and positive emotions are directly related. Our ability to really feel the negative emotions (and not just run away from them or stuff them down) directly impacts our ability to really feel positive emotions. Here is another post that I wrote about 6 months ago about owning negative emotion. It goes hand in hand with this post and talks about some other good reasons to embrace negative emotion.
Stay tuned for many more posts about emotions and my quest to feel. 🙂
Awesome p0st Shelly! Love the idea of sitting with negative emotions instead of fighting/numbing them. So good!
Thanks Celeste! I think the hardest part of this process is remembering to use it… and then not getting stuck in stubbornness and actually deciding to go through the process. 🙂