In our coaching session, Tim uncovered and disclosed his feelings of anger, hurt, frustration, and hopelessness. We unearthed the initial incident and started to repair the damage from the past so that the two departments could cooperate and collaborate once again.
This is not a unique situation. Actions are taken, things happen, and we react. If you didn’t react, there would be something wrong. Feelings are an integral part of being human. It is how you deal with your feeling that is critical. In this particular situation, the feelings were internalized instead of being addressed. If we dissect the situation between Tim and Jay, it looks something like the case-building chart.
An incident occurs which causes feelings that are unresolved. These unresolved feelings become externalized into judgments. Then a decision is made based on the judgments and unresolved feelings. Decisions grow and multiply until they formulate a belief. Ultimately, a self-fulfilling prophecy surfaces and unless the sequence of events is unraveled it will create polarization among the parties. This is exactly the cycle that countries become locked into that is the catalyst for many wars.
• Tim’s long-anticipated sale backfired causing his expectations to be unfulfilled resulting in disappointment
• He felt in addition frustration, let down, hurt, anger, and hopelessness
• He tried to contact Jay with no results that caused him to feel unimportant
• He then judged Jay as inconsiderate, unavailable, and self-consumed; not a team player
• He decided that Jay didn’t care about him, the sales department, the company, or the customer
• He formulated the belief that the service department didn’t care about the sales department, nor did they care about the customers. Service was only concerned with their paychecks; they didn’t care about anything but money. The entire sales department started to mirror Tim’s feelings and beliefs and began to act accordingly. Then their beliefs became globalized into all service employees are useless consumers.
The sales department had a general attitude toward the service department that was riddle with feelings of hostility, with judgments ranging from incompetence to disinterest. Yet few of them could tell you where these feelings and judgments came from. Their response would be, “Everyone knows that service is…”
Tim was willing to look within himself to sort out his feelings. It was a risky situation, because people often think that talking about feelings in a business environment is not appropriate. However, in order to resolve the situation, the venom had to be released. We had to penetrate right into the core of the hurt feelings and dig out the poison. This is how a simple incident morphs into armed camps, and, eventually a full-blown war.
Barometers and Signals
Feelings control your attitudes, moods, and sense of well-being. They are natural expressions of your internal condition. Feelings are a barometer of your reality that indicate whether someone is an ally or an adversary; whether something is desirable or rejected; whether to halt or proceed. Feelings are pivotal to the physical, mental, and emotional health of every human being, along with the decision-making process.
Feelings are Purposeful
Feelings are fundamental to the Negaholic recovery process. Sorting out, experiencing, acknowledging, expressing, and communicating feelings is essential to the health of every organism, every person, family, or organization, and nation. Dealing with the innermost feelings in an honest and straightforward manner is fundamental to the health and proper functioning of any entity.
Feelings exist to orient and reorient you to yourself and your world. They connect you with your inner truth regardless of whether it is “right” or “wrong.” They also integrate you with your essential self. By allowing and releasing your feelings, you become free to live life fully. Your feelings give you immediate feedback regarding your relationship with yourself and others. Your sense of well being with yourself has greater impact on your happiness and fulfillment than anything else; feelings give you important information about your overall condition and wellbeing.
CASE-BUILDING
Situation Driven
Disconnection From Feelings
When feelings are not dealt with, they become bottled up and create a blockage, both personally and interpersonally. This, in turn, isolates you from yourself and your world. The fastest and surest way to become detached from reality is to avoid, discount, discredit, and disallow the real emotions that connect you to your essential self. In Chapter One we said that the core feelings of a Negaholic are inadequacy, fear, and loneliness. If these feelings are never addressed, released, and healed, then the only recourse is the pursuit of a sense of well-being through any means possible, even if it means engaging in activities that are self-destructive. In order words, if you are cut off from your feelings, and you need to feel in order to confirm the fact that you exist, you will strive to feel something.
One of the reasons that some people engage in self-harm is to release emotional pain. People who have difficulty expressing their emotions will sometimes revert to inflicting pain on themselves to make them feel better. Self-harm includes anything one would do to themself to intentionally cause injury. This includes: cutting, scratching, burning, scalding, hitting, banging one’s head against the wall, punching things, sticking objects into your skin, preventing wounds from healing, swallowing poisonous substances or inappropriate objects. Since these people are cut off from their feelings, they are searching for a feeling, even pain, and they would opt to feel something, even though painful, over feeling nothing.
Designer Feelings
Some people try on feelings as if they were clothes. They check them out to see if they like them or not. If they want them, then they may be incorporated into their wardrobe of feelings. They use their analyzing skills to assess desirability. They also try to categorize their feelings into nice and not-so-nice feelings. They distinguish happiness, joy, pleasure, and peace as “nice” feelings, which are acceptable and desirable. They label anger, sadness, hurt, depression, and pain as “not-so-nice” emotions. Then they try to have some and disallow others. This is difficult if not impossible to do.
Feelings are connected. If you allow yourself to have your feelings, then you must allow all feelings. If you suppress your feelings, then you suppress all feelings. You can’t selectively say, “I’ll keep joy, but get rid of depression,” or “I’ll never be lonely again, but let in all the pleasure that’s possible,” it doesn’t work that way. Feelings are woven together in a big interconnected web.
The web is loosely knit so that if you suppress anger, you don’t necessarily totally suppress passion, but tightly enough knit enough so that if you keep your anger in check, you can never completely discover your passion. The point of choice is: to feel or not to feel?
Feelings Are the Lights on the Dashboard of Life
All feelings are equally valid and necessary. Feelings provide indications of functionality or the lack thereof. Like the oil light, gas gauge, and other lights on the dashboard of a car tell you that something is happening inside the hood, your feelings let you know that something is happening in your interior. When you are running low on gas, a light goes on to indicate that you need to fill up. You could respond in several ways. You could be pleased that the light is working and that you will know about the problem ahead of time and take proper measures so that you aren’t left stranded somewhere. You could be upset because you don’t have time to get to a gas station or because your car uses up so much gas, or because you just got gas and whoever used your car last didn’t refill it. Or you could be upset because the cost of gas these days gets you really upset. On the other hand, you could ignore the lights on your dashboard altogether and see what happens.
Tell Me/I Don’t Want to Know
Some people are pleased to have an indicator to tell them what is going on and let them deal with it appropriately. Other people are annoyed by the very fact that they have feelings. They think of them as an unn
ecessary nuisance, a bad use of their time, and inconvenient as well. They may deem them inappropriate and irritating believing they would be better off without them. Still other people avoid and ignore their feelings until the organism comes to a complete shutdown. Much like a car running out of gas, the human organism will shut down, have a burnout, a nervous breakdown, or a heart attack when the red light indicators are consistently ignored.
Society Looks Down Its Nose
Feelings are generally ignored, discounted, invalidated, and/or repressed, except in theatre, therapy, or personal development. We are taught repeatedly that our feelings are not legitimate and should not be trusted. We have been led to believe that feelings should be denied and avoided, and that expressing them will only get us into trouble. We are indoctrinated to believe that feelings are wrong and disruptive, and this belief is reinforced through disapproval, avoidance, and punishment. From a very young age the learning process teaches us to disassociate or to disconnect from our innermost feelings, to avoid feeling and to intellectualize instead.
When feelings occasionally erupt at a movie, a sporting event, a marriage, or funeral, we feel momentarily out of control and immediately strive to regain control. We suppress the feelings that seem inappropriate to the specific environment. Suppressing feelings becomes such a conditioned response that after a short period of time suppression becomes automatic. If you are disconnected from your feelings you have an opportunity. You are at a crossroads: You can continue to engage in the old behavior, or you can start feeling your emotions.
You will not be instantly able to change negative behaviors and pursue healthier alternatives the moment your feelings are awakened. You have just become aware of your feelings, yet you do not yet possess the skills to implement the required changes. This stage is potentially the most disruptive because you have the awareness without the new behaviors. This gap between the old way and the new way creates guilt, remorse, and self-flagellation. Though this state is on the path to recovery, it can feel very distant. It is like hitting bottom before reconnecting with your essential self. One of the blocks to owning your feelings is embarrassment.
Embarrassment Reigns and Terrorizes
Adult feelings are often embarrassing. To feel hurt, sad, angry, or even jealous exposes a vulnerable part of our humanity. To let others know that we are human, that we feel not-so-nice feelings, that we care enough to feel intensely is inherently embarrassing. There are some feelings that are considered so unacceptable, so heinous that people won’t dare admit to even having them. Anger at a co-worker who has been promoted over you, jealousy of a sibling who just received public acclaim, hurt about not being invited to a special event are examples of some of the feelings which one might be reluctant to admit.
The Five Steps to the
Successful Management of Emotions
What do you do with unacceptable feelings? Feelings can either run your life or you can take charge and manage them. They can terrorize you so that, as a defense, you completely suppress them, or they can flare up anytime when you least suspect them, making you appear out of control. You need to know how the feelings can be identified, sorted out, and then dealt with in healthy and appropriate ways. The more acquainted you are with your feelings, the easier it is to handle them when they surface. The more you ignore them, the more they control and dictate your behavior.
1) SORTING OUT THE FEELINGS
There is rarely one isolated feeling which is lingering all by itself, but rather an assortment of feelings all tangled and intertwined, much like spaghetti. The sorting-out process means separating each strand of spaghetti. Feel it, without judgment, and assign it a name. This process is reflective and introspective. It requires patience, and quiet time. It is often advisable to have a coach available to help draw out, separate, and label the different emotions.
2) ACKNOWLEDGING YOUR FEELINGS
After all the feelings are sorted out comes the moment when the truth is told. Admitting that your feelings are yours, owning them as your reality without having to justify, explain, defend, or understand them is the next essential step in the process.
3) EXPERIENCING, EXPRESSING, AND RELEASING YOUR FEELINGS
Often people think that once they have sorted out and acknowledged their feelings it’s all done; they can get back to everyday life. It’s not that simple. In order for healing to take place effectively, there needs to be a release. It’s as if you wanted to have a wound heal, but you left the venom inside. You need to extract the poison before the healing can effectively take place. Emotionally speaking, the poison is the feeling(s) that you have been harboring within yourself. That feeling needs to be released in order for you to let go of the pain, hurt, trauma, or anger.
This does not give you license to vent your feelings on anyone who upsets you. If you were to do this, you might get locked up. For instance if you were stopped on the street by a policeman who started asking you questions, and you vented your anger on him, you might get escorted to jail. You want to choose appropriate places to release your feelings so people don’t become alarmed. Over the years I have found that using a surrogate to release and vent the emotions can be very helpful. Similar to role-playing that helps you reenact a situation to air your feelings, in a safe way, without creating a new incident. Using a coach or friend as a surrogate can help discharge built-up energy as well. To have access to your emotions but to also be able to monitor their release is essential to successful emotional management. You need to be able to choose where and when you release your emotions.
4) COMMUNICATE WHATEVER IS NECESSARY
You do not want to confuse communicating with experiencing, expressing, and releasing the emotions. People confuse these four, thinking: If I communicate to the person, then I have released the “charge.” Communication is an important step, and it can happen in many ways. You can do it verbally, face-to-face, over the phone, or in writing. You want to make sure that you release the “charge” on the feeling before you communicate it to the person who has been the catalyst for the feeling. It is important that you communicate responsibly. After all, you want to produce a result, not just blow people away. It may feel great to release your feelings, especially after so many years of suppressing them, but you need to anticipate the result venting will produce. Often the emotional charge is disproportionate to the stimulus. This happens as a result of the accumulation of past, unexpressed situations. When you don’t address the emotions hidden underneath the message, you are a loaded gun waiting to shoot an unsuspecting person who might accidentally hit the trigger. You may offend, insult, and alienate people if you do not separate these two steps. Numerous acts of random people shooting innocent bystanders in schools, malls, and neighborhoods have occurred in the US, Russia, Israel, Scotland, Yemen, The Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Argentina, Canada, Finland, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Norway, and France. The US has by far the majority of incidents, but it causes us to stop and reflect on why this growing phenomenon is proliferating. One of the reasons that has been sited is because of bullying in the schools. Another is the significant violent role models presented in the media. Another reason might be the total lack of permission to express feelings, and the tacit approval of resolving issues with weapons. If children and adults constantly see their heroes resolve their conflicts with guns, bombs, and missiles, both in films and in real life, then it starts to become normal in their reality to follow suit. It is a matter of connecting the dots. If we want to reduce the widespread violent behavior, we need to make it more safe and acceptable for people, adults and children alike, to express their not-so-desirable feelings in a non-violent and responsible manner.
By dealing with communication as a two-step process, you take care of both people. You attend to your feelings and honor them. You take care of the other person because you have communicated responsibly, in a respectful way, and in a manner that can be heard. You want to ensure that you are approachable and rational in your delivery
, so that the message is received and not rejected.
5) COMPLETION OF THE CYCLE
At this phase you reflect on the process you have been engaged in to determine what lessons are to be learned from each experience. You look to see what you would do differently next time. In other words, you need to reflect on what you learned before you proceed to the next situation. To repeat patterns habitually that have never been examined or released is a compulsive and addictive behavior. Ultimately, each experience of intense feeling can be a healing from the past as well as an opportunity for growth in the present to create a desired future.
The Secret Ledger of the Subconscious
Another manifestation of feelings in daily life is the storing of incomplete feelings. When a feeling has not been experienced, expressed, or released, it lodges itself within your psyche and hovers there until the time when it is called forth to be of service. And it is always called forth to be of service.
Sarita took a phone message from Herb for Ben, and forget to give it to him. She was embarrassed about it, but didn’t say anything. When Herb called later that week, he asked if Sarita had given him the message. Ben dismissed it, but noticed that an important message had been dropped. Later that week, Ben was to meet Sarita for a luncheon meeting with papers which she needed to sign to formalize a contract that would accelerate her commission check. Ben arrived at lunch without the papers. When Sarita asked Ben about the papers, he felt chagrined because he had totally forgotten to bring them.
On the surface these incidents look innocent enough, but upon closer examination and considering their relative proximity in time, there was a definite cause-and-effect relationship between them. Ben ignored his feelings. But Ben’s feelings did not forget Sarita. Those feelings needed to be attended to. In truth, Ben felt unimportant and dropped out. The feelings would get the attention they deserved one way or another. Ben’s feelings, even though seemingly unimportant, were logged in his subconscious. Events like this started occurring more frequently, so that eventually Ben and Sarita were hardly speaking. Ben’s ignored feelings demanded vindication. Ben and Sarita came in for coaching to sort out their association and to get their relationship back on track. After they had traced the clues that led to the original incident, they were amazed at how important feelings are to every relationship. It shocked them to discover that such a trivial situation could cause a major communication breakdown.
Negaholics Page 9