Part 1 describes how ‘feeling your feelings’ has no inherent value. This is very different from how feelings are viewed and valued in most of the mental health field. “Suppressing” emotions is considered to be a big no-no.
Here is a different (perhaps unpopular) way to think about it:
Suppressing emotions, or dissociating from them, is often a rational attempt to avoid flying off the handle or melting into a puddle of tears when confronted with a challenging situation. Adults, unlike small children, are fully capable of facing something disturbing without being bulldozed by a freight train of emotions. This is a defining feature of maturity (one which, unfortunately, age does not make inevitable).
The strategy of suppression/dissociation can be effective, but it has some undesirable side effects. One is that it creates a fear of feelings. The fear of a feeling, and struggle against it, can end up being more painful and dysfunctional than the emotion itself. Riding out the energy of the original emotion is usually a better bet than fighting it.
Secondly, suppression/dissociation doesn’t make the cause of a feeling go away. The emotion can continue to get fired off by thoughts, so it requires ongoing vigilance. Being on guard against a feeling is energetically taxing Adjusting what is causing the emotion, like an unhelpful thought or belief, is much more effective than continuously managing it.
Another problem with suppression/dissociation is that feelings contain information. Feelings are caused by the unconscious mind and so carry with them the signature of whatever the unconscious is up to. That is valuable information, because it points towards how your mind is functioning. It has data regarding things that are not accessible directly through consciousness. A feeling is the conscious evidence of what would otherwise be fully unconscious.
Without the ability to detect feelings, information is missing. You can’t do anything about or with the information, if it is not showing up in your awareness. Hence, notice your feelings in order to move forward. Feeling them for the sake of feeling them does not accomplish much. Retrieving the information they contain may be of value, or perhaps not. Either way, it's worth having access to.
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