Feelings Allowed

What happens when someone close to you - a friend or spouse - has a bad day? When one of your kids is in a funk? How do you respond?

Do you try to relieve the negative feelings? Is your tendency to criticize & minimize or ignore the emotion? Often our response is a reflection our own feelings. We may feel responsible to make things better, calm the waters, relieve the discomfort. Sometimes we experience awkwardness and embarrassment; a sense of being ill at ease, unsettled or uncomfortable. We feel as though we should “do something” when the other is down. Maybe we just don’t like being around someone when they are in a funk. It might bring us down. We don’t want anyone to feel bad. Many times our loved one simply needs a safe place to feel what he or she is feeling.

The more searching question is, “Why amI nervous or uncomfortable when someone else is struggling? What is happening inside of me at that moment? ”

Let me recommend and quote from two excellent resources you may want to add to your library:

In Safe Haven Marriage, Dr. Archibald Hart and Dr. Sharon Hart Morris note: many people fail to realize that there is a basic “wisdom” in all of the emotions. They are neither random nor unpredictable. Whatever you are feeling, you’re feeling for a reason! Emotions are the stuff of which life is made – happiness and sadness, elation and depression. As Ecclesiastes 3:4 tells us, there is a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. Because emotions – which we sometimes call “feelings” – are God-given, they are designed into us to serve a purpose.

Emotions are biologically-based and are a synthesis of all that you experience at any particular time. Your brain processes all the information perceived by your senses and converts that information into emotions. You do not have an experience or a thought without an accompanying emotion. Some of these emotions may be imperceptible, but they are there nevertheless. Emotions are intertwined with your beliefs, expectations, and thoughts.

5 Ways Emotions Affect Us:
1. They tell us we have a need – for significance (worth), purpose, meaning or mastery.
2. They direct our thoughts and can overpower reason
3. They give meaning to our thoughts. (although not necessarily accurate)
4. They prompt us to respond. (positively or negatively)
5. They inspire responses from others. (ditto above)

Milan & Kaye Yerkovich have written extensively on this subject in How We Love:

We need to learn to come into relationship for comfort and relief. Being fully known and understood requires that we say aloud to someone else what is going on within our souls. We need to be safe for the other person so they can come tell us they are hurt, angry, etc. We need to experience love, even in the dark places of our lives.

Comfort is not possible unless a connection is made. Comfort is an art.

We often offer reassurance and miss the opportunity to really listen. Asking Q’s helps to find out more about how the other person feels. It is also a way to validate feelings. We all need validation. Validating another’s emotions simply means letting them know that their feelings make sense to us and that we have viewed the situation from their perspective. The key to validation is an attitude of acceptance. What a person is feeling is what a person is feeling, no matter how I view the situation. To accept the reality that the feelings are there whether I like them or not is to validate that person’s experience. This is a sign of maturity.

When someone listens to us and asks questions, we have an opportunity to reflect and put words to what is going on inside us. The self-awareness that comes from learning to reflect gives us the ability to understand our reactions, behaviors, needs, and inner conflicts. Even if you think you know what the other person is feeling, ask anyway!

Action Step – Next time you encounter negative emotions:
1. Ask yourself what’s happening inside you!
2. Ask the other person, “What are you feeling? (or needing)

The goal is to stop telling them what they are feeling, needing, doing, or need to do and listen – to them, to ourselves.