Feeling is not a 4-letter word

Some people act like feelings are something other people—lesser people—have, but not something they experience themselves. This concept grows out of training from parents who had that same idea or contact with adults or peers who made acceptance conditional upon the “feelings are bad” code.

The reality is that feelings, or emotions, are an integral and crucial part of being human. Emotions are great tools that let us know what is going on between us and the world. They create a feedback loop that can inform our choices about what to think, do, and say. Fear of big trucks on the move can keep us from walking out into the street as one passes by. Ignoring that feeling can be deadly.

If we don’t pay attention to our emotions, they will still create behaviors in us, we just won’t be as in control of those actions as we are when we are conscious about our emotions.


When we don’t acknowledge our painful emotions, we have a tendency to store them. It’s as if we have columns of different emotions inside of us. Each column becoming a storage facility contributed to by a variety of situations that all stimulated that particular emotional response. It’s like we have a column of fear, a column of guilt, one of resentment, and so on.

Ideally these columns have a spigot at the bottom that opens up as we process the emotion through. The column might get backed up for a while when big things happen, but we eventually process the emotion through and have room again for the next events that trigger that emotion.

For many people, it’s like the spigot is crazy-glued shut. They are very intent that “negative” emotions in general, or possibly some in particular, are not going to be expressed by them and they think they can shut them down. What they aren’t taking into account is that the feelings are not going to be denied an exit point. If you stop them from flowing through in a conscious way they will find other ways to be expressed.

Emotions that are blocked from being processed through don’t disappear. They are stored and tend to get pressurized. The column just gets fuller and fuller, until it fills up and a scum-like seal gets created at the top. The next event that triggers that emotion (it might be the smallest of stimuli) creates a hole (it may just be a pinprick size) in the scum and the pressurized emotion comes oozing out. And it often creates a big mess: over reactions, anger, blurted responses… because the person is feeling all that stored emotion, not just the feelings that go with the situation that just presented itself.

Alternatively, the way that a person deals with having these storehouses of painful emotions is to go numb. They shut down so hard they can’t feel anything. There are huge prices to pay for this method of denying emotions. It takes energy to keep the lid on tight, and, when you can’t feel pain, you can’t joy either. Life becomes a bland, draining existence. WHEN YOUR EMOTIONS AREN’T GETTING DRAINED YOU GET DRAINED.
© Ann Silvers, MA, LMHC ann@annsilvers.biz  Silverstream Unlimited, PLLC
206-660-9840  http://www.annsilvers.biz/