As we were discussing the ways to recognize wisdom that resides within one’s self, my client said, “I’ve been told that you can’t always trust your feelings.”
Coming from the same cultural background as she has, I not only knew what she was saying, I felt a bodily memory of doubt and confusion that came with this misguided belief. Through Compassionate Communication (a.k.a. Nonviolent Communication) I’ve come to understand that it is very common for us to misdefine feelings and misuse the word; for the sake of our self-compassion and connection with others, it is important to correct this.
When we say something like, “I feel stupid,” or “I feel threatened by…,” or “I feel I should not do that,” we are not describing an actual feeling in the body, we are describing an evaluation in the mind, or more specifically, we are describing a judgment or a conclusion about our self or another. Stupid is a conclusion about the character of a person. ‘Threatened” is an assessment that something or someone else has intended something against us. “I should…” is an expectation about conforming to someone’s idea of right/wrong behavior. These almost certainly have feelings behind them, but they are not statements of actual feelings, and confusing those two may lead to the loss of information essential to making better decisions for ourselves.
When we say something like, “I feel angry,” or, “I feel tightness in my chest,” or, “I feel uneasy about that”, we are truly describing feelings of the body and the mind. (Note: theoretically, there is a difference between emotions and feelings, but for the purpose of this essay, my use of the word ‘feelings’ will include both). Focused on keeping us physically and socially safe and on the path to growth, the nervous system is a detection system reaching throughout the entire body to receive an enormous amount of information about what is going on inside the body and outside; all this is happening below consciousness at first, handled by the lower brain to initially determine the safety or opportunity of situations we are in. The lower and mid-brain areas quickly filter and provide an initial assessment of its importance which takes the form of emotions we experience in the body – and then make some parts of that information available to the higher parts of the brain where it is interpreted on a higher level, making judgments and preparing our bodies for a response. These initial feelings – not the judgments that result from higher processing – are essential in helping us discern what’s happening in the social and natural environment around us and what’s happening in the processes inside our bodies. To ignore these feelings and focus on the judgments first often makes it much harder to find satisfying solutions for ourselves.
To get to the point: when judgments are mistaken for feelings, as in the first example, we may do well to treat these with skepticism and pause to get more perspective before acting upon them, because they are conclusions formed very quickly with limited information. When feelings are defined as sensations and emotions in the body, they may more safely be treated with curiosity and respect because they come from specialized systems that are experts in detecting information that is relevant to our mental and bodily well-being.
When we are in a meaningful experience, judgments about the experience may sweep in before we know it, getting all mixed up with the feelings in consciousness. It may not be possible to stop the flow of judgments at first. The initial task here is to practice noticing the difference between observed feelings and processed judgments. Just the act of observing the two will create some space in which we can observe and come to accept the feelings of the body and seek to understand their connection to what is factually happening in us and around us. This forms an initial foundation for personal wisdom. Then we can slow down, observe the judgments that our minds are inclined to hastily make, and consciously engage the higher brain to ask questions and gather out more perspective from ourselves as well as from others. By this, we test and refine our mind’s judgment-making program and grow in our ability to form better conclusions and choose better behaviors.
So, we may say that you can trust your initial feelings but you can’t always trust your initial judgments.
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