I sometimes find it challenging to honor my own feelings – especially if what I want or feel seems to be at odds with other people, or my emotions don’t seem to be “appropriate” to the situation. While I’m not someone who tends to hold back sharing my honest opinions, desires, and feelings and, over the years, I’ve gotten quite a bit of feedback from people close to me about talking too much, dominating situations or conversations, and being selfish – underneath all of this is a deep fear that my feelings and desires aren’t as important as other people’s.
It has been humbling to come to this realization about myself recently. However, it has also been incredibly liberating to see this pattern and to ask myself the question, “What would it be like to honor my real feelings and to live my life knowing that what I want and feel is just as important as anyone else?”
Honoring our feelings isn’t about being self absorbed, arrogant, or better than anyone – it’s really about being true to ourselves, honest with how we feel and what we want, and willing to engage in authentic conversations with other people – even, and especially, when we don’t feel or want the same things that they do.
So why can it be so challenging for us to honor our own feelings? Some of the primary reasons for this are:
- We worry that people won’t like or approve of us
- We don’t value ourselves in an authentic way (i.e. we think we’re not good enough)
- We’ve been taught to put other people’s needs, desires, and feelings ahead of our own
- We’re not comfortable feeling and expressing certain emotions
- We don’t think we “deserve” to have what we want (i.e. we think we’re not important enough)
- We haven’t been taught healthy ways to honor our feelings
- We worry that we’ll be seen as selfish
These and other things get in the way of truly honoring what we feel and what we want in life. Sadly, by not honoring our feelings we both discount ourselves in a painful, and ultimately damaging way, and we create separation between us and other people, often the most important people in our lives.
Here are a few things you can do to enhance your capacity to honor your own feelings:
- Be Real About How You Truly Feel – The first step of any process is always about being real, first and foremost with ourselves. Even if we feel unclear or uncomfortable with a specific situation or certain set of emotions or desires, the more willing we are to be real about what we truly feel and want, the more ability we’ll have to honor ourselves and be authentic with others. Making it a practice of getting in touch with our true feelings is essential. A great way to do this is through journaling. It’s not about justifying how we feel to anyone else, it’s about being honest with ourselves.
- Stop Judging Yourself – One of the biggest things that can get in our way in life, in general and specifically when it comes to feeling our feelings and expressing our desires, is self judgment. We think to ourselves, “I shouldn’t feel this way,” or “If I share this, they will think I’m a terrible person.” We use these self critical thoughts to suppress our true feelings, which can have significantly negative consequences on us and others. What if we just allowed ourselves to be real and to honor what’s true for us in the moment, without judging it?
- Give Yourself Permission to Feel – Because of our self judgment, we sometimes don’t give ourselves permission to feel… especially certain emotions. As human beings we tend to have a hierarchy of emotions – liking the “good” ones (love, joy, gratitude, peace, etc) and not liking the “bad” ones (anger, fear, hurt, powerlessness, etc). However, at the deepest level, all human emotions have value and can benefit us if we’re willing to feel them in an authentic and healthy way. Giving ourselves permission to feel what we’re feeling is critical to our ability to honor and move through our emotions in a way that serves us, our relationships, and our life.
- Let Go of Your “Story” – Many of us, myself included, are attached to our “story.” We love all of the drama and all of the details that make up the relationships, situations, and circumstances in our lives (both past and present). While our life story, as well as the details of specific relationships and circumstances in our lives, is important at some level, too often we get caught in the story and all the drama, which actually takes us out of our emotional experience. Where we have real power is in feeling our feelings, not talking about them, rationalizing them, or explaining them – but in simply feeling them. Human emotions are not sustainable – especially if they are authentically felt. It only takes about a minute or two to genuinely feel and move through an emotion. However, when we attach an emotion to a story, we don’t allow ourselves to truly feel it and thus can keep it stuck in place.
- Get Emotional Support – As important as our emotions are to our lives, our well being, and our relationships, sadly we don’t get a lot of emotional training in life (through school, at work, and in general) and we don’t often have built in, healthy emotional support mechanisms in our daily lives. We live in a world that is primarily focused on action, results, and appearances – none of which has anything to do with our emotional experience (even though our emotional experience is not only one of the most important aspects of our lives, but is what drives much of what we do and produce in life). There are, however, many ways we can find or enhance our emotional support. Most of us have certain emotional support structures in our lives that we’ve set up for ourselves, consciously or unconsciously. The key is for us to utilize these in a consistent and authentic way, as well as to make sure they are empowering us to honor ourselves and our emotional experience in life.
Share your thoughts, ideas, insights, actions, and more.
That was just what I needed. I just journaled last night when I was completely hurt and didn’t know how to handle my emotions.
Thanks Jessica
This is a great article! I especially identify with the idea that kids fear that anger equals lack of love. Tonight my 4 year old purposely poured apple juice all over his dinner because he didnt want it. I was so upset that I let Dad handle it and was very quiet for the evening because I di&n3#0d9;t want to lose it and scream like a lunatic. My son was so upset that I was angry. He asked to help with clean up. While I appreciate that he wanted to help, I'd hate for him to think my love would hinge on one ruined dinner. It's a tough balance.
My prlebom was a wall until I read this, then I smashed it.
I liellarty jumped out of my chair and danced after reading this!
Thanks for this thoughts today. It’s therapeutic to read something like this to remind ourselves how important we are as human beings and our feelings are just as important as our existence and therefore let it be free…
Amen Vykim!
Recently I have begun to let others know how they are making me feel and it has been a very positive experience. Especially when others close to you make you feel guilty, sad, or hurtful. I have started to confront them with the question “if it was their intent, how it made me feel, and why do they want me to feel that way”. The conversation that follows leads to open discussion and healing. Try it.
Thanks Dick! Remember, though, no one can “make” us feel anything, the feelings are within us – the other person (or people) may instigate our experience of certain feelings, and it is our job to honor them, feel them, express them (if we choose to) and possibly give some feedback or create some boundaries.
I recently had a conversation with a co-worker about our jobs. I was expressing my frustration as to how I’ve out grown my job and I feel in many ways that it’s holding me back. His response was one that made me feel guilty by saying how good we have it and we should just be happy where we are. That conversation didn’t sit well with me. In being true to myself, it’s important for me to be constantly growing and learning as life has so much to offer. Thank you for reminding me that it’s ok to honor my own feelings without having to feel guilty.
Thanks for this comment and your honesty…people won’t always respond the way we want them to. Such is life
Hi Mike!…As always, very nice to hear from you, even though it will be periodically from now on.
This blog of yours fits me like a glove.
I’m a very emotional person and I often feel that I should start to be more logical and stop being too “feeling oriented” .
You can image the fight I have with myself when Im trying to be more logical in any given experience or situation and all about “feelings”. So, good to hear it is perfectly fine to honor feelings. Chances are I’m not that crazy at all!
XOXO
Keep writing Mike and sending me your letters.
🙂
Appreciate this newsletter today. My little girl and only child graduated from preschool yesterday and I was hit with a sudden wave of intense sadness and emotion in the 24 hours leading up to and after the occasion. My upbringing was very much around stuffing feelings — particularly negative ones — so crying feels very uncomfortable for me. And, I felt like there must be something wrong with me to feel so sad around what is essentially a happy occasion. As hard as it was, I reminded myself to just feel the feelings and not to be afraid of them, and reminded myself that they’re all legit — even these non-joyous ones. Thanks for the reminder.
I enjoy the honesty and openess that your articles/blogs present. I wish more people would “apply” them rather than just read them. Like others who have commented it seems that when you share your true feelings someone always attempt to make you feel guilty for expressing them. Thank you for reminding us it’s ok to feel “whatever” we/you are feeling (good, bad or indifferent)as long as you are not causing harm to anyone.
Mike, thanks so much about your honesty re “being real about and honoring” your feelings;
I was struggling with this re a certain uncomfortable business situation, and realized that I had let myself be unduly persuaded by the opinions of others. Didn’t feel good &
actually backfired on me. Now I can see all from a larger perspective. Again,Thanks so much!
Wow every word in this article resonates
with what I’ve been experiencing this past
week!Thanks Mike. Seems Universal:The conflict within to be pleasing to others/ grant ourselves our true desires. I’m @ the 50% point! honoring my desire to keep to myself/saying yes to others requests of
my energy! I wish to be authentic but how do you say I prefer to be by myself than with you without Risk of hurting someones feelings?!
Thanks Mike for your candid insight. Some people are gun shy about being open and honest in the workplace, because not all voices are equally valued. I remember a time when after two years of advocating for my staff, I finally started to advocate for myself. My boss accused me of not caring about the company, because I was being selfish. Risk of hurting others or being hurt will definitely impact what we can say to whom.
I agree with what you are saying.
It is though incredibly difficult to get rid of past conditioning and long term habits of thought you have built up, usually as a defence to something real, or sometimes imagined, which has long since moved on.
What is really odd is you think you have conquered one demon and then find something else underneath which needs dealing with. Maybe that is just the way life is. Once we have all the answers and can deal with everything there would be no interest in life.
I think I have come to the conclusion that the key is all about control. We try to control our lives and what happens in them far too much and maybe we should just stop and accept that for most things we are powerless to affect one way or another. This is particularly true of other people.
Allowing yourself to just feel is one way of taking this step back from ‘control anxiety’.
I do sometimes wish I knew how to feel instinctively and just let feelings happen. My tendency is for my mind to interfere before I can register how I feel. I suspect I am far from alone in this. At least I am able to accept now that I do have feelings!
Thanks for an interesting post.
Hi Mike, thank you for this informative and helpful article. I conducted a search for ‘feelings matter’ and this was one of the first results that popped up. What lead me to search for this is the sudden and recent awareness that I had not been ‘honouring my feelings’. In all of my 40 years, I had been judging, rejecting and disregarding my feelings, and have instead been thinking rather than feeling. This insight came to me when I was having an argument with my sister, who did not want to know that I was annoyed with her at something that she did, and not only did not want to know (but shutting me down, telling me to ‘shut up’, etc.), she actually got angry with me for wanting to express myself. At that moment I decided that my feelings actually do matter and if she doesn’t want to hear them, then I cannot be around her. What also came to light is the fact that she was getting angry simply because she couldn’t acknowledge and accept her own feelings that she had done something wrong. Her behaviour was reminiscent of my mother, who had always rejected, ignored or dismissed our feelings in some way or another. Hallejulah, I say, I have seen the light! I hope your readers will relate or resonate with what I am saying, it has been a truly insightful experience for me, and now, for the first time in I don’t know how long, I am looking forward to the year ahead and life in general. Peace.