Power In Our Feelings?

A feeling is what’s happening for us in the moment. There is personal truth in it. It might not be something that necessarily makes a lot of sense for us, but it is founded in our own truth.

If I’ve learned anything in my work as a therapist at the Center for Christian Life Enrichment it’s that thoughts and feelings are not the same thing. Expressing a feeling means explaining what our experience is in the moment – it’s true because it’s true for us. If I’m feeling sad and say that I’m sad, there is truth in that. I’m being authentic and honest in the moment. I’m letting you into my own experience in a very real way.

Sharing a thought on the other hand comes from how our brain interprets our internal or external world. As it involves our own interpretation it is vulnerable to bias, judgment, and miscommunication. This is sometimes a confusing concept to talk about, but we all know it when we see it. If I’m in a disagreement with a coworker and I tell him about my own feelings and experiences it’s easier to understand. I say that I’m feeling angry in the moment and it conveys my own personal experience. If, on the other hand, I share my thought that he’s the source of the “problem” I’m experiencing, I fog up the communication with my own bias and judgment. I attach my own preconceived understanding of the world which is muddy with experiences I’ve had from infancy to adulthood. It might be true, it might not be – it’s hard to determine, but it often makes it difficult to connect with another person at a deeper level without sharing my actual individual experiences.

The foundation we use for talking about our own feelings at CLE is “SASHET” – it’s a tool for talking about feelings in basic, more true way. SASHET is an acronym that stands for the 6 basic families of feelings: Sad, Angry, Scared, Happy, Excited, And Tender. We know there are thousands of words to use to describe how we’re feeling, but we use SASHET as the foundation of our expression. It keeps us grounded in our core. It keeps us from muddying the waters of communication with our own extra meaning. It’s common language, and even though it seems limiting at first to keep coming back to these 6 words, it actually frees us up to be more involved and invested in what we’re talking about. It may seem simple, but there is power in its simplicity. In college I took a poetry class – it was so difficult for me personally to change my writing style. I had a way of telling a story and it was hard work for me to adapt that in any way. Finally my professor explained to me that using rhyme and other techniques in poetry seemed limiting like they would actually inhibit my ability to express meaning, but on the contrary once I got used to using them they would open me up to express in such a way that would make the other person feel what I was feeling rather than just reading what I was writing. In many ways SASHET helps us do that in conversation. It feels limiting to change our way of talking about a certain way we feel, but when we learn to use language that is accessible to others and founded in our personal truth, they will feel what we are feeling and connect with us at a deeper level.

The power comes from creating more intimate and meaningful connections with those around you – connections that are founded in your personal truth. Relationships become more satisfying and work becomes more nourishing when we are in touch with our feelings.

Interested in learning more about the power of our feelings? Join me as I present a FREE webinar on Wednesday, May 25th from 12:30pm to 1:00pm. It’s an introduction into the emotionally-focused work we do here at the Center for Christian Life Enrichment, and it will help you see how you can access your feelings more fully to catalyze you to live a fuller and more enriched life! Register here: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/621430386