Guest article by Patrizia Patz
Emotions – i.e. feelings – are on everyone's lips in our world. They are used everywhere: advertising, sales, even politicians have discovered emotions for themselves. Success is achieved by reaching the other person emotionally. But when it comes to our own feelings, most of us are illiterate. How does that fit together?
We are emotionally illiterate
It seems somehow paradoxical. On the one hand, it is preached that emotions are important and that people can be convinced of something even better by emotions than by purely rational argumentation. On the other hand, we learn next to nothing about how to deal with our own feelings. Emotional competence is completely ignored by our current standard training. From childhood on, it is mainly our mind that is trained in school and university. We learn to read, write and calculate, we learn to think logically, to solve problems and to draw conclusions. Our minds are fed with a lot of facts during this training. A high level of intelligence is rewarded and valued. But feelings? Not at all!
Social conditioning in matters of feelings
The only "education" we receive in terms of feelings is through social and family conditioning. At a young age, we simply adopt what is considered socially appropriate and appropriate, what we observe or are told in our family. Or we draw our conclusions from painful experiences we have had with our own feelings or the feelings of others.
This unspoken, but ubiquitous social paradigm regarding feelings can be summarized roughly as follows: Feelings are a private matter. Showing emotions in public is considered unprofessional (one of the few exceptions is the football stadium). Feelings make us weak and manipulable. Feelings are childish, irrational, moody and untrustworthy. Anger, fear and sadness are negative emotions that must be avoided. Being an adult means having yourself and your feelings under control. This negative collective imprint is also reflected in our language: "An Indian knows no pain", "Men don't cry", "Crybaby", "Scaredy-cat", "Who screams is wrong", "Fear is a bad advisor" – to name just a few well-known sayings or swear words as examples. That's the lesson we've all learned about feelings.
Emotional numbness as a collective mass phenomenon
The result of this social conditioning is that we learn very early on to suppress our feelings and pack them away. However, feelings do not simply disappear by suppressing them. Because feelings are not a design flaw of creation, but an important part of the human being. So we not only suppress feelings, but make ourselves deaf to our feelings.
And our culture actively supports us with all kinds of offers that we can use as anesthetics to stop feeling anything. We throw ourselves into work, simply feed away our feelings with sweets, let the TV or radio fill us with sound all the time or distract ourselves with the Internet, computer games or social media contacts. Representatives of the New Age also try to escape their feelings with positive thinking or meditation. In the worst case, a glass of alcohol or a cigarette also helps. However, our way of dealing with feelings cannot develop in this way and thus remains in its infancy. We banish our emotional world completely into the unconscious.
Unconsciousness makes manipulable
And there they lie, our feelings, fermenting – unconsciously and yet present and fully effective. And above all: fully accessible to manipulation attempts from the outside. The paradox mentioned at the beginning is in fact not a contradiction at all. The fact that emotions are a useful and effective tool in advertising, sales, media, politics, etc. is precisely due to the fact that we live out our feelings unconsciously and have no conscious access to them. Because if we are not aware of our feelings, it makes us easy victims for emotional manipulation. In this case, the institutions mentioned are simply taking advantage of the fact that we have repressed our feelings. They are still there, and when addressed in the right way, our unconscious feelings motivate us to buy certain products, join a particular opinion, or vote for a particular party. We react from unconscious emotional programs without having a real choice. How convenient for the
Economy and politics!
If you look at the advertising from this point of view, you will quickly notice that most of the commercials are aimed at unconscious fears: the fear of getting sick, getting tooth decay, experiencing an accident, not belonging, becoming old and frail, missing out. The same applies to the election advertising of the parties. Here it is the fear of losing one's job, having less money at one's disposal, being overrun by strangers or having no future at all.
A new paradigm
The magic word is awareness. Because where there is awareness, manipulation has no chance. And the possibility of emotional manipulation from the outside is not the only problem that arises from the culturally cultivated emotional numbness. There are numerous other negative effects. Suppressed feelings can be expressed, for example, in physical symptoms such as high blood pressure, digestive problems, nocturnal teeth grinding, headaches or heart problems. The unconscious and "childlike" way of dealing with our feelings often puts a strain on our relationships – whether privately or at work. But suppressed emotions also often play an essential role in many psychological symptoms, such as anxiety attacks, depression, uncontrollable tantrums or burnout syndrome.
Was uns fehlt, ist eine Ausbildung im Umgang mit Gefühlen. Doch solange wir die kollektive Geschichte aufrechterhalten, dass Gefühle negativ und unprofessionell sind, gibt es in unserer Gesellschaft keinen Grund, um sich mit dem Thema zu befassen. Ausgangspunkt muss also ein neues Paradigma, eine neue Haltung in Bezug auf Gefühle und Emotionen sein. Gefühle sind nämlich eine unglaublich nützliche menschliche Ressource. Wenn wir lernen, sie bewusst zu fühlen und verantwortlich mit ihnen umzugehen, dienen Gefühle uns als Navigationssystem und Kraftquelle. Sie geben uns nützliche Informationen und Handlungsimpulse. Sie versorgen uns mit Motivation und Kraft, Dinge in Bewegung zu bringen und umzusetzen und auch andere davon zu begeistern. Gefühle machen uns menschlich, verbinden uns und lassen uns mitfühlen – um nur einige Aspekte zu nennen.
Adult feelings
Starting from this new paradigm, the first step is to learn to feel again, i.e. to free our emotional world from the exile of the unconscious and to create conscious access to this resource again. This includes becoming aware of our emotional conditioning and ensuring that emotional injuries we have suffered in the past can heal. The second step is to learn an adult way of dealing with feelings: What am I feeling right now? What information does this feeling give me? What can I use this information and power for? Because according to the new paradigm, being an adult does not mean having oneself and one's feelings under control – in the sense of "Indians cry silently". Instead, it means being aware of your feelings at all times and using them responsibly for your own life, whether in your private or professional life.
And this is how you perceive your feelings again:
#1 – Pause and center
The emotional reaction to a stimulus takes place in a matter of seconds. Before we become aware that we are feeling something, our mind has already knitted several stories about it. Here it helps to pause for a moment and consciously direct your attention away from the thoughts to the physical body. Because feeling happens in the body, not in the mind!
#2 – Classify the feeling
Then ask yourself, "What am I feeling right now and why?" Contrary to popular belief that there are infinite feelings, you can trace most feelings back to 4 basic feelings: anger, sadness, fear, and joy.
#3 – Feel the feeling consciously
You'll find that your conditioning wants to get you back on track quickly and go back to the mind. Instead, stay in your body with your attention, keep breathing, and allow the feeling to be there and express itself – possibly including tremors, tears, or whatever else comes up.
#4 – Watch what happens
Breathe in and out deeply while letting the feeling be there. Keep going back into the body with your attention to your feelings. Observe how it changes when you have consciously felt it for a while. Notice how it just ebbing away after a while. And then make yourself aware: everything is fine, you're fine!
The Author
Patrizia Patz is the evolutionary crust sprinkler. As a professional trainer and coach, she has been accompanying people and organizations beyond the boundaries of their conditioning to more possibilities and authentic vitality for over seventeen years. She is an expert in the connection between emotion and ratio, so that her clients regain the power of their feelings in addition to effective solutions.
www.emotional-empowerment.de
Patrizia Patz:
Feelings
Emotionally healthy in a rational world
1st edition BusinessVillage 2019
220 pages, ISBN 978-3-86980-495-8
14,99 Euro
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The author:
Thank you very much for the valuable post! Readable tip.