There are Self Esteem and Stress Relief Benefits of Expressing your True Innermost Feelings
Feelings are so important to our mental hygiene and even our physical health. We often put a strict filter on how much we allow ourselves to express what is burning within us. Since there is a phrase that says Feelings Buried Alive Never Die, burying the hatchet and taking the risk to say what you love, first breaks barriers to communication and frees the soul.
Balance lives in the Intention behind your Self Expression.
Words and their power emit from the intention placed behind them. A paradigm shifts when you pause to say “I feel..” instead of “You do this to me…” Taking a conscious approach to living is by making intentionally simple statements that are clear. Remember, statements are made by much more than just using words. As such, a silent protest, or the loud thunder of the silent treatment, has to hear itself. It will elucidate some barriers to communication that we may unconsciously hold up as defenses. Make positive the cause to lift and let go of fear in our interactions with others and have the hard talk with the intention to be sincere and fair.
Personal Freedom and Health in the psyche and spirit come from practicing Authenticity.
Becoming a well-defined, fully self-expressed, and engaged individual, the ability to function increases, therefore the conditions for living in psychological integration and balance are set. By first loving and accepting oneself fully, authenticity is allowed to stretch out and grow freer from outside pressures and social barriers. How authenticity is roused to life through some playful spontaneity for enjoying and celebrating your personality, coaxing hidden wounds gently and embracing your personal sensitivities, as you become conscious of “self-climes” like your moods, needs, and feelings. By withstanding discomfort over your insecurities, self-consciousness, and vulnerability to allowing yourself to express clearly what is on your mind, and loving oneself for, can even help you be proud of your shadow.
Empathy Exercise: How do we truly listen to each other?
Exercise in Communication in 5 parts.
Start with finding a partner. Sit across from each other and hold a space for this 5 part communication. We can learn to increase an empathic connection to one another.
1. Sit facing your partner and make steady eye contact in complete silence.
2. Now one partner will talk about a painful experience with a person in their life that they didn’t have the chance to have a conversation with that would have reconciled a misunderstanding that resulted in hurt feelings. The assigned listener will listen attentively with eye contact and genuine facial expressions, but will not talk or interrupt. Then switch turns.
3. Now, each person will take turns reflecting back to the speaker what they heard them say.
4. Next, you will try to reflect back to them what they may be specifically needing and feeling, listening to the feelings and needs of the person underneath what was said.
5. Now, empathize with the person from their past by speculating what that other person’s feelings and needs may have been.
Notice the difference. Did each person benefit from being held in a compassionate space? Did they get their need to be heard fulfilled? Did they gain healing and insight in identifying the core need that was left unexpressed from their past?
This is a method based on a model called Peer-Reevaluation Counseling. It is a process that values the release of emotional discharge that is needed while we process old baggage by speaking in a safe space. Then a reframe of the struggle helps shed light on the feelings and needs of the person experiencing the hurt. The best thing is Peer-Reevalution can be done by anyone! Your best friend, a kind group member and someone you may call an empathy buddy!
We are all Healers. We all have the ability to heal each other. We all want to be Heard and we all need Love. It is not easy but it is worth it. First in our families, our relationships, and then with the wider World.
We can Shine The Light of Consciousness on our true feelings and needs when we practice Empathy. We, as humanity, have the same universal needs and feelings. It is worth the time you take to find out what your unique needs are as an individual.
We have positive feelings when our needs are met. We experience negative feelings when our needs are not met. Language, in either mood set or feeling, can set up life-affirmative experiences or set off opportunities for growth and discussion to understand conflicts.
When we make assumptions and judgments, we can experience misunderstandings, which cause hurt feelings, sadness and drama. You can see how our language is limited and even ingrained with hostility and criticism. After upsets, we all want to return to a semblance of emotional homeostasis. We come back. We eventually want to steer our language away from accusatory statements and judgments because the people we speak to will close down and shut off from truly connecting. They can interpret your message as meaning they are not good enough when we say, “You did this to me.”
There is a difference between feelings and thoughts. Thought words that we mistake for feelings are such: For instance, saying “I felt abandoned by you,” implies that the other person did something to you and can be interpreted as a criticism. If we say that “I feel hurt because I really need safety and trust in this relationship to feel secure.” This can lead to empathizing with the other and others, while not making it the responsibility of the other to cause your feelings. For instance, they can then say: “I’m sorry that when I left on a trip without inviting you that you felt that way. I was only honoring my need for space and renewal at that point in time.” Both people just needed to communicate to fulfill their needs. Nothing was personal. It was just a misunderstanding that the first person internalized, when nothing another person does is really personal.
Turning to paradigm shifts when you find you are internalizing blame or any other unpleasant feeling may be to look at situations as opportunities to enhance your self-esteem by rising to the challenge of meeting and loving the conflict. Empathic communication and conscience makes relationships conscious! Enjoy consciousness through the Light of connection to Love. Boundaries yet included!
Common statements in our cultural conditioning today are deeply imbedded beneath our language, possessing an almost seeming code that begs from the speaker only two questions: “Please” and “Thank you.” A yell or a scream or an insult is the inevitable part of the process of being human. Don’t you ever wonder about loss, or about feeling bad, low on the dial, on the level, proud and refreshed, clear, or guilty? Welcome to the social animal of humanity.
Following the points I’ve been making concerning the importance of communicating during hardship, there is this seminal breakdown to the approach to Nonviolent Communication designed for a way for us to open up to those we find difficult to resolve problems with. These are a few bullet points designed to show you the feelings and needs behind the words people say.
Down below are communicative statements that are attuned to Empathic Communication. They are reframes, if you will, of the truth behind only wanting, needing and connecting in Love and Cooperation.
Empathic Communication Attunement: What Would Loving Thoughts Sound Like?
“Your thought is really important to me….” I CARE.
“I rather be more honest here, but I feel her point is important for her to share first.” I RESPECT. I HAVE COMPASSION.
“I believe you are important, and I know what you have to say is believable.” I AM OPEN TO TRUTH. I DESIRE OPENNESS and CONNECTEDNESS. I WANT RESOLUTION. I VALUE BEING ON COMMON GROUND.
“I feel better about myself today, so I will approach listening to people with an open curiosity.” I AM OPEN, OPTIMISTIC, and WANT TO CONTRIBUTE.
” Even though I do not agree with his statements on leadership in this situation, I strive for a way to survive this conversational lesson.” I LOVE TO LEARN AND GROW AND EXPAND. I AM CLEAR ON EFFECTIVENESS—IT GOES AGAINST MY AIM FOR HARMONY TO BEAR HOSTILITY.
“I would like to pause and perceive her facial expressions while she fills her need to fill in the details.” I AM PATIENT. I MAKE AN EFFORT FOR HER TO PROCESS. I NOTICE BEAUTY. HER ARRIVAL TO CLARITY BENEFITS MINE TOO. I VALUE THE EFFORT FOR COOPERATION TO HAPPEN.
“I don’t know what his point is, so I am going to ask him a few questions and listen so he has a safe space for clarification.” I CONTRIBUTE and I OFFER LOVE. I HOLD SPACE AND OFFER SAFETY. MY GENEROSITY COMPLETES MY NEED FOR SELFLOVE. I AM ENHANCED BY PARTICIPATION AND ACTIVE LISTENING.
Let’s tell the Truth. It is not always easy to be patient while listening to a diverse group with challenging opinions. We may jump to fix, or stifle each other unintentionally, shifting uncomfortably with the thwarted opportunity to be heard. Premeditation and paused responses is a practice and benefits greatly the outcome of interactive growth between people. Instead of feeling limited by the idea of compromise, translating language into understanding can lead to a better chance of achieving win-win solutions. Empathy is Intentional and is Gentleness, setting the tone for quiet listening and a fresh way to exist peacefully.
“I thought distrust would make you hurt. I only took the Heart out of life and only for this burned.”
Has the Universe of Surprises ever dawned on you in the midst of spinning your emotional wheels? Here we are: we are trying to get something accomplished, something falls through, somethings come up for someone else, and we, as spiritual warriors, start to wonder what it means. What is the “Universe” trying to tell us? Or perhaps, what are we telling ourselves and others? What is key to cracking the code is Generosity.
Giving and receiving breaks barriers.
The point to life is to live in relationship, and there is never a limit to that unless when we think there is.
There’s always a more to what we know about each other, and we can get comfortable without knowing there is richness to every person. So reactions to people cause us to grow. Take every opportunity to serve and learn the fellow person around you.
It’s really about not accepting shallow judgments and allowing the negative to take over. How much judgment there is in the mind is at times unavoidable. Do we as a people have anger lingering perpetually inside of us? It’s the last emotion we allow ourselves to talk about because it feels unsafe and has consequences within our relationships. It’s seen as the dividing factor between us. Our minds can become consumed by resentment. There is a convenient adrenalin in holding an enemy image in the mind that fosters blame and fosters a reason to react. Emotional survival and the grapple for safety are hard impulses to overcome when anger has been buried under the rug for so long. The reason may lie in not asking the fellow person around you what they feel and how they are affected, in general. Decisions are made past that concern, decisions are likely executed from inside an insulated world. Diversity challenges us to overcome our own internalized phobia of ourselves around the different. Diversity is the only fact of existence. How can we remain cut off in life without anger imploding individually and hence collectively?
If you want to change the World, explore the opportunity for opening to a hard talk with someone.
If we can sit in our discomfort, willingly balanced uneasily on tinder hooks for the time it lasts, you’ll gain so much stamina to face reality and become a person that others can go to. What is painful is the person who can’t face their reality and must live dissociated from the truth of who they really are and their effect on others. A lot of us who know these persons can be protecting them from facing their pain, thus enabling their delusion to continue. I think a policy of telling the truth and exercising boundaries as a skilled person is extremely beneficial for the village.
How do we reclaim the village?
Our potential for suffering can be minimized by expressing ourselves and being listened to, and in turn, making the effort for others to be heard without reacting. The root of the village’s existence lay in the cause of anyone suppressed, the working poor and the destitute all over the world, the stigmatized, the spiritually impoverished. They themselves, the conversations of enemy images always literally transforming to an image of them that is free. Who doesn’t break the law but cajoles it?
I’ve been loved. I must give back.
We can call ourselves to the empathic give to action; To practice opening your call to expression and expanding your emotional literacy through the effort. Self-empathy is allowing space for this ambitious flower to open. Think of it as you’re having tea with your mind and a listen to your heart. You’re inviting a friend to sit with you and talk next. Letting the creative perceptions, thoughts, words, emotions divested from prayer engage in rapport building with those you normally avoid because of previous conflict. Trust and live the process out. Sustain communication as long as you can. Withstand awkwardness and embarrassment, if you must! You are putting feelings into words, and actually causing a rumble in the Universe of Surprises yourself. Humble beginnings and owning them as an expert. And giving of yourself with concerted effort. The result is the regenerated feeling of sovereignty over your own inner being, respect for the other’s opinion and feelings, whether you agree with them or not, and a reverence for your inner self and that of the other’s.
“Beautiful is not often recognized as an event like this.”
Empathy is Poetry 