This is the twentieth in a series of articles where I take a look at key words and phrases that play an important role in the work I do, helping people discover ways to live and love like they mean it.
You can view the entire series here.
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As a new year begins, many of us will likely jump straight into plans for improvement — better habits, healthier routines, a more organized life. But research, along with my clinical experience, shows that the changes that truly last begin with emotional awareness, not sheer willpower.
Therefore, we should all approach the new year knowing that our emotions and feelings need attention and care, and that care takes time. To care for our feelings, we need to stay with them. Give them the room and attention they need. Acknowledge their presence, slow down, and open ourselves up to experience them in all their fullness, and heed what they are telling us.
Taking Care of Our Feelings
Feelings, when dealt with in a healthy way, don’t make things worse, as some people think. They make things better.
Imagine watching an emotionally powerful movie. You settle into your seat in the theater still slightly distracted, still caught up in the details of your life. Then, shortly after the movie begins, time seems to slow down, the past and future fall away, and you pay more full attention to what you’re seeing on the screen. You find yourself getting actively involved and caring for the characters. You feel fear when there’s danger, joy when there’s success, touched when there’s tenderness, and sorrow when there’s pain.
The movie doesn’t happen in an instant; it takes time—it plays out frame by frame, scene by scene. But as you stay with it and give yourself over to the experience, you’re taken along on a rich and moving journey.
The same thing can happen in our life. When we give our feelings their due, when we honor our experience and fully see it through, we transform our feelings into positive energy.
When we stay with our emotional experience, when we give it breathing room to move and flow through us, we’re attending to our original pain. We’re allowing stuck memories or emotional states to process through to completion and lose their charge. As psychologist Richard Schwartz explains, we’re “unburdening” our younger selves from the extreme feelings and beliefs that they’ve been carrying.[i] In short, we’re healing ourselves.
Taking Care of Our Past
Many people struggle to feel compassion for their younger self. Indeed, many people struggle with feeling compassion for their adult self as well. The sad truth is, if we weren’t cared for as a child in a sensitive and attuned way, if we didn’t feel valued, respected, and loved, it’s hard for us to respond to ourselves in a caring way. We have no frame of reference from which to draw on, no working model for what self-compassion looks like. We lack an internal voice that tells us we’re okay, that we’ll be okay, that we’re worthwhile and loveable, and that we’re not alone. In short, it’s hard to imagine being this way if you’ve not experienced it.
In addition, our defenses can impede our attempts. We turn to look at our child self and we feel nothing. Or, worse, we feel frustration, disgust, or contempt. Why, you may wonder? Well, some of us adapted to our early experiences in life by learning to blame or give ourselves and our feelings a hard time. As children, we presumed or got the message that it was our fault if things weren’t going well with our caregivers, if we were not being attended to, if we were being treated poorly.
So, we figured that, if we can get control over ourselves, things will be better with our parents. We imagined and hoped that they’d treat us differently, that they’d be there for us in the ways we needed, that they’d love us.
Perhaps such a strategy worked to some degree. Maybe it helped us feel some security. Maybe it kept us from being overwhelmed by feelings of pain and sadness. Trouble is, the strategy was built on a false assumption or accusation. It wasn’t our fault that our parents couldn’t meet our needs or treated us poorly. We weren’t responsible for their behavior. We were children. Yet, like other coping strategies that we developed early in life, it persists. We continue to be hard on ourselves. We continue to criticize, blame, and brow beat ourselves. No wonder we hit a wall when we try to feel some self-compassion.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t develop it. After all, it’s innate to feel empathy and compassion. We were born with that capacity. It’s what enables us to connect with others. We just have to loosen up our defenses, find those feelings inside of ourselves, and cultivate it. And we need to allow ourselves to receive it.
Taking Care of What’s Inside of Us
Sometimes dropping inside and allowing ourselves to feel what’s there is enough to calm and heal the source of our distress. It enables us to disentangle ourselves from the past and see our present reality more clearly. But sometimes what’s inside of us is stubborn and holds on. Sometimes it needs more attention. When this happens, we need to figure out what the stuck child inside of us needs in order to be freed from the bind he or she is in. Then, we can use our imagination to help him or her get those needs met.
Something to Try
Imaginal Caregiving Exercise
Try to recall a relationship experience that was triggering and still feels charged to you. Get a mental image of what happened that was distressing for you. Then, close your eyes and go inside. Locate where you’re feeling activated in your body.
Follow your feelings back in time to the hurt, scared, angry, or distressed child inside of you. Through your adult eyes, look at the child in your memory. If you have a hard time visualizing, don’t worry about it. All that matters is that you engage emotionally and that you have a felt experience.
Ask yourself, what does this child need? What would have made this situation better for him or her? Perhaps he just needs someone there to hold his hand. Maybe he needs someone to recognize, validate, and empathize with his pain, sadness, or anger. To tell him that he’s loved, is good enough just the way he is, that everything will be okay. Maybe he needs to be taken somewhere where he’ll feel safe, to know that he’s protected. Maybe he just needs to be held. Let your heart guide you. Deep inside you know what your child self needed.
When you get a sense of what your child self needs to be unburdened, picture your adult self caring for him or her in just the right way. Picture your adult self really giving the child the care that he or she needed. Help the child feel what it’s like to be seen, heard, to be cared for and loved. Give your child self whatever he or she needs from you. Let yourself feel what it’s like for the child. Let yourself feel what it’s like to be met in this way. Let yourself feel, as an adult, what it’s like to be there for the child. Let all the feelings flow. Let your experience be deeply felt.