'feel your feelings': part 1

Perhaps you have heard it is “important to feel your feelings”. I agree, but only partially. I think it is valuable to be ABLE to tolerate any feeling. But I don’t believe feelings are generated in order to be felt or that feeling them has any inherent value.

Here is another way to think: mind causes feelings in order to cause actions. Your mind wants you to DO something, so it mobilizes energy to cause it. If you don’t do anything, the energy circulates and you feel it.

Mind generates all sorts of feelings to deal with situations that either don’t need to be or cannot be dealt with (for example: “Make that guy stop criticizing you 2 years ago!!!!”. It cannot be done.). Therefore, riding out the energy of an impulse to act (when no action is required of you) is a valuable skill.

Letting the feeling be there until it dissipates will likely require feeling some things you don’t enjoy. Hence, “feel your feelings”. But that’s not really the point. It’s more a side effect of mind attempting to cause actions that don’t need to be taken. Any strategy that enables you to effectively get to the other side of unhelpful impulses will do.