Let’s Talk About Your Feelings

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You have a right to your feelings and so does everybody else.

You have a right to your opinions and so does everybody else.

Opening the door to feelings means opening the door to all feelings, not just your own and not only those feelings of outrage or offense.

Since feelings are so nebulous, regulating human behavior to control them is all but impossible.

There are no metrics to feelings and they vary dramatically from person to person. When something isn’t quantifiable it cannot be regulated or managed effectively. This is why we are not able to create a world of human interaction where people are spared from those things they find unpleasant or offensive.

There is a distinct danger to maneuvering through life at the mercy of your feelings because it is not a universal human trait. In fact, emotional capacity varies dramatically from person to person and those who are less emotional can have a very distinct advantage in life. Those who are emotional but are able to put their feelings aside and accomplish things in the face of their own unhappiness or pain will always have an advantage over those who cannot. This is not a level playing field.

It is very important to remember that only the people who care about you care about your feelings.

Strangers don’t have to care about your feelings because your life is not relevant to them. Their life is not relevant to you either, so in turn, you do not need to care about their feelings. If you choose to do so, you have made that choice for yourself and you should understand that choices sometimes come with difficult consequences. Never forget this school yard lesson — caring for someone else does not automatically require them to care for you in return.

The ability to be kind to strangers is a gift of a charmed life. If you don’t need to be naturally suspicious of strangers, you have been lucky enough to not have been irreparably harmed by one. Don’t assume that everyone else is as lucky as you or should have the same capacity for open-heartedness as you do. Kindness is not a universal human experience because ours is a world where there is still much suffering.

We all have circles of influence and caring in our lives that start with those we love and spread outward from there. People outside of these circles don’t care about your feelings unless they are naturally caring and compassionate people. Not everyone is made this way and you cannot make them this way if they don’t want to be. Some people are simply not innately able to understand the emotions of others and no amount of coaching can get them there.

There are people in the world who are enjoying the fact that they can cause you pain and embarrassment. They relish your suffering. It’s an enjoyable game for them and it makes them feel better about themselves. The reason why we have never been able to stop people from verbally abusing each other is because that act of abuse makes the abuser feel good. Physical abuse we can regulate because it is visible and quantifiable. Verbal abuse is not, which is why the onus is on the adult individual to manage it or minimize it in their own lives.

If your feelings are personally unregulated and you get into the destructive habit of expecting other people to cater to your feelings, you will always be at their mercy. If you make it clear to others that you are easily manipulated with words, those words will always be used against you.

It’s a sadly common misconception that the protection of feelings that was afforded to us in childhood has been extended into adulthood. This is a mistake because more is expected from you emotionally as an adult when it comes to your own self-containment and maintenance.

People have far more autonomy and control over their lives than they used to but more is required of them as a result. You are not at the mercy of the landowner whose land you work. You are not a peasant and this is not a feudal society. Freedom from tyranny is a reality for a large part of the world today.

Survival is no longer a daily struggle in developed countries. People are now able to live independently of each other and no longer need the structure of a family or community to survive hardships. Our lives are in fact ridiculously easier and safer than our ancestor’s lives were. Since we are no longer engaged in the constant battle for survival, we are now able to occupy ourselves with much more less critical issues including our feelings and the feelings of others. This is NOT necessarily a good thing!

Since most of us have far less to occupy our energy than our ancestors did, we now have to be diligent about what we allow into the limited space of our minds. In this overly connected world, we are constantly bombarded by competing forces for our attention. It is now more critical than ever for us to be extremely scrupulous about what information we consume and be extremely mindful of how it affects us.

If we are so consumed with the fear that others have instilled in us about what might happen, we are in fact failing as adults in the world we live in today. Survival of the fittest is no longer about brute strength, it is about emotional resilience. In the battle for our attention, we must recognize that emotional manipulation is now an industry standard in news and media.

Feelings aren’t necessarily bad things but when their purpose is perverted they can become incredibly destructive. Those who chose to ignore, bury, or medicate away their feelings with alcohol, drugs, food, or other self-destructive addictions aren’t addressing their feelings in a way that will resolve those feelings and prevent them from popping up later in more dangerous ways.

Feelings should be evaluated, examined, and questioned in the harsh light of day. What are my feelings trying to tell me?

1. Are these feelings warning me about something that I am not facing head-on that I should be?
2. Are my feelings serving me or do I need to examine them, thank them, and dismiss them because they are not serving me in a helpful or positive way?
3. Am I expending too much emotional energy on something that I cannot control? And do I need to take myself more firmly in hand?

The world is far smaller and safer than it ever was before. It seems however that now human beings will make any of their trials or issues as all-consuming as they need to be to fully occupy their minds, even when those problems would have been laughable to their great grandparents.

So, are you the master of your feelings or are they the master of you?