How we feel about ourselves is a mirror image of how we will feel about other people. We're conditioned from an early age to think and behave a certain way. We're conditioned to feel a certain way and don't stop to question our feelings.
But we must look deep within ourselves to work out how we feel, about our lives, about life and other people, but we must also include ourselves in that equation. If through our upbringing we were more open in an uninhibited manner, we would come to understand and learn to explore our feelings more.
We can feel, but not know how we really feel. We need to explore our feelings on an unconscious level, because it is our unconscious thoughts that have the answers, our unconscious thoughts will tell us how we feel.
My feelings weren't really considered or acknowledged as a child.
In all honesty, I have no idea of what I really feel at any given time. I have gotten to the point of just saying, I'm okay to people who ask; since most of them really don't care anyway.
I know it's meant for polite conversation, but don't bother asking if you don't want to know. Nothing worse than someone asking that question and then just walking away before you have a chance to answer! Yes, I do realize it may be just me at times, but I have caught on too, when people aren't really interested, since I can actually read them pretty well.
Only now do I actually consider how I really feel and I can't say it's very pleasant! I have spent most of my life trying to feel nothing like a robot, but that hasn't worked out very well for me. You can only suppress your feelings for so long before they begin to come out sideways and you eventually explode like a volcano!
We're not meant to live that way, since it is actually our feelings that allow us to survive. We need feelings like fear and anger to let us know when we're in danger. I was well trained to ignore my feelings and worry about everyone else, so it's a very hard habit to break! It isn't something that you just get over.
People like me usually turn out to be a Norman Bates type who keep mother in the basement! I must have done something right, since I'm not a psychopath as much as I thought I would become one!
The reality was that I was acting out in horrible ways,but I had no idea how to process the feelings I was having like other kids learn how to do. You can't stuff all those feelings of rage and anger for too long before you do explode. My real feelings are foreign to me, so it's taking a while to make sense of them.
Maybe someday I won't feel so much like a Vulcan as great as that is sometimes.
Thanks Randy. I have to admit, it took a while for me to think about my emotions or even equate that I had any as a child and if I did, I wasn't emotionally able to equate those feelings back and why.
Unfortunately, as you know, when you're told how to live, emotions aren't something you think about. When you're not used to processing your feelings and as a result understand very little as to how to deal with the behaviour you're presenting, you end up dealing with very little.
That said, you've come a long way, because you're aware of what your parents didn't do and as such are learning how to process your emotions now. I don't believe it's too late to learn, for anyone to learn. Each day we have the opportunity to learn something new and if we're not learning something new, to at least hone in on something, so that we can do better.
If there's one thing we must deal with, it has to be our emotions. I have seen first hand what happens when we come to neglect what we feel. We must be aware of how we feel.
I hope you continue to make sense of your feelings Randy and that you're doing better now.
I feel pretty good about myself in terms of knowing who I am, who I am not and where I'd like to be. Although I came very close to being lost to a need to shrink or balloon myself to fit into someone else's stage of existence.
When I decided that I was fine with me and my identity, I saw how I really felt about a lot of things.
I think you're last paragraph concludes your response to my blog beautifully. Thanks Tim.
I think we go through various stages in our lives of questioning who we are what we are, but when we do own our feelings we can truly begin to live.
Unfortunately, I didn't go through that phase. I know that when it got to the stage where I literally had no control behind my decisions, as they were constantly being made by others. It was then I seriously began to question my life, but until that time I didn't question anything. I just accepted how things were.
I believe the more independent we are, the more in tune we are with ourselves... the more likely we are to work out how we really feel and what we want.