Just last week I told you in the newsletter how important it is to learn to identify your emotions, and above all, to pay attention to them, because emotions are our internal compass.
This is a harsh truth:
It all goes downhill when we don’t know what we feel, and worse, what happens when we do identify an emotion but dismiss it because it isn’t convenient, because “now isn’t the time”, because we’re going to make other people uncomfortable, because we’re going to cause a conflict…
Life gets better if we have the nerve to listen to our emotions, acknowledge them, identify them, and act in line with them.
Now, some nuances: We can’t make our emotions, or what we feel, the centre of the universe and expect everyone else to orbit around it. But we also can’t go to the other extreme, which is exactly what I was saying before, ignoring and repressing what we feel just to be accepted by other people.
And it’s exactly that second experience I want to talk to you about today.
I’m going to tell you about a man who lived through a traumatic situation at work, workplace abuse, and then, after some time, had to do the slow work of making sense of it, understanding what happened, and repairing the damage.
This person learned a lesson that’s indispensable for our lives: identifying, acknowledging, and listening to our emotions.
A process that, of course, gets completely forgotten and pushed aside in a situation of abuse, of any kind.
But when the storm has passed and we’re back on solid ground, we can look back and understand the why behind certain situations, and understand what role we were playing in something so negative. Only then can we learn, so that in the future we can face whatever happens with more resources.
This person, the one who lived through the workplace abuse, said to me, “Look, I know that if I’d met this boss in person beforehand, I would’ve felt that immediate sense of “this doesn’t feel right.” He accepted the job, and the learning he was able to do later, once the storm had passed, was to look back and realise there had been small, minimal signals of “this doesn’t feel right” since the very beginning. [restrict paid=”true”]
But for some reason, and that reason we’ll have to look at in another newsletter or in another context, because make no mistake, there’s always a reason, we decide to override those small signals that build up over time.
We decide to stay.
And then we enter that vicious circle that’s very hard to get out of.
He told me, “If I’d paid proper attention to those signals, I wouldn’t have made decisions of that magnitude, like moving to another town to take that job, or making major changes in my personal life so I could take that job. I wouldn’t have put myself in such a vulnerable position.”
That was his reflection.
But it’s clear that until you get out of a situation like that, until you get out of the eye of the storm and time passes, and you can start to heal those wounds, that reflection process doesn’t begin.
That moment of: “Wait, what happened? In reality, I did see those small signs of mistreatment from the start. So what made me not leave earlier?”
And just in case, I’m putting a big disclaimer here: I’m not saying, not at all, that a victim is responsible for harm. But we are responsible for taking care of ourselves, and for asking: “OK, what can I do differently next time? How can I listen to myself better, pay attention to myself sooner, and be able to say, clearly: I don’t tolerate this. I’m leaving.”
And this reminds me of what I told you in last week’s newsletter.
I told you about someone who went to see a health professional, and when she walked out of the appointment she didn’t feel good. I’m talking about that same sensation. Her emotions acted like a compass, telling her there was something in that interaction with that professional that didn’t feel right. Even though the professional looked very professional, with their university credentials and their studies and their etc, etc, etc, she still didn’t feel good in that interaction. And she told me it took her a little while to realise it because at first she adapted to that professional and accepted what she was being given. But the next day, after she’d had time to calm down and actually hear herself, she started taking that feeling seriously.
It’s worth remembering what the family therapist Virginia Satir used to say. She said: “I have the right to feel what I feel. I have the right to think what I think.”
And that’s the key.
I have the right to feel that the appointment with the doctor didn’t feel good. I have the right to feel that we weren’t a good match. I have the right to feel that she wasn’t supporting me the way I needed. I have the right to stop, leave, and cancel the next appointment.
I have the right.
I know it sounds ridiculous to have to remind yourself that you have the right to say no, that you have the right to feel you’re not being listened to, to feel you’re not being treated well.
It sounds ridiculous to someone who doesn’t have this problem.
And like I said, if you don’t have this problem, maybe this newsletter isn’t even about you. But if it hits a nerve, stay, because you need to know this.
It’s extremely difficult to listen to yourself when the whole context is telling you what you should feel, what you should do, what you should think.
It’s very difficult to create distance, to stop, and to say, hang on, how do I feel? What are my emotions telling me?
And if this isn’t something you were taught when you were little, which is when you’re meant to learn it, it’s something you’re going to have to train as an adult, to relearn it.
Learning to see yourself and feel yourself. Learning to pay attention to yourself. Learning to take yourself into account.
Because you matter.
You’re valuable.
And what you feel matters, and it deserves to be taken into account.
It can sound like a bunch of obvious statements to someone who doesn’t have this problem, but if something that basic wasn’t learned when it should have been learned, it has to be learned at some point.
And now is the time. So that if you find yourself in a negative situation, of any kind, you can stop, and listen to yourself first, before you listen to everyone else.
Because if not, what’s the alternative?
And, if you want a practical way to train this, I recommend the book Permission to feel by Marc Brackett. It’s a framework for naming what you feel, understanding what it’s telling you, and choosing your next move with more clarity. Here.
Love,
Noemi[/restrict]
