Psychology 101
There’s this thing happening where we think permission to have and feel our feelings is the end point. I can see why, there were too many miles too many of us had to crawl, scratch and claw to claim that permission. I hope it’s not disheartening when I tell you that arriving at that permission is the beginning. The very beginning where now you learn how to be skilled with your feelings, you know what they mean, where they came from, and what the fuck to do with them. Where you’ve figured out that permission to have feelings is something entirely, entirely different than permission to share them, to be throwing them out there where they may or may not belong.
Psychology 203
Whatever got done to you is also a doer that lives inside you doing it to others in similar fashion. Horrifying right? Let’s say you have a mother who cannot receive feedback. Defensive everytime. Which means - unwilling to accept any responsibility for things that go wrong. You know who you are then in your relationships, especially in intimate ones like marriage/partnership? Probably someone who cannot receive feedback. Defensive most of the time. Someone who is unable/unwilling to accept the full scope of their responsibility for things that go wrong. The harder you insist you are the one who got harmed and not the one who now harms, the more harm you’re dishing out.
Psychology 305
Not only do you know your feelings and have mastered at least something of the art of where and how to express them, you now have options with your feelings/self. As someone brilliant in my life said while teaching this to their little one - You can cry OR you can not cry. This was not teaching her child emotional dismissiveness, it was teaching them there are multiple truths happening in every. single. moment. Sometimes a feeling is big enough that that’s all there is in that moment. Great. Sometimes that feeling is a size where other things are also there and we get to decide what actually fits the moment in the very best way. We’ve learned that we can pause and find the truest thing. It’s called self-mastery. And in case getting to Psychology 305 feels like too long of a road, let me offer some encouragement by saying, self-mastery is the absolute fuckin’ best.