How does one feel feelings?
Lately, I’ve been having regular conversations with my mentor and friend, Simon Carcagno, and this man has been on a roll. He will make these seemingly throwaway comments and observations that worm their way into my brain and unlock and unblock these mental obstacles I’ve been struggling with since the beginning of 2024. It's like a positive version of this Scrubs clip:
His latest earth-shattering observation about me was as follows (paraphrased):
You ignore your intuition until you are able to back it up with logic.
Boom.
Well at least it’s a “boom” for me. I told this to both my weightlifting coach and my bass teacher, and they were not surprised at all. In fact, they have been leveraging this insight the whole time I’ve been working with them to be effective with me. They noticed very quickly that I am able to pick up the kinesthetic skills they are trying to teach me once they see that I understand the logic behind it.
So let’s just take a moment to appreciate the incredible teachers I have in my life.
And now, let’s move on to my current real-life implications of what Simon said.
I ignore my intuition if I cannot justify it with logic.
That allows me to:
· Prioritize facts over feelings.
· Correct for unconscious bias.
· Give people and situations a chance.
It has caused me to:
· Devalue my experience and expertise that has formed my intuition.
· Be lenient and permissive under the guise of open mindedness.
· Get emotionally attached to people or situations which makes enforcing boundaries painful and difficult.
As I think about it further, I realize that there are two things I need to work on:
1. Tapping into my intuition and how things feel in the moment.
2. Being uncompromising on how I should be valued both emotionally and financially.
I’ve been having conversations with different people to get their insights and here are some gems that have emerged:
· Your Mind Pattern informs how you tap into your Kinesthetic/feeling focus.
My Mind Pattern is AVK. That means that Kinesthetic triggers my Open Attention. That means tapping into my feelings is great for my creativity and getting me into a flow state, but it’s really tough to focus.
An analogy of this asking someone who has Auditory for their Open Attention to follow what is happening in a meeting where someone is droning on without visuals. (I’m actually pretty good at doing that!)
· Your childhood conditioning is something you must recognize and unlearn.
If achievement was always an expectation instead of a celebration, when does one realize that they are enough?
For example, say we have a young girl of color who would often perform just as well or better than her white male counterparts in debating or public speaking competitions. However, the teacher leading the team, who the girl respected and admired, considered those counterparts as the ‘superstars’ of the team and the girl as someone who should consider herself lucky to be included. Would it be all that surprising that the girl would carry that ‘gratitude’ into professional situations?
We live in a society that brands people (more often women) as selfish or entitled for articulating preferences or needs. We have created a system that punishes someone for protecting their dignity and enforcing boundaries (watch Emily the Criminal to understand this better).
What blows my mind is that being accommodating and compromising doesn’t help either. It just allows others to take more and more. So, either you are branded selfish/entitled/toxic/bitch or people think you’re great and take advantage of you until you burn out.
It should be noted that there are some precious, wonderful people who respect you more for advocating for yourself and your wants and needs – and I am blessed with many wonderful relationships that do support that (Seth being the gold standard). The problem is that they have spoiled me. I start assuming that most people are this way. Then when I come across some charismatic interesting people and I get close to them, I feel betrayed/heartbroken when I find out that it’s more like they aspire to be this great but have not figured it out yet.
· Extending Frances X. Frei’s and Anne Morriss’ triangle of trust to yourself.
The triangle of trust consists of Authenticity, Logic and Empathy. You need all three to trust someone. So I thought I would apply it to myself – why don’t I trust my intuition alone? Let’s see where I “wobble”.
Authenticity – this is definitely not the issue. I can’t not not be myself if I tried. I’m way too self-absorbed and in love with my own mind. A lot of people think that I don’t drink or take mind-altering substances for religious reasons, but they would be wrong. It’s because I don’t want to not be me. This does align with my religious doctrine but that’s just a happy coincidence.
Logic - err, I don’t think this blog post would make sense if that was the issue. So by deduction, the wobble is…
Empathy - and this makes sense. I deeply struggle with extending empathy to myself. I used to have low empathy for everyone but then I started doing the work of recognizing my privilege and everything I’ve been given – so everyone else gets a pass but not me. I’ve got to make the most of everything I’ve been given, otherwise I’m an ungrateful jerk. Rules for me but not for thee!
Going back to the original insight – I know on some level that I need to be kinder to myself and give myself a break, I just have not yet found the logic to back that up so I haven’t figured out how to put it into practice.
I’m still working through all of this so I would love additional insights – especially how you feel your feelings and any advice you have for me.
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