Brett offers what Joe calls “a beautiful pointer”: every thought you have about not being able to feel an emotion all the way through is itself an emotion you get to feel.
“I should be able to cry” — that’s shame. Feel the shame. “If I cry, I’m never going to stop crying” — that’s fear. Feel the fear. “Why can’t I feel anything?” — that might be anger. Feel the anger. The thought that you’re not feeling correctly is never just a thought — it always has an emotional charge underneath it.
“Every thought that you have about not being able to feel an emotion all the way through is an emotion that you get to feel.”
This dissolves the common frustration of “I’m trying to feel my sadness but nothing’s happening.” The frustration itself is the next emotion on the river. Maybe what needs to be felt first isn’t the sadness but the fear of not feeling, the shame of not being good enough at emotions, or the anger at being stuck.
The metaphor of a river applies: sometimes it goes around a bend, through gentle class-two rapids, then over a waterfall, then class four, then into the ocean. You don’t get to decide the sequence — you follow it.
Related Concepts
- Feeling an emotion fully requires letting your identity restructure
- Questioning feeling destroys feeling
- Judgment signals unfelt emotion
Source
- [[sources/qa-3-common-questions-uncommon-answers|Q&A #3 — Common Questions, Uncommon Answers]]