Being a true friend.
Of course the greatest benefit to be gained from doing ones Feeling-Healing or applying the feeling-acceptance principles, comes from speaking about your bad feelings. Speaking brings out and liberates the suppressed energy of them. However to speak them, means you require a friend, someone in whom you feel you can tell all you feel to. One can speak to the walls, oneself, the trees or even God, however it's still not the same as speaking to someone who’s on your side, someone who you feel does really care about you. And yet having that someone in your life might not be so easy. Ideally it is your partner you will want to share ALL of yourself with — express all your bad feelings (and good ones) to. But it's not always that easy, as often the very person we are closest to, or believe we are, or want to be, is the one whom we feel we can't express ourselves warts and all to. We have to deny many bad feelings for fear of them rejecting us, getting angry or upset with us, which in turn will put pressure on the relationship, even possibly threaten to end it. And often it's more impartial friends rather than our intimate person we can share more of our feeling-self with. So please feel free to use the forum as a place where you can possibly find more impartial friends, a place where you can write all you feel being more anonymous and so not afraid of causing other problems for yourself. We all need a friend, or friends, someone or people who we feel accept us. Of course this is all what we needed right from our first moment of conception, desiring and needing our parents to always be there for us, and people in whom we can go to anytime and speak about all our bad stuff to, no matter what it is, and all without the fear of them rejecting us. However, although a nice idea, sadly for a lot of us, it wasn't like this, our parents being the major causes in our early forming lives of our deny many of our bad feelings, having themselves been the causes of our bad feelings. A true friend is a willing sympathetic listener, someone who is non-judgemental and unconditionally accepting. And some people seem to naturally be this way, whilst others might believe and want to believe they are good listeners, yet will be put to the test when someone starts to open the bad-feeling-flood-gates. |
We need in our friend the world to listen to us, and to say, yes that’s right; yes, YOU ARE RIGHT, YOU ARE RIGHT HOW YOU FEEL. And as that happens we feel good about ourselves so are able to accept and love ourselves a bit more. So by unburdening your soul to your friend, expressing every bad feeling you feel, all those bits of yourself that you believe are bad and no one would want to hear about; all those bad feelings you’ve been trying to keep hidden, can now come out and feel loved and happy, as they, who is you, is welcomed into the world. And to be able to emote and express and speak all the most vile, darkest, evil, most terrible bad feelings you have within you; to be the worst person you can be whilst fearing deep down that you might actually be that way; to bring up and out all your perversions, all your hatred, all your yuk, and to have your friend accept it all; then having bared the worst of yourself, and still your friend accepts and even loves you, then the world is saying, you’re okay, just as you are, even at your worst. And this will lead you to complete and unconditional self-acceptance.
And the role of the friend can vary. Sometimes that of just listening, other times actively involved in your yuk with you, encouraging you to bring more of it out. Your friend must feel they want to know you, every tiny part of you, know everything about you, so will be willing to question and poke and prod you — why do you feel that, what does that mean, why did you say that, why did you do that, can you tell me more, and so on. And if you and your friend are helping each other to work through all your bad feeling repression, then conceivably there will be some very trying times as you push each others buttons, as you both want to express your bad feelings. And you might have some terrible arguments as you push each other deeper, it won’t all be love and roses, and it will certainly test your friendship. But if it survives, it will be much stronger and far richer, greatly benefiting from the whole interaction. So in feeling a bad feeling and wanting to speak about it, you reach out appealing to your friend to listen to you, and for them to accept the bad person you feel you are. And as your friend feels sympathy for you as you express your pain, so you know you do truly have a loving friend. And if you don’t have such a person in your life, you can use the forum as a standby, whilst you long and pray for one to come into your life to help you with your bad feeling expression. |
Trying to fix or solve the problem.
If you’ve been made to feel responsible for other people's well-being, you might find you want to try and fix the other persons problem when they are feeling bad, all so they will no longer feel bad. And most of us naturally want to help the other person when they’re not right, feeling down, and in pain. However, as good as such well-meaning intentions might be, they might also serve the purpose of stopping the person who’s feeling bad from expressing their bad feelings should they be wanting to do so trying to do their feeling-healing, and so be unintentionally (or even intentionally) helping them to further deny their feelings and so parts of themselves.
In the feeling-healing process it’s best to try and not fix the problem. To step aside, unless of course obvious help is required, and allow the person feeling bad to speak about their problem as they long to uncover the truth of it for themselves. So for example, if you were to say you have a headache, and your partner immediately offers to get you a pain killer, hold off and instead try and speak about all your pain, expressing all you feel whilst longing for the truth of it - whilst wanting to know what really is causing it. |
And once again, this might sound easy to do, but in reality it can be very difficult if you’re used to helping the other person to stop feeling bad. To try and go the other way and allow them to feel all their bad feelings, being there listening to them crying or moaning or yelling at you, and possibly going on and on for hours and days at a time, might test you to your limits. And will no doubt soon start to bring up bad feelings for yourself to express. The feeling-healing process should be viewed as an approach or way of life, if one wants to go right into it, committing oneself to it. So it’s to take a long term view of it, as there will be a lot repressed bad feelings inside you seeking expression, and a lot of bad feelings along the way that occur naturally in life. And as I said, one can take a: each bad feeling as they come, approach, trying to express them if one feels so inclined; or, to dedicate ones whole life to trying to express and uncover the truth of them all. |
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