Perhaps you're worried that you'll go into therapy and your therapist will look past every word you say in search of the feelings you ought to know and share. This would certainly feel like being stripped off and left vulnerable. It wouldn't be fair and shouldn't happen.
So - MUST you talk about your feelings in therapy? No. Your therapist MUST go at your pace. Feelings or no feelings.
It's true your therapist does want to know how you feel - the experience you go through and how it sits with you. The unfair part is if they forced you to share or forced you into an awareness of yourself. Learning new things about yourself may be big, scary news.
Besides, there will have been a reason why you didn't know, or resisted knowing something about yourself. It's not always fair to demand someone ought to be feeling something and know about it. Believe me on one thing: it is super, super(!) common for people to have no idea how they feel. This is one common reason why people come along to therapy, because they may be literally confused about themselves.
How am I feeling? Who even am I?
Are these two questions above one and the same? They're pretty similar. And that's why we care.
Here's why therapists tend to be so interested in feelings...
Therapists and people who spend time researching and writing therapy books tend to believe that sensing feelings and understanding them are important for one big reason: they shape our sense of self and relationships with others.
I'll say more...
Emotions behave as the mechanisms in which we can make sense of and evaluate our experience in the world that in turn tells us about our wants and needs and how it's best for us to go about meeting them.
Even if we don't know our feelings, they are still guiding us to do what we do.
Let's use music as an example...
In one moment, why do you get up and dance to one song and skip the other? Because one is creating a feeling that just seems click within you in that moment, and the feeling is buzzing through your veins to the point you're now moving your whole body (either in a sad dance or a happy dance - you 'know' which). And the feelings in other song just don't fit in that moment (or maybe ever) - so you skip it. The songs are making us feel a certain way about ourselves and the world, and we're acting accordingly. Tomorrow we might react and behave differently. And that's perfectly normal.
These feelings going on inside of us, with or without our knowing, are responsible for creating the relationship between us and our environments. Our emotions enable us to navigate responding and interacting, ebbing and flowing closer or further away from others, while checking on our own mental and physical well-being. Awareness of our selves as embodied, feeling beings is what creates a sense of identity and purpose.
This awareness of feelings is key in person-centred therapy. One of the main goals is to arrive at a greater understanding of yourself by helping you to understand your experience, needs, goals and motivations. How do you feel about this and that?
It matters, because it is you.
Because we believe the nature of identity and self is, for the main part, emotionally-charged, psychotherapists are keen to engage with the experiences (the feelings and emotions) of their client so that they both, as a team, can understand who the client is authentically.
But sometimes we don't know or own our feelings...
... which can be an unpleasant place. People tend to be unhappy about not knowing their feelings. I wouldn't wish it on anyone. In line with what I said above, unawareness of feelings is pretty similar to not knowing up from down regarding oneself and relationships. Defiantly tough.
For this reason, therapists look to help people know who they are by understanding their unique and timely set of emotions.
What do you think about this? On the whole, are you your feelings? Are your feelings you? Yay or nay?
"Either way, therapists tend to fall on the side of "feelings = person = feelings".
But they should go slowly with you. They shouldn't throw you at yourself. They should let you sit comfortably with your feelings and uncomfortably too.
Written by Lily Llewellyn
July 24th 2023
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