A beloved member of my family posted this on Facebook, "Is it possible to describe feelings? If so, how do you learn?"
Which got me thinking, how do you describe feelings? How can you eloquently describe the pain, happiness, loss, freedom or bliss that you feel inside? There are plenty of descriptive words in the English language, but do any of them actually describe what it FEELS like or what you're GOING through? What is a feeling?
The dictionary definition of feeling is:
1. An emotional state or reaction
--feelings, the emotional side of someones character: emotional responses or tendency to respond.
SEE NOTE AT EMOTION . . . which is . . .
A feeling can be almost any subjective reaction or state; pleasant or unpleasant, strong or mild, positive or negative, that is characterized by an emotional response.
An emotion is a very intense feeling, which often involves a physical as well as a mental response, and implies outward expression or agitation.
So, order to feel one must emote and in order to emote, one must be in touch with their feelings. There has been a lot of exploration in my world about this precise subject lately. I have been in an acting class since January and one of my biggest challenges has been reconnecting with my emotions and allowing myself to truly experience the way I FEEL. I don't know or remember WHY I learned to push my emotions down and in, instead of letting them come up and out. I DO remember that when my Grandpa died I made a conscious choice to remain "the rock" and the "strong one". I remember being at the funeral and barely crying at all, including through my Grandma's rendition of "Wind Beneath My Wings" which she SANG at the services to the love of her life, the wind beneath her wings. EMOTIONAL is an understatement. BUT, at the age of 14 I didn't let myself walk through it. I did eventually break down months, maybe even a year later, at youth group, finally allowing that feeling to rock my body and soul and release in true emotion.
I was in a relationship about 18 months ago, the first "real" relationship I have had in my short life. And before you get angry, Bateman, I mean "real" in terms of length of time and the fact that we lived together, met one another's families, etc. Not whether or not our feelings were real, or the connection real. . . there it is again, that word, feelings. How do you have feelings for someone? Can you adequately describe what love is, loneliness? I'm getting ahead of myself though, rewind, back to the relationship. We had a great relationship, it was fun and exciting and full of lots of adventures. We both knew from the beginning that we didn't want the same things out of life, i.e., I wanted kids, he didn't. BUT we were having so much fun that we just kind of kept brushing things under the rug, we can deal with that dust and grime later, for now, WINE TASTING! Yippee. What I learned is that if you're brushing issues under the rug, chances are that your feelings are also getting shoved back under there as well. No matter how much you love someone, or share with them, if you know deep under that rug that they don't want to experience life with you, fully, in the way that you want to, you can start to resent them and your feelers get hurt. It doesn't even matter if you can logically understand in your brain that it is not personal, they just don't want that, its not that they don't want you, they just don't want that. Your little, or big, heart will ache and hurt and bleed (which in reality is good, because it means its still working) ; ) and in order to continue having fun and moving forward, we shove our feelings back under the rug too.
The problem lies in coming out of it, realizing that you haven't allowed yourself to feel the sadness, loneliness and pain that comes from ending a relationship, a friendship, a connection, a love. I could blame my lack of emoting on my former Lovah, but that wouldn't be honest, nor reality. Because, in truth, no one can DO anything to us. It is all a choice. We are the only ones who can dictate any part of our life. If someone has "done" anything to us, it is because we allowed them to. It's just easier to point the finger at someone else and say, why would you hurt me in that manner, than it is to look at ourselves in the mirror and say Why would YOU hurt YOU in that manner? Yikes. That is intense. Writing that sentence made me feel like I kicked myself in the stomach. Nothing that my ex and I experienced was "wrong, or improper, or anyone's fault" It was simply the journey that we had to go on, and continue to go on everyday.
Its not like I've always been emotionally shut down or restricted in relationships! Just ask Ryan P. my first love and boyfriend from the 3rd through the 5th grade. I don't know if he remembers this but the drama queen inside of me sure does. I was upset with Ryan once in the third grade because I believed he liked my friend and was acting inappropriately. We were in separate classrooms, but my teacher had asked me to deliver something to his teacher and I felt this was an ample opportunity to express my emotions. I walked into that classroom where they were watching a movie, handed the papers to the teacher, turned toward Ryan, removed the rings he had given me and threw them at him. Stormed out. I am so awesome. :) Don't worry. We made up and continued our innocent love adventure through 5th grade.
When I'm in acting class and a scene calls for emotion, I panic and get in my head about how I am going to create this emotion?! I am learning that I simply can't create emotion, that I must step into the experience and open my heart in order to move into emotion. My brilliant acting coach, Dee Wallace, can simply stop the scene, ask me to open my heart, guide me to an experience I have had, and the entire emotional life opens up, simply, truthfully in an honest and connected way. The beauty of it is that it never feels the way I expected it to. It's always SO much better.
I have been reading a book called, "Women, Food and God" by Geneen Roth that was given to me as a birthday present by my sweet friend, Amber. The title of this book makes it seem like its very specific to women, people with food issues and those that believe in God. However, the subtitle of this book is "An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything". Geneen has developed a retreat and her life's work is with women who struggle with food, over eating, under eating, bingeing, etc. Her philosophy is that if we can understand how and why we eat the way that we do, that we will be able to understand our lives and why they are playing out the way they are; that " Our relationship to food is an exact microcosm of our relationship to life itself." She asks the women in her retreats to stop, take a moment and breathe into whatever feeling they are experiencing when they eat. Are they doing it to get lost? to forget? to disappear? What does the feeling FEEL like? Is the loneliness a large pile of ashes sitting on your chest? and if you breathe into the ashes, what happens? IN almost all of the cases, breathing into the pain and loneliness isn't as bad as they all thought. "The simple fact that her pain can be touched and it it won't destroy her means that all is not lost or hopeless or unredeemable."
If we allow ourselves to feel, understand and experience our feelings, if we have a "willingness to engage with and unwind the suffering rather than be its prisoner. . . the exquisite paradox of this engagement is that when suffering is fully allowed, it dissolves."
I have never associated myself with an eating disorder or a problem, but I have definitely spent the last 7 years focused on it, losing a lot of it, gaining some of it back, forgetting about it, focusing on it, not being comfortable in my own skin, being a size 8! a size 8! and not knowing who that person was??! Who am I at a size 8? I must be a different person than that one that was a size 16?! The real bitch of it is, is that I'm not. I am who I am no matter where or what or who. I am me. I have spent the last few years expanding my life, raising my vibration and being in touch with just WHO AM I? Who is Elizabeth Mihelich? It hasn't been and its been a breeze all the same. A continuing process, that as Geneen says, " "If these women could unpack their pain (beginning with allowing themselves to use food as a way of supporting rather than punishing themselves) and tell the truth about their lives - (paraphrasing poet Muriel Rukeyser -- the world would split open."
"When you sense yourself directly, immediately, right now, without preconception, who are you?"
Geneen's main lesson is that its not actually food that we are hungry for, but a spiritual life, a connection with the soul that we are starving for. The life force that sustains us, gives us our intuition and knowing, our empathy and ability to LOVE someone.
Do you realize everyday what a miracle life is? That we can wake up every morning and simply DO anything we want to?? That we can choose to lay in bed all day entangled in passion with someone we love? Choose to explore our being-ness in art, singing, dancing, photography? Celebrate the AMAZING, BRILLIANT, living, breathing thing that our BODY is. Remember anatomy class? all those crazy systems working together to keep us standing upright, walking, talking, DANCING??! It is mind-blowing. THEN add in our ability to connect with other living things, humans, animals, people. . . wow. just wow. There are almost no words that can describe that incredible miracle that life is. You know if you workout on a regular basis, your body WILL get stronger, and your muscles will change? How about today, when you look in the mirror, instead of saying, "You're fat, I hate you. What's wrong with you?" you look at that mirror and say, "I love you because you CAN change. You are amazing. You are strong and sexy and healthy."
Life is for living and emotions and feelings are a gift. So, no matter how you choose to describe them or understand them, just choose to let them in. Open your heart and experience everything. You could experience a great love, one that you never knew was even possible, and then you could experience the crushing realization of the loss of that love. At least you will have experienced it and if you're aware enough, you will learn from it, you can shatter the facade and step into the reality of being.
Why not? What have you got to lose?? Everything and nothing.
Open your heart and step into the experience of your life.
*All quotes above are from "Women Food and God" by Geneen Roth.
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