The Best Kept Secret to Getting Unstuck: Face Your Core Feelings
At 34 years old, Garrett is doing well in life. He has a good job and a girlfriend he hopes to marry. So Garrett is confused about why, each time he is alone, a sad feeling sneaks up on him. To prevent this from happening, Garrett stays as busy as he possibly can. He avoids being home alone, driving alone, or being unoccupied. When he is forced to be, he always cranks up his music or has a TV show playing on a screen to distract him.
Jolene is very intelligent and has loads of potential. But she lives alone in a dingy apartment and struggles to earn a living as the office manager of a failing business. Jolene is frustrated by her circumstances, yet she is held back from trying for more. She will do anything to avoid a painful feeling that overcomes her each time she thinks about taking a risk such as starting college, applying for a better job, or going on a date. So she never thinks about it.
Lizzy is a 48-year-old Executive Chef at a thriving, popular restaurant. She runs the restaurant with clean efficiency, and kindness toward all who work for her. People see Lizzy as competent, confident and happy. But inside, she struggles. When something goes wrong (as it often does) in her large, busy kitchen, Lizzy immediately gets a very unpleasant feeling which stays the whole day. Lizzy works long and hard to prevent errors and oversights so that she won’t have to experience that bad feeling.
At first glimpse Garrett, Jolene and Lizzy might seem to have little in common. But they are exactly alike in one very key way: They all have a Core Feeling that has power over them, and it affects how they are living their lives. And none of them is consciously aware that this is happening.
Core Feelings
In truth, Core Feelings dwell all around you. They are in the people you know and among your family and friends. Everywhere. But no one talks about Core Feelings. Only therapists use this term, and yet becoming aware of your Core Feelings can change how you live your life.
A Core Feeling is a powerful emotion that’s based in your childhood and which comes and goes throughout your lifespan.
Children are like little computers whose brains are being programmed by their parents. The “software” for their lives is being set up by their parents and their families; the rules, expectations, feelings, and values that surround children are absorbed into their little brains. This all gets wired into them. It becomes a part of who they are. It defines a big part of who they will become as adults. It becomes a part of what they will feel as adults.
The folks most vulnerable to being ruled by their Core Feelings are the ones who grew up in families that did not teach them how emotions work. These are usually families who rarely discuss or address the feelings of their members. These are families that are, by definition, raising the children with Childhood Emotional Neglect or CEN.
If your parents fail to respond to your emotions as they raise you, they fail to teach you how to recognize, tolerate, manage, or express your feelings. This leaves you sitting with old feelings and, unfortunately, old, unprocessed emotions do not go away.
A Core Feeling is the one emotion that you experienced the most often, or intensely, growing up. It becomes embedded in the software of your brain. As an adult, this feeling is very real, and can at times be very strong.
Throughout the decades of your life, you are not always feeling it. But it dogs you. It hangs around on the sidelines waiting to break through to you. It tends to come, unbidden when you’re alone, undistracted, or otherwise vulnerable to it. Or it gets touched off by specific current events that activate it.
Not everyone has a Core Feeling, but many people do. Therapists know about Core Feelings and often identify them in their patients. Typically, though, they are viewed as an unpleasant burden. Most folks hope that if they avoid and ignore their core feeling, it will eventually go away.
Unfortunately, however, nothing could be further from the truth:
3 Surprising Facts About Your Core Feeling
- Your Core Feeling is a pipeline to your childhood. It represents unresolved issues from the past. It has great value to you.
- When you avoid and ignore your Core Feeling, you are actually making it stronger.
- The only way to make your Core Feeling go away is to allow yourself to feel it, discern its message, and process it.
To understand how a Core Feeling develops, check back for my future blog which will describe exactly how Garrett, Jolene, and Lizzy got their Core Feeling, and how each of them processes it.
But now I’d like to focus on what to do with your Core Feeling if you have one.
The 8 Steps to Process A Core Feeling
- Become aware of your Core Feeling. Find the words to describe it.
- Pay attention when you’re feeling it. Is it at certain times, or when you’re with certain people, or under particular circumstances?
- Stop avoiding or fighting the feeling. When it comes, make an effort to sit with it, tolerate it and feel it. Even the most painful Core Feelings must be felt and processed.
- As you sit with your Core Feeling, think about when you experienced this feeling as a child. Think about what in your current life touches it off. If you can, put your thoughts in writing as you sit with it.
- Ask yourself what messages the feeling might be bringing to you. What does this feeling say about you? Why did you feel this as a child?
- Share your Core Feeling and your thoughts about it with a trusted person.
- See if you can willingly generate your Core Feeling on demand. This is a part of taking control of it.
- Learn all you can about Childhood Emotional Neglect. When you start down the path of healing CEN, you change your relationship with your own emotions, making it less likely to develop new core feelings or suffer from old ones.
Welcoming, accepting and sorting through your Core Feeling is a way to manage it. Essentially, you are stopping it from controlling you. You’re turning the tables and are taking control of it.
By listening to its message, you are building your resilience in three ways. You are increasing your tolerance for pain; you are building your self-knowledge by understanding yourself better, and you are improving your emotional health by working through an unresolved issue.
In other words, when you are tired of running, turn around and face it.
To learn more about your emotions, how they work, and how they may be affecting you, see EmotionalNeglect.com and the book, Running on Empty: Overcome Your Childhood Emotional Neglect.
This article was first published on psychcentral.com. It is reproduced here with the author’s permission.