5 - The Need to Feel
Episode Highlights:
We all have a physical body, and we all have an emotional body.
We are all 99.9% identical. You can’t escape your DNA.
Everything seeks the fullest expression of its survival and thriving.
We have an emotional and spiritual DNA.
We are feeling creatures who need, desire, long and hope.
Hope is the birthmark and birthplace of being human.
Human beings seek pleasure and seek to avoid pain. It turns out that without dealing with pain, we will never have the pleasure we are made to have.
We have been given 8 feelings that open us up to needs. The 8 feelings are sad, fear, healthy shame, hurt, lonely, guilt, anger, and glad.
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We have been given the gift of feeling. Because we live in a tragic place, if you don’t do feelings, you can’t do living. You can’t be emotionally present.
We’ve been given fear that allows us to recognize danger and seek help.
We’ve been given sadness that allows us attach to what matters, what we care about, and also allows us to deal with loss because life is full of change.
We’ve been given hurt that calls us to seek healing in our wounds. Hurt is painful. You can’t carry on fully unless you get healing from hurt. Healing makes us wiser and courageous.
We’ve been given loneliness as a testimony that we’re relationally created to be in relationship with ourselves. We get loneliness to spend time with ourselves, solitude. We have loneliness to spend time with others. There are certain people who we are made to be connected with more than others. We get lonely for God and lonely to create and have impact. Loneliness brings us to friendship and intimacy.
We’ve been given anger. Anger is a very vulnerable feeling because it exposes what we care about. It is a feeling that allows us to hope, wish, want, desire, long and yearn. The gift of anger is passion, a willingness to be in pain for what matters more than pain.
Healthy shame is the dependency feeling. It is the recognition that I need you; You need me; I make mistakes; so do you; I don’t have all the answers, but I’ve got some, let’s share; I’m not God and you aren’t either; so let’s face that we’re in need of God.
Guilt lets us recognize when we do something that goes against our value system.
Gladness is an outcome of being good at the other 7 feelings.
When we run from our feelings, we start to move into impairment. Feelings are launching pads, energy-in-motion, emotion. So, they take us to the good or they take us towards the impoverishment.
Hurt people who don’t take ownership of their hurt, hurt other people.
Scared people who won’t take ownership of their fear become anxious, and they scare people. Sad people who won’t take ownership of their sadness, slip into self-pity.…
When I deny my feelings, then someone else is going to have to carry my feelings for me. Either we deal with our feelings or we get sick, OR others are going to get sick of me.
Past traumatic experiences become the lens through which we see the present and future.
If we expose our wanting, needing, wishing, hoping, craving and letting things matter to us, then we are putting ourselves at risk of not belonging and mattering to those people who won’t feel.
People who won’t feel are addicted to something. They are addicted to control, force, their own terror of what feelings will cost them.
Feelings require us to face that we have needs. Feelings take us to needs. They are tools that move us towards the things that God designed and created us to have.
Dr. Chip Dodd
Voice of the Heart Center