Feelings, Fast and Furious

Feelings flash on whether we’re prepared or not.  The flash happens electrically, in a part of the brain called the limbic system.  Two tiny almond-shaped mechanisms light up on either side:  the amygdalas.  This is energy at its most problematic.  Sure, if the feeling is love and the person you are loving feels the same, all is good.  But if the feeling is anything but:  trouble is a’brewin.’  You will have to deal.  Jealousy, irritation, outright anger, grief, sorrow, embarrassment, confusion, dismay, incredulity, misplaced passion, disgust:  there are so many ways our feelings can intrude on life.

Feelings are fast because, in part, they ready us for threat.  It used to be, way back, that if you felt nervous, the hair on your neck at attention, a lion was no doubt about to eat you. Then, as a species, we learned to stand up and could actually see the lion coming.  Threat was all too obvious. 

Now-a-days we tend to imagine threat where it really doesn’t exist.   The nervous system, wired for threat from lion-stalking days, tends to the negative.  We stimulate feelings through our negative perception of people and situations, and our thinking about what’s happening (or isn’t happening) can be alarming.  The amygdalas fire.  The muscles tense.  The eyes dilate.  Life becomes difficult.

Oh, to be a robot.  What good are feelings, anyway? Why have them if they’re trouble?  The fact is, they can make life easier, once you begin to honor them.  They require attention and effort, but if unpacked you will become more directed in your life, more able to choose wisely, to predict outcome, to move confidently towards happiness.  And happiness is a feeling worth feeling.

But negative feelings are also worthwhile.  They inform.  Suppose you are cold.  Do you doubt the feeling?; wish you weren’t?; think that nobody else feels the same?  No.  You trust the feeling and grab a sweater.  It has informed you of what you need.  Feelings about people and situations are of course more complicated and take more time to unpack, but the principal is the same:  expect that your feelings are trying to tell you something.  Expect that there is something you can do.

Say you are annoyed by the long meetings at work that drag on unproductively.  You can ignore the feeling, or you can explore what to do about it.  Taking action often involves some risk, but not taking action predisposes you to resentment and dis-ease.  So you check with a colleague – is she bothered, as well?  You make a suggestion about time limits.  You volunteer to be the time keeper.  The meetings become worthwhile and you’ve stretched yourself.  The feeling prompted growth.

Or say a friend’s chronic lateness is getting on your nerves.  Or that the conversation with your sweetie left you troubled.  Or that you can’t stand being around so-and-so.  Feelings prompt us to grow in some way - to do the thing we thought we couldn’t, to take a chance on making it better, whatever it is.  Sometimes making it better means leaving, getting another job, letting go of a painful relationship.

Repressed or ignored feelings show up anyway.  Though we like to imagine we reveal nothing, they leak out in body language, tone of voice, a caustic slip of the tongue, changed behavior.  Might as well let them help, instead of hurt.  Might as well accept that the flashing amygdalas have some news for us.  Nothing all that threatening, really:  just an opportunity for personal growth.