Well intentioned advice implicitly denies one’s processing of feelings

My 20-year old son messaged me with his brilliant insights he’s gaining in the world. Something that’s been resonating with me as well. So I’ve decided to write about it here.

Growing up, I heard a lot of well-intentioned advice – “Ignore him. You’re the better person.” or “Take the high road.” or “Don’t be sad. Look at the bright side.” and most of this well-intentioned advice comes ill-timed.

Combined with ill-timing, this type of advice is implicitly asking the person to stop feeling what you’re feeling, and move on, let it go. With age now, I’ve learned that one needs to process these feelings to get it out of your system. Ignoring, suppressing them doesn’t release them. If you’re upset, just yell out loud when you’re by yourself in the car. If you’re angry, release the anger energy through your hands by hitting the pillow. These are all safe and healthy ways of releasing energy. As I’m typing this, I recall movie scenes or even my own conversations with friends, who if they saw such a person do that, would judge and label that person as crazy. I’ve been guilty too before I learned what healthy emotional processing was. What’s really happening is this person was releasing their energy before it consumed them and instigated behaviors that are unhealthy such as snapping at someone, hitting someone, inflicting harm on someone.

I do believe first, we need to allow, assist, hold space for the person to feel and process the emotions. Feeling the painful emotions, such as hurt and sadness, are physically painful as well. Someone going through this needs a safe space to feel it. Someone they can trust. How great is it if we all learn how to do this for our friends and loved ones? How much better would our connections and bonds be? How much less hate would there be?

How great would it be if we can do this for ourselves? When told over and over again to move on before we’re ready to, before we’ve even had a chance to release the feelings, we end up learning to bury our feelings, our authentic self, over and over again. And as life goes on, we internalize these feelings, turn them against ourselves and start shaming our own feelings/ourself and then we become incapable of holding space for our own feelings. We’re born as emotional beings. We have basic feelings. Thus, we need to feel; we are wired to feel. So it requires we become comfortable with our own and others’ feelings to continuously thrive and not just survive.

After a person processes these feelings, I do believe the advice delivered will be better timed, better suited to now help reframe the person’s thinking to help them heal and move on.

So my framework would be:

1. Acknowledge and hold space for the feelings. Recognizing the feelings and acknowledging them provides the permission to feel. This includes using feeling words and recognizing how those feelings are manifesting physically in you. I feel sad. I feel abandoned. I feel hurt. I feel angry. I feel my torso heating up and feeling like a fireball. I feel antsy. I want to hit something (hit a pillow). I feel pain in my shoulders, my stomach, my gut. I feel my jaws clenching, my eyes furrowing. Think about a moment in time when you’re in front of a friend who’s going through something painful. You see how the body language is different. They’re looking down, eyes sad, shoulders rolled forward, etc. Your body will always reflect what you’re feeling somehow. It could be day minutes, hours, days, weeks or even years for someone to completely process their feelings. They could be processing just a moment or years and years of buried emotions.
2. When the processing of feelings is over, the healing journey begins. That’s when the advice on how to move forward begins. Yes, it’s sad my relationship is over. Yes, I wished we stayed together…but then again, if we stayed together, I would not have been truly happy. I did get the opportunity to experience my fairy tale love albeit it was short, and it is better than nothing. I did get to experience many wonderful adventures, and so on. And even during the healing process, it doesn’t mean the processing of feelings related to the event has ended sometimes. It depends on how deep that wound was. In the end, just keep honoring that feeling…even for yourself.

As my therapist said to me, “You just need a better relationship with your feelings.”