On Feeling vs Action in Therapy

There is an important distinction to be made between feeling something and acting upon it. You can inadvertently communicate so much through your face and your presence when you are just feeling something, but the words you choose to say involve a conscious choice, a path of action. How do you stop the words you say from being a reaction to what you’re feeling, rather than an expression of it? How do you make sure you are being fully congruent and genuine, and not just reacting to the discomfort your feelings or thoughts create inside you? Through integration, I think; through maintaining a connection between your heart and your head, your attachment and your detachment, being clear on what is yours and what is not yours, and ultimately, by ‘doing your work’.

The self-awareness that you will foster by ‘doing your work’ can create enough space inside you to allow you to attend to what is really going on for you before you interact with the world - can allow you to really recognize what your genuine feelings are in response to the events in your life and not just discharge the anxiety you feel because of them.
​
By ‘doing your work’ in this way – by getting closer to who you are and what you really feel – you can begin to step out of the collusion in unreality which we all, it seems, engage in as part of the social contract: the unspoken agreement to all be living inside our own heads and forever interacting primarily with only our own ideas and beliefs about the people around us, instead of being real and authentic with one another.