Feeling Deeply, Thinking Clearly

Have you ever thought about people who fall on either side of two extremes – the over-thinkers and over-feelers of the world? And drawn the conclusion that the reason the over-thinkers cannot feel is because they think too much. And the over-feelers cannot think because they feel too much. But is this always true? Are feeling and thoughts as antagonistic to each other as we’ve been taught to believe?

In his wonderful book, Honoring the Self, Nathaniel Branden delves deep into our psyches to answer these questions. What he emerges with are insights that give us a new understanding of how our thoughts and feelings interact with each other.

Branden starts by saying: “Feelings are often the first form in which we become aware that something is wrong with our life. We need thought in order to know what to do, but feelings often alert us to the existence of a problem.” If our response to these uncomfortable feelings is to suppress or ignore them, then we effectively cut ourselves off from awareness.

This disowning of our feelings muddies our thinking. Since we are unable to integrate the knowledge that our feelings contain, our only option is to keep on living in a pre-programmed, automatic way. Branden says: “In the area of our personal life, if we cannot feel deeply, it is very difficult to think clearly. This is contrary to the notion that thinking and feeling are opposed functions and that each entails the denial of the other.”

Naming and owning our feelings, instead of banishing them to our unconscious, is an act of courage and honesty. To describe our feelings correctly, to say “I am angry or sad or hopeless at this moment” is not self-pity. What is self-pity is when we make a statement like: “I am in a hopeless situation.” In the first case, we own the truth about what we feel. In the second, we are making, what Branden says is, “a statement of alleged fact.”

Most of us have never been taught to make this important distinction. While self-pity is destructive, owning our feelings means that we accept our painful experiences. When we can acknowledge them, we also have the option of working to confront and resolve them. Branden says: “We cannot liberate ourselves from that which we have never experienced; we cannot leave a place that we have never been.”

So, how do we access blocked feelings? While this is a unique process for each of us, if our wounds are deep and ancient, it often requires professional help. The first part of this process, however, is simple and profound. Branden says: “Opening the breathing is generally the first step to opening the feelings.” Deepening and being aware of our breath creates a stillness in which we stop running away from our emotions. In this space, our emotions can actually register in our conscious experience.

This is one of the reasons why meditation is such a powerful practice – it can help release buried feelings. But Branden gives us advance warning – in the beginning, because of its emphasis on breathing and being still, a meditative practice can cause emotional outbursts that we can perceive as highly threatening. The sludge is being brought to the surface.

It is often only at later stages that meditation leads to calm. This means that a meditation teacher who can guide us through this process is invaluable – we need a guide who can help us navigate the hills and valleys of our emotional experience.

Once we’ve made our way through, we come to a place of greater freedom. We’ve courageously owned parts of ourselves that we’d abandoned. We’ve mourned losses that were buried deep in our psyches. We’ve confronted uncomfortable feelings like anger and released them in healthy ways. It is only through releasing feelings stuck deep in the body, can we ever hope to transcend them.

As feelings are experiences and released, the shadows that they cast on the mind are also cleared. We no longer deny parts of ourselves. We can acknowledge the truth of our experience. And when we can do that, we can see our experience more objectively. Basically, we think more clearly. Then, finally, we are in a place where we are free to choose our actions – where we can act in conscious, autonomous ways instead of the mechanical, conditioned ways we’ve been taught.