DailyJim: Less healing, more feeling

Hello everyone, welcome to another DailyJim. Today is Monday, March 11th, 2024. Notice how I said "today" and not "the episode for" because I'm actually recording during the day. Yes.

Today I wanted to talk about a phrase that came to me just a few minutes ago: "Less healing, more feeling."

So this phrase came to me in a conversation I was having with a friend of mine who recently went through a breakup and has been, I think, trying to forget about the guy. And in talking with her, she was asking, well, maybe if I get with a lot of different guys, that will help me heal more. And then I send a voice note back about not knowing if...I used to say that being open is the way to heal, like to be healthy, but I don't know if that's always the case, depending on someone's situation and environment. Being really emotionally open, surrounded by people who are not really emotionally open, can cause a lot of problems and, frankly, a lot of stress and a lot of what we would deem as unhealthiness, I guess. But then it got me me thinking about how I think a lot of people have used the phrase, "I just need to go heal."

As in almost a way to stop feeling. It's that I feel this pain, for me healing is to not feel the pain anymore, but also maybe not to feel the joy anymore, to maybe also not feel the excitement anymore, or the uncertainty, or the fear, or the anger, or really just not feel anymore.

So I think a lot of times when we use the phrase healing, when it comes to emotions, it's often to stop feeling, at least in the Western context, but I think in some other contexts, too. I'm really curious how this plays out cross-culturally. But this idea that healing for so many means to stop feeling, or at least to stop feeling the "bad" feelings, but it's pretty hard to stop feeling only the bad feelings because the good feelings often bring the bad feelings. If I love somebody and feel so safe and happy and excited to be around them, when they are no longer here, whether that's through a breakup or through death or for whatever reason or through a fight, it really hurts. The sadness and the frustration really kick in.

So I wonder, well, what if instead of trying to heal, we tried to feel? What if we wanted to feel more? We go through pain, we go through loss, and we want to feel it instead of trying to heal it and get rid of it because I think, yeah, I think a lot of times when we talk about emotional healing it is suppression of emotion or, um, extinction of emotion, extinguishment. I don't know. I don't know the word for that. Um, but like to put out like a fire, we have this fire that's burning inside of us, whether that's, uh, love. I mean, you could say love is this combination of almost all the emotions, like intense emotionality. Um, but like to put out the excitement, the sadness, the anger, the confusion, the, the nervousness, the, maybe not safety, you know, maybe it's just, I just want to have calm, safe, steady waters, similar to like wanting peace, which if you've listened to some of my episodes before, can seem like indifference, apathy.

So, I'm just really curious how it would be if instead of focusing so much on healing—aka, at least in the context that many people use it, of stopping emotions, stopping the feeling—what if we wanted to feel more? What if we said, "This is actually healthy. The feeling is healing." Ooh, maybe that's a better one. Like, to feel what's actually happening, to be awakened to the sensations in our body and how our mind and our thoughts interact with our body, interacts with the environment, interacts with the bodies of others and their thoughts and their words, and to really be aware of everything that's happening. Is that healing? Is healing to increase the awareness, not to decrease the awareness of what's going on in ourselves, but also what's going on in others and around? So I think so often I have this aversion to the word healing, because it seems to carry the connotation of "to not feel, to become less aware, to disconnect from ourselves, to disconnect from our surroundings, to almost be more numb to life." And I sure don't want that. And I don't want other people to do that either. I want people to really love life and appreciate the moments that we have here, because honestly, I've gone to four funerals over the last year—I think I've gone to four funerals. Our time on this planet seems very short.

So, I hope you all listen to this and you at least start to rethink what your definition of healing is and whether it involves feeling more or feeling less.

And I know I feel grateful for this reflection and this realization. So I hope it helps you in some way. And I'll talk to you tomorrow. .