Transcript
Hey everyone welcome to another DailyJim It's Thursday September 1, 2022. I missed an episode yesterday and you know what it's okay at some point? I thought maybe I should record, no, not feeling, it just wasn't feeling it.
And today I wanted to talk about sharing how we feel and how sometimes.
The hard part is not to share the feeling, but the context or situation associated with it. So I was listening a couple podcasts and they were talking about affect labeling, which is something that I've been very interested in for Gosh since I phileo so about 10 years at least, just this concept of taking how we're feeling and putting a word to it or putting a phrase to it somehow. Taking the emotion, the feeling sensation and labeling it with an affect they would say. Um and there's been some evidence of how it helps us or do stress or whatnot, frustrated me a little bit when I was listening to podcasts or a couple of them because they seem to speak with such certainty about how this always helps and it will make your life magical and it will rid you of conflict. And you can tell I feel a bit annoyed when people express kind of blatant certainty or this level of Assume certainty. I don't know, it's just something when people tell me that something will will work 100% of the time, this is like I don't trust you. Um so anyways, but what I wanted to talk about was how a lot of the conversation was about saying how we feel and you know, how do you feel right now? Maybe you're feeling excited, maybe feeling tired, maybe feeling confused, Maybe you're feeling grateful, Maybe you're feeling who knows what? Maybe you're feeling something in a different language if you're to label it. Um but how much information does that really convey and how different is that from what's actually going on on our face? I mean how hard is it for us to glean how somebody is feeling? Is that the real hard thing for us to interpret? And is that one of the things that scares us to say to somebody else? So if you ask me how I'm feeling, I could say I feel sad, you could ask me how I'm feeling, I could say I feel tired, You can ask me how I'm feeling, I could say I'm feeling uh motivated or whatever.
Those in themselves don't really reveal too much information. Okay, I feel sad, sad about what? Okay, I feel tired tired from what? Oh, you feel motivated, motivated to do what? And so a lot of those contacts attached to those emotions, The thoughts, the beliefs, the actions of the situation, the environment, the smell, the sensation or whatnot. Those can provide so much more information. And I think those are things that we often at least I often struggle to communicate out of fear of exposing way too much fear of. Like, I don't necessarily want people to know everything that's going on with me. I mean I do for some people and for some other people, it's like, I'm a little afraid to tell you I'm angry. I don't care if I tell you I'm angry, but if I tell you why I'm angry or the thing I'm associating with that anger, it can reveal so much and someone, you know, I hear people say, oh how are you feeling? Or like you need to tell people how you're feeling. I say, okay, tell me how you're feeling. Also, I'm curious what are you associating with it? And I don't know if people talk about that that much, at least in terms of these meta conversations on whether we should talk about these motions. And it's something I personally struggle with lately just wondering how much do I share with family members, How much do I share with friends about, romance or work or physical health or many of these different contexts that cause a lot of the emotions, finance, and how much do I open up and share about those topics as they relate to the emotions that I'm feeling. The things that I'm feeling and I think that's where we start talking. That's where I start talking more and more about proper vulnerability. You want to be vulnerable. Don't just tell me your sad, tell me what you're thinking about when you're sad, Tell me what what's going through your mind. Tell me the thoughts and the visions and the smells and give me the full three dimensional uh scenario or backdrop to that feeling. That's the deep, the deep vulnerability. But that's also where a lot of the the information lies, somebody shows up to work and the person says they're they're tired, okay, tired from what they tired from working too hard. Are they tired from having too many projects? Are they tired from the early schedule? Are they tired from the late schedule? Oh they're tired because they have a newborn? Oh well that makes me feel a lot less frustrated or guilty or confused about the situation can clarify so much. But maybe they don't want people at work knowing that they have a newborn at home because maybe they're afraid that if people at work know that they have a newborn, then they'll treat that person differently. Maybe they won't give them more assignments and frankly the person loves the new assignments because it gives them a break from thinking about the newborn baby lifecycle, which from what I hear is pretty, can be a quite tiring experience for many people. Um, so I think there's a certain.
I think there's something missing when we talk about the conversation about talking about how we feel. And I think often that the story attached to it, the context, the situation, the environment, the thoughts that the other stuff attached to that feeling, that really does convey a tremendous amount of information and can really help us or hurt us or make, you know, can really direct our direct how we feel and direct how we act in many different ways. And yeah, so this is more about just talking about how it's not just about saying how I feel, it's about us saying what else is happening, that I relate to that feeling. And I hope this makes sense for you. As I say that I feel a little confused, unsure um and tired, tired why because I didn't sleep that well and I feel like I haven't had enough water today. Oh, look at I'm giving you more context. Anyways, I've gone way over time and I will talk to you. Maybe I'll do one tomorrow because I skipped one day. Or maybe I'll just say screw it and I'll come back on monday. I think I'll just come back on monday. We'll see. Alright, take care.
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