You Aren't Your Feelings
Oh boy, now that sounds deep. It is deep but it can be really, really simple.
Who are You Really?
I'll cut to the chase - there is no answer.
Pragmatically, sometimes I'm brave and impulsive, sometimes I am careful and deliberate, sometimes compassionate, and sometimes lacking foresight. And lots more. I bet you are lots of things too.
But that's the catch — ALL of that is you. You aren't one “thing”. You and your mind/brain/imagination are limitless, there's SO MUCH ROOM to be many things. And it's all you.
How cool is that?!
I am Large, and I Contain Multitudes
From both a poem by Walt Whitman and a Bob Dylan song, what I get from this sentence is that acknowledgement we are not just one thing. We can be hundreds and thousands of different things and still be “me”.
So What?
Language matters. Here what I have been practicing on 2024 when, for example, I get angry about something:
Do NOT say or think “I am so angry!”. Believe it or not, you're teaching yourself to equate your identity with that one feeling. “I am…” makes that connection.
Instead, I think something a little more corny: “I feel anger arising.”
This frees me to be something else in addition to angry! I can have fun with my kids and still have that anger sitting there. I can do my job, have a conversation.
Now that I have not equated “me” to “anger”, I can look at that anger without judging myself. I'm not looking at “me”, I'm looking at a feeling that is coming up.
Don't push that feeling away, don't resist it, let it be. You wouldn't push your loved one away if they were fuming (I hope!). Don't do it to yourself.
Then I can just watch it and eventually it will pass, as all things do. (There's more to unpack here but that is a separate musing)
Summary
We are so many things at the same time. We don't have to let a strong feeling take over and become all of who we are.
Blake might call those feelings “mind-forged manacles” that you can free yourself from if you just breathe and remember you are so, so much more than one thing.
