“I have a very simple system I use in counseling for getting to the real emotion underlying a situation. When someone is confused and using “I feel” as the prelude to a thought, (rather than relating an actual feeling) I simply ask, “And how does that make you feel?” So, if someone says, “It makes me feel like he doesn’t care about me,” I say, “And how does that make you feel?” They might answer, “It makes me feel like he lives in his own world.” “And how does that make you feel?”
Eventually, we will “drill down”, as they say in computer lingo, to the core emotion. “It makes me feel angry,” for instance. For some reason, most of us think there might be quite a few emotions, but in reality there are very few, and most, it seems, are variations of anger and sadness. We can use this technique on ourselves, and keep asking the question, “And how does that make me feel?” to get to the core of what we are really feeling as well as refocusing on ourselves.
The reason that it is important for us to know the exact feeling(s) we are experiencing is because our feelings are where our truth resides. When we want to connect with others we need to speak our truth. To do this we will need to know exactly the emotion(s) we are feeling or have felt, because emotion is the place where our truth joins that of others.”
John Earle, in “Waking Up”
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Jeff Maziarek, author of Spirituality Simplified and Codi’s Journey, launched Pondercentral.com in April 2007 as a Web-based forum for “PONDER on THIS,” a series of weekday inspirational email messages he began sending to subscribers in March 1999. A FREE service since its inception, “PONDER on THIS” provides subscribers with meaningful content to assist them on their individual paths of spiritual growth. In addition, it benefits subscribers, authors, and publishers by including links to Amazon.com where subscribers can learn more about the book being quoted, and also purchase it.
