Published on
Naming and owning our feelings—our emotional responses to what is happening around us—is key to experiencing natural joy. However, many of us do not know how to recognize the feelings we are experiencing, let alone, how to stay with them. There are three main challenges that we face when learning how to own our own feelings:
The first challenge: allow ourselves to acknowledge the existence of our feelings.
  • Many of us have learned to push our feelings down, or distract ourselves from what we feel so that we can deceive ourselves that we are not feeling anything at all. 
The second challenge: name the feelings.
  • Learn to identify what the feeling experienced is: sadness, anger, elation, fear, etc.
The third challenge: own and take responsibility for our feelings.
  • Feelings do not come from outsides of us, they arise from within. Therefore no one else can be assigned responsibilty for what we feel but ourselves. Others can a be a catalyst for what we feel, but they are never the source.
2 Comments
Chaos in my Wardrobe - 2 years ago
Loove this
mental health nashville tn - 9 months ago
Mental health services in Nashville, TN offering assessments, therapy, medication management, and personalized treatment options.
One realm we have never conquered--the pure present. One great mystery of time is terra incognita to us--the instant. The most superb mystery we have hardly recognized--the immediate, instant self.
~ D.H.Lawrence

Author

I am Myohye Do'an, a bhikṣu (fully ordained Chán Buddhist monk) and Chán Master. Here I share my thoughts and observations about living a life of compassion, attention and gratitude.

Categories

    No tags found.