Notes – Staying Clear Of Fear

People in the West (or all over the world, actually) have a problem with one particular thing: feeling their feelings.

Before somebody even considers doing so, you have to wrap the topic of feelings in a neat bow of productivity and sprinkle some capitalism on it for good measure. Only then, when feeling your feelings is synonymous with having the chance of becoming more successful, they're ready to look into the abyss.

The great crux of not acknowledging your feelings is that they steer your life. They're at the helm of your every decision. Like Carl Jung said:

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate"

There's also a different kind of peril instead of not feeling your feelings, but looking at them for too long. Therapy speak has become commonplace especially in my generation. Everything and everyone has to undergo psychoanalysis. I sadly couldn't find the attribution, but the quote "not every room in a house has to be lit" fits here.

The benefits of analysis are limited. When we look at issues from every angle, they might cause reflections that don't mirror reality. It's like the Strange-Face-in-the-Mirror Illusion where you stare too long at your own face in a dimly lit room, it will start to distort in all kinds of frightening shapes.

Yet the truth remains: the only way for these feelings to lose power over you is to look at them. But this is painful. In some manner, we don't run away from our feelings, but the potential of pain they entail. Because our species was equipped with a negativity bias from dear mother nature, we tend to overestimate this potential pain. So the fear of feeling pain is much greater than the pain itself.

The only way is through, and it sucks. But it's liberating beyond belief.