I was recently thinking about the question “How do I feel about…” (yes, I was living my best life having an internal question-session with myself), and I was going through a list of topics. My family. My job. Being at service. Kim, my friend. My relationship with Kim.
Asking myself how I felt about the relationship with Kim gave me a lightbulb-moment… It made me adjust my question from: “How do I feel about…”, to: “What is my relationship with…”. I went through the same list; my family, my job, Kim, my relationship with Kim…
Although both questions touched on the same topics, they provided different answers.
The first question put me headfirst into my feelings, which is valuable. Being immersed in my feelings helps me learn more about where I am. I think it’s easy to miss the current moment and let our emotional reality pass by without taking supportive, appropriate action. At the same time, being immersed in emotions feels consuming, and it makes us miss out on something important. It doesn’t represent the full picture of where we are. It leaves out:
How we relate to what we feel.
How we choose to act (free will (or not)) based on how we feel (how we choose to act towards ourselves, AND how we choose to act in the situation and to people involved in the situation), which is dependent on:
Our values.
The second question brought up answers that represented the full picture, or at least MORE of the full picture.
When I asked myself “How do I feel about Kim?”, the answer was: hurt, rejected, and resentful. When I asked myself: “What is my relationship with Kim?”, I got the following answer: I feel hurt and resentful, I appreciate our relationship, he is a solid guy that cares about me, he has not been fully present lately, I don’t feel like engaging with him (for now), I want to end the relationship in a way that leaves room for coming back, I have a desire to blame him for the ways he has hurt me, but I want to find a different outlet for those feelings (ref: I want to leave room for coming back (if I didn’t want the option to come back, I might have chosen to take my blame out on him (permission to be a bad person))…
I’m curious how you experience asking yourself the two questions. Does it feel different to answer the first versus the second? I’m also curious to hear what you asked yourself, and what your answer is to both the first and the second question. Do you want to share?
Gunhild Archer, counselor 