The feeling you never feel

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Here’s something you may never have thought of before. It is a feeling you have never felt, not for a long time anyway.  David Riddell aptly described it as your “unbearable feeling”.  One unbearable feeling operating in your life can cripple you completely.  Prisons are full of people who are there because they were avoiding their unbearable feeling.  Domestic violence, drug addiction, divorce, you name it; you can often fin an unbearable feeling at the root of the problem.

Many of us know who “presses our buttons” right?  But have we ever asked ourselves “Why do I keep providing such big easy to press buttons?”  You see we are often, in fact I would say almost always having a feeling triggered that we must avoid.  That’s why we react, clam up, lash out, yell, drink, drive like a maniac, punish our loved ones.  Over a feeling?? Come on, how can a feeling have that much power.  Well it has power because we never learn to deal with it.

We’re not talking about an unpleasant feeling here, or something you feel all the time.  No this is an unbearable feeling.  When we take a magnifying glass to the dysfunctional parts of our lives we discover that we have developed reactions and mindsets to protect the damage done to our hearts, the emotional damage that 99% of us have incurred throughout our lives.

We avoid the hideous feelings associated with that damage by using anger, abuse or shutting down to make sure we don’t feel our unbearable feeling.  The term unbearable is critical here.  This is something you so want to avoid that you literally will do anything to avoid the feeling.  A father will bury his children before he will feel this feeling. A woman will abandon her family, a child will take his or her own life before they will feel their unbearable feeling.

When I started to see how this operated in my own life it literally changed my whole world view. Suddenly things that were bizarre made sense.  One of my unbearable feelings is shame.  So when I was younger the thought of failing at a job was unthinkable.  ( This is all operating subconsciously of course, I never “thought” about the shame of failing at a job).  So I had several occasions in  my 20′s and early 30′s where I was promoted very quickly and was on the edge of a major promotion.  Suddenly the risk of feeling shame through being promoted above the level of my own competence became a reality.

So on 3 separate occasions in 3 different companies I started behaving in ways that resulted ultimately in me getting fired!!

You see the feelings of rejection and being thought badly of I could handle, but the shame of  failing at my new positions was literally unbearable.  I am now at 46 years old pursuing things I should have done all my life as I make friends with my unbearable feeling.

What about you my friend?  What have you not done because of your unbearable feeling??  Never pursued university because feeling dumb was unbearable? never married because fear of rejection or commitment was unbearable?

I may never have net you but I would say there is a 99% chance that you are not living the life of your dreams at least in part due to your unbearable feeling.

Tomorrow we’ll start to look at how to identify your UBF!!

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.MassiveAction.tv