Emotion is adaptive, meaning that it promotes the organism's ability to thrive. The universality of emotion is adaptive in that it allows interpersonal communication, including cross-cultural communication. It means that we can guide our behaviors to survive. It is a way to escape fear-inducing stimulus – Jack Westin
It is natural to adapt feelings in response to dangers, or perceived dangers. But, have you adapted your emotions to fit in, to meet someone else’s expectations, until you feel lost to yourself? Have you ever blurted out in anger at someone who totally did not deserve it, knowing full well whoever else did? Adaptive feelings are those residual feelings that hang around and help us when such is needed, but sometimes, it is negative. I have experienced both. Have you? How authentic ARE our feelings?
As you were thinking about your story, from an earlier blog post, did you start to realize that some of your feelings and perceptions were not as you thought? We are in a position that we are constantly being conditioned to be accepted by others, to fit in, to be more successful, to be loved. We want to be respected. We want to contribute in some way. We want to live with purpose. We want our lives to mean something. But we can become superficial. We can seek a perfection someone else has defined for us. We trade off our values for others’ values. Where did we lose our authenticity?
We do not spend too much time examining our inner lives. The world I crazy busy. We are crazy busy. But stop just for a moment and think about what happens when you are under extreme stress. We all have been. We have reacted and responded in ways that the feelings that come may be less authentic. We may see that there is a falseness to it all. Did we give in because giving in was easier? Did we lash out because the stressful situation is/was comparable to another situation (maybe decades old)? In recognizing this, we can begin to be more authentic. Once we know the WHY, we can adjust the real.
Do a lot of our adult responses belong to our childhood? If we look back at our early family environment, we can find where we began to please, rather than be authentic in our feelings. New born babies are masters at manipulation, btw. They need total care to live. Some of us might not have dropped some of that ‘pleaser’ feelings. What we believe is one thing, how we act might be another. The same with feelings. When we speak, are we speaking our truth or something that just fits in? Are we feeling one way but acting another? Soemtimes we might not even know what we believe and what we value because those things are echoes from training, environment we grew up in. Dang, it is tough to find our authentic feelings amidst a lot of ‘stuff’ we grew up being taught and modeled. We were taught our childhood home social rules and expectations. When we are seeking the WHEN of our losing our authenticity and gaining our adaptive self. It was then. And we continued to adapt to different social arenas when we went to school. Yes, some were positive, for sure, but there were some negatives, as well. It all gets buried deep in our very soul.
Getting to the root, the authenticity, of feelings can be tough. The way we text, social media, does not show the pauses after an answer, nor the look on our face. My face has a resting ‘bitch face’ look to it when relaxed. All the wrinkles. How do we learn to express our genuine feelings? Somehow, I know I need to work on self awareness, self-acceptance and being Present. No wonder we often feel disconnected, and more so, now that covid restrictions still stand. Yes we have needed some of the negatives of adapting, as I said, but, oh, we also needed the positive ones. Clinging on to “perfectionism”, to “pleasing” can get us into a heap of trouble. Examining our authentic self versus our adaptive self, through some deeply intimate alone times of soul-searching, we can begin to shed light on things we need to change about our adaptive feelings. When we cannot figure out why we act, or say, the things we do that don’t feel right afterwards, may be coming from the adaptive side of one’s life. Sometimes we need to tell that critical/Ego/EIW to ‘just stop!’ It is scary, but you can make leaps and bounds towards authenticity if you are willing to do the work.
Our dear authentic self holds so many emotions that are huge. It holds our woundedness. It holds a lot of anger. It holds fear. Somehow, we need to get to the root of those negative feelings and try to allow the authentic self to recover and come joyfully to the forefront. We need to be very loving towards ourself. We need to, as it were, ‘parent’ ourselves.
As we work on becoming more authentic, recognize that it will take time. It has been embedded for a long time and, with work, over maybe even the rest of your life, keep working on expelling non-authentic feelings that erupt. It does not mean you can never be authentic, it just means it will take time and then you have to maintain that authenticity.
Truth telling and truth-feelings mean to be as honest as you possibly can about how you feel. How YOU feel, not how you feel according to who you are around. Speak your truths, speak what you value, speak what you truly-deep-down-forever-now feel. We can all change. We evolve. As we become enlightened, we become more authentic. Listening to our intuition (not the Ego/EIW) can be developed. As it is developed, you begin to become aware that your feelings are struggling to tell its authentic story rather than an adaptive one.
Every parent knows that you have to pay attention. Every adult knows there is meaning between the lines. Well, seeking your authentic feelings is finding the feelings between the lines.
Bless may you be if you begin to work on this.
©Carol Desjarlais 11.7.21
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