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In this week’s episode, I will discuss How to Honor Your Feelings in 4 steps!
I’ll answer why codependents often honor the feelings of others while dishonoring their own
You’ll hear the four steps to honoring your own feelings: identify, invite, intentional action, and iterate
We’ll end with two anecdotes: “A Tale of Two Feelings,” to help you apply the steps in your own life without expecting yourself to be perfect, ya dummy!
@therapywithmarissa on IG
Thanks for listening!
More deets on this week’s episode:
What does “honoring your feelings” even mean?
To honor: According to Google, to honor means: to regard with great respect. Synonyms include salute, recognize, value, and cherish.
Feelings: According to Google, feelings are: emotional states or reactions; the emotional side of one’s character; emotional responses or tendencies to respond.
To honor your feelings: Thus, to “honor your feelings,” I mean “to regard your emotional state, response, or reaction with value.” Your feelings matter.
Unfortunately, a hallmark of codependency is honoring the feelings of others while dishonoring our own via:
Denial: failure to acknowledge an unacceptable emotion or to admit it into consciousness
Repression: the restraint, prevention, or inhibition of a feeling – unconscious
Suppression: the conscious inhibition of unacceptable feelings – conscious
I am not going to detail why it’s hard for you to honor your feelings but let’s just blame our parents, their parents, and their parents before them AND cultural influences: media, sexism, education system, etc.
Blame them but now we, as young women, have to grow up, take responsibility and honor our feelings SINCE NO ONE ELSE HAS OR WILL unless we do.
Today, this week, this month, this year–I want to challenge you to take contrary action and start to honor your feelings.
Step 1: Identify your feelings
Ask yourself, how am I feeling? How am I feeling right now? In psychology literature, we suggest that there are 8 primary emotions. I’m going to list them out and see which one resonates most with you right now:
Angry
Sad
Afraid
Joyful!
Surprised
Disgusted
Ashamed
Love
These are the suggested 8 primary emotions and from there, we have secondary emotions which are emotional reactions to an emotion.
Step 2: Invite your feelings
“Pull out the welcome mat for your feelings.” It’s either from Geneen Roth or Anne Lamott. Just pull out the welcome mat and invite your feelings in.
If you are feeling angry, be angry. If you are feeling sad, be sad. If you are excited, then be fucking excited!
Allow your feelings to take up space in you. Acknowledge the feeling and accept the visceral response.
According to the research, feelings when they are felt, last 90 seconds. I haven’t had an intense emotion and thought “Oh, let me time this!” But if you truly identify and invite the feeling in. Let it take up all the space that it needs–you may just be a minute and a half away from relief.
Step 3: Intentional action
This is where the honoring comes in. Intentional, meaning done on purpose, deliberate. Take conscious action, behave deliberately, based on your feelings.
Your feelings are trying to communicate to you. Something is coming up that deserves attention. After acknowledging it, you may need to act on it.
If you are feeling heartbroken because your partner is texting someone and you just saw it while looking at something on their phone–the intentional action may be to say “I just saw your texting that girl from work. That breaks my heart. I asked you not to. This is over.”
Step 4: Iterate to develop Courage
Iterate: repeat. It will get easier and easier every time.
Remind yourself: identify, invite, intentional action, and iterate. Marissa said so. This whole dishonoring my feelings thing is getting old!
Like the Tiger in The Wizard of Oz, I as a codependent, am working my ass off to develop COURAGE. It takes ovaries to do this girl. Internal strength in the face of others but it’s possible.
To help with your application, I’m going to share two anecdotes. I call this piece “A tale of two feelings:”
Not going to my in-laws
Inviting guests on that I knew were bad
YOUR HOMEWORK: Identify, invite, intentional action, and iterate. That is your homework. Feel free to send any questions, application of the process to marissa@codependummy.com
Before I say bye, I want to share a quote: …If we could realize that the work is to keep doing the work, we would be much more fierce and much more peaceful… By Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
That’s a wrap. We are celebrating 8 months. Thank you for listening!
Marissa’s info:
@therapywithmarissa on IG
