Dave Kashen talks about why people resist their feelings and how to work through that resistance. He focuses on noticing emotions in your body and using coaching to help people feel what they're actually experiencing instead of pushing it away.
How do you get people to start even being aware of the resistance and noticing? And then how do you, how do you help coach them to work through it?
I mean, let's see. So the classic, like, emotional intelligence sort of work is first around identifying and recognizing a feeling that's happening, which if we don't recognize it, we tend to skip over it and essentially resist it or actively resist it. So part of it is just like we— I think we talked in the last episode about like taking the elevator down from your head to your heart or to your body. So just starting to pay attention to like what's happening in here, because you have a body and it has sensations and feelings. And then if you start to do that, you will notice that you do resist most feelings. I will just— I'll just assert that from my experience, most people resist most of their feelings, even joy and excitement, sometimes even more joy and excitement, right? Um, so it might be just a useful place to start. Let's just assume any feeling you have, you're at least partially resisting fully feeling, because that's just what we tend to do or tend to learn. Um, but—
and I think we said this last time, but I just want to say it because I think it's relevant, is the pipe, if you will, of feelings is like one pipe. And so if you resist sadness, you probably also resist joy because it's like the pipe will grow. My mental model is like your pipe is feeling is your resistance pipe is one pipe regardless of the feeling coming through.
Yeah. Because it is even, I mean, to some degree, even the distinct feelings that we described are just conceptual. Like there's some kind of energy that's trying to move through your body. And if you, if you block it, you block it. So I think that's an important point. You don't— we don't get to pick and choose, it seems, really. Like, we can pretend to, but like, you're not going to feel your full aliveness and joy if you don't feel your full rage and terror. Um, and so, and I can generally feel it now in my body, like there's some kind of bracing against Again, because the energy is wanting to move and it will just naturally move, like you said, in your 18-month-old. So there's some kind of way that we brace against it. And honestly, a lot of like chronic physical issues are really, I think, just chronic bracing against feeling. You know, the last line of defense is our jaw, right? It's like, don't say that, right? Don't speak it, don't cry, don't— or don't cry out, right? Don't—
right.
