:)

My feelings are what they are. I can manipulate them, But I can't create them. If I could, I never would have drank. I can create thoughts to no end. My feelings are what they are though. They don't themselves lie to me. They don't tell me truth either for that matter, okay?

Nonetheless, my feelings are like the water of a waterfall, but not the fall itself. Like the surf, but not the wav that moves thru the surf. My feelings are physical and I have emotions built on that foundation. As a baby, I learned to feel much before I learned to have emotions. I think we all did.

Spending my first years in hospital from 11 months to 2.5 years changed me into what I am. I'm not really attached normally to things, or people, as a result of those early years.

Give me an example of "feelings don't lie" please.

Eckhart Tolle speaks about "this emotion. “Fear” comes close, but apart from a continuous sense of threat, it also includes a deep sense of abandonment and incompleteness."

He says you are not the thinker, you are not your mind. You are much more than your thoughts. You are the observer of your thoughts.

After reading this thread and pondering how to respond to you, this is what I found.
The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle Excerpt: "You Are Not Your Mind"

Every paragraph is relevant to this discussion. Please see what you can take from it.

Can feelings lie? Certainly. I will use the argument of the orbital frontal cortex region of our brain and the function of the OFC to receive input from all the sensory areas. Think of walking into a Tommy Bahama store where your senses are triggered to believe you are on a beach somewhere. This feeling helps bring you to a more serene place to get you to spend more but in reality you are in store in a mall not a beach. Of course feelings lie. Feelings are an illusion - an attachment to a certain emotion. An attachment to a memory. You can change your feelings towards things. I used to get rage when someone would cut me off...I am now able to change this through meditation.

"If we were all to sit in a circle and confess our sins, we would laugh at each other for lack of originality". ~ Kahlil Gibran

Maybe the same would hold true with our "feelings" ? :)

Being and becoming. Now I have a whole new concept to study...

You attach yourself all the time - in this thread there are numerous examples of you attaching yourself to when you were an athlete to being disabled.

My suggestion is perhaps its in this attachment that lies part of the problem. Feelings are attaching an emotion to a memory.

My intellect and my feelings are very distinctive and it is not true for me that my feelings somehow lie to me in some relationship with my intellect. Certainly my mind can lie to me. Like a rug.

My feelings? Not so much.

Dear Robby, I really, really can't imagine what you're going through. But my grandfather had both of his legs amputated, and at some point he chose to withdraw entirely into himself. He lived to be old, but more and more he withdrew, and not in a positive or spiritual way, but in a dark, negative way, until the last several years of his life he stopped speaking, and the last year he refused to feed himself -- he would accept being spoon fed. He apparently just didn't care to live, but couldn't and wouldn't die.

I don't think that path was inevitable for him. He chose it incrementally over time. He wouldn't ask for help or accept his weakness and he hated himself for needing help and being what he thought was weak. He could have been an inspiration to his family, but he had a very narrow view of what makes a man.

I don't see you as narrow or negative in that way. When one door closes, another is revealed. It may take time for your eyes to get accustomed to the different light in the room you're in, & to find the next door opening, but I'm sure you'll find it, and that for you, it will lead you somewhere beautiful.

feelings don't lie?

the two don't belong together, i'm thinking. different categories. feelings neither lie nor are true. they have nothing to do with honesty/dishonesty. they just are. and then they change.

a little more difficult with what seems more like rooted "core"-feelings. i get that.

am also thinking that seeing things in fail/succeed and good/bad and win/loose terms is adding to your desperate place. this i'm saying because i see you put things in those either/or terms in this thread over and over, and because i used to find my own safety there for a long time. a fake safety, mind you, but felt more secure than letting go of either/or. i used that as an anchor.

you asked at one point what to let go of....maybe the failure/success view might be a beginning?


It is unclear how I can deal with my escape desires and still deal with things.
hm...in one way, and do please say if it's way off base...this seems a lot like a newcomer to sobriety; i mean: we've been there, all of us, in different circumstances, but with similar need to deal with escape desires and still deal with things...

maybe something helpful will show itself if you look at it that way? sorry if i'm misunderstanding.

oh! are you using "feelings" more in the sense of "sensation" rather than "emotion"?

I didn't say I don't attach. I did say I don't do so normally.
I do agree that some attachments are not healthy for me, and others are however.

Feelings are not just attachments though, is my opinion. Feelings can exist on their own merit, unattached.

As for feelings not lying, I'd say I agree. No more than a table lies. Mistaking a feeling for a fact can lead people to make wrong decisions, but the feeling itself is real. Also we adopt associations among feelings that can be dangerous and unhealthy. Like associating feelings of pleasure with feelings of shame. It's the job of many an alcoholic to understand where the feelings come from, to know why they're there and how to respond to them. It's not our feelings that are so often incorrect; it's the way we think about them.

Do you believe that your feelings are static? Or can your feelings about something change?

Thanks for that, Courage. I'm sorry for your loss of your grandfather in such a way. Some amputees do suffer into themselves. This has not happened to me. And will not happen. I'm not a victim here. The amputations for me were all elective. They are also all successful. My quality of life has greatly improved. I'm okay.

((Courage)) :hug:

That works for me!!

:scoregood

They can change. To become static, I need to have a specific resentment in place to make that so. Otherwise, they are free to change as they desire.

Ok then, sensations don't lie? I don't understand...

As they desire? Do you have the ability to change the way you feel about something? Or it just happens that the feelings change on their own?

:scoregood

Yeah, well I just finished my 4th step today. Talk about a person who's taken really normal understandable feelings and had completely screwed up thoughts about them and then taken insane actions....! :)

I seem unable to change my feelings. They can fade. They can flame. I don't have exact control. Not so with my thoughts though. I can easily control my thoughts.

My feelings... not so much. Never could. Its not an alcoholism thing. I think it has direct relationship to the abuse I felt. I don't have words for these feelings that stick. The words slide off and the feelings remain fuzzy and undefined other than I recognize patterns and I'm familiar with the sameness.

I am clearly able to feel my feelings though. My descriptors are fuzzy. My feelings are clear. Hope I'm making sense enough to get across my meaning.

As for sensations vs feelings, these are one and the same for me when I "think on them"

I can block feelings out quite easily. The price I pay is it costs me in loneliness. The more I block, the more lonely I feel because I become just a robot.