Thoughting #4: Don't believe what you think you feel

A middle-aged man, no intimate relationship in all his years, no longer comfortable with loneliness, said he feels “worthless.”

“‘Worthless’ isn’t a feeling, it’s a judgment, a bad metaphor. Go inside and see what is the feeling that you label ‘worthless.’”

One wouldn’t expect someone so shut down to have quick access to his body feeling, but he did. “Shame. My mother didn’t love my father and I felt ashamed of him. That turned inward.”

Therapists have enough to do even while accepting the client’s self-descriptions. And they have too much to do if they accept them, because they won’t know the person. It’s important to take the extra step and question the nature and validity of “believing” and question what clients claim to feel.

“I feel guilty.” You said this guilty feeling started when you were young. Did you do anything wrong by getting a D in science in fourth grade? “No. I was a depressed kid.” Then you don’t feel ‘guilty.’ You were made to feel inferior and bad about yourself.

“I feel proud of my husband for not drinking over the weekend.” He’s stopped drinking a dozen times this year. You feel ‘proud’ of that? “Maybe I don’t know what I feel.”

“I love my mother.” Why? “Because she’s my mother.”

I wrote this comment to a recent New York Times op-ed:

It bothers me . . . that big thinkers live on the plateau of ideas, which can’t explain themselves, rather than in the inferno of those ideas’ cause: visceral feeling that is rooted in the buried history of the person.

Adults don’t seem to know or care that ideas can’t explain ideas, that there is something literally deeper than a thought or a belief. Plumbing ideas’ origins leads to reductio ad feeling. “I like Trump.” Why? “Because he’s strong, and he owns the libs.” What do you mean by strong? What is good about ‘owning’ liberals? “Strong means he takes charge. And squashing liberals’ bleeding-heart ideas is good.” Taking charge of putting children in cages? Taking charge of colluding with dictators? Disliking immigrants? “The country has too many immigrants.” There’s no fact behind that. “It’s what I feel.”

And of course, that’s enough for many people – “it’s what I feel” – but it shouldn’t be for therapists. “I want to forgive my brother, who sexually abused me for years.” Should we accept that? or should we see if this desire, and this capacity for the emotional suppression that is “forgiveness,” are a weakness or false charity or religious imprint that could lead the woman to harm for the rest of her life?

Feeling-centered depth therapy isn’t just another paradigm of what goes wrong with people, of how to help. It’s the only approach that reaches the meaning, the actual truth of the person, the feeling beneath the thought.