Are People Afraid of Feelings?

It appears to me that people are very afraid of feelings. They seem to go running scared when you start talking about them. I have really been trying to work on my communication rather than getting all upset with people. But, it is interesting… I have found that in many cases I get more of a response from screaming and yelling than from calmly trying to communicate my feelings.

I have found that if you try to take the “high road” and refrain from screaming and yelling and getting upset, you are just patronized and taken advantage because they consider you to “weak” and perhaps a little “wishy-washy.” We really do tend to just steamroll right over people’s feelings on a daily basis and try to pretend they don’t exist and that we’re not harming anyone.

If we are ever going to “evolve” into kinder and gentler people who could perhaps one day far far far from now explore the possibility that there is other life out there besides just the life existing on our planet, we need to start acknowledging that our feelings do exist, they are valid, and they need to be discussed and acknowledged.

We are starting to explore this possibility… we discuss emotional abuse, we discuss how making fun of someone could cause harm to them, we discuss how being alienated from people could drive you mad with loneliness, we discuss feelings all the time but on a daily basis we seem to have such trouble discussing them when they pertain to our personal relationships.

Like for instance, I have had several scenarios lately where I have been in little disagreements with people and they will just decide to completely ignore me. Therefore, I relay to them that it really hurts my feelings that you are ignoring me. I tell them that I’m very sorry if I offended them and ask if they can please explain to me the reasoning behind it so I can prevent people from ignoring me in the future. After I send this message to people, I just continue to be ignored.

The bottom line is if we don’t start communicating much more and explaining our point of view and perspective and instead just hold a grudge and dismiss one another and try to forget about them and “move on,” we are never going to learn much of anything.

I am well aware that people think I’m a little “nutty” when they receive a message from me telling them that they are “hurting my feelings” because that is not, generally speaking, something that adults do at this point. When someone is ignoring them, even though it does hurt their feelings they will just dismiss the other person and not try and communicate and probably just go complain about them to someone else instead of getting to the root of the problem. That doesn’t seem to be very adult-like to me. Adults work through their problems, they communicate and they listen to each other and try, however difficult it might be, to come to some sort of understanding and common ground.

And, just to sum it all up, I must say I often laugh because with all of our wars, divorces, and battles we have on this planet… I often think that if there are other life forms that do exist somewhere out there, they are saying to each other, “I’m not going down there. Are you going down there?” I surmise that they would be absolutely terrified to come down and visit our planet.

If you have any questions or comments on this article, please contact me at beth@empathylessons.com.

- Elizabeth Fink, February 23, 2009