While we most likely didn’t learn to gamble, drink or watch porn when we were children, it was probably then that we learned that we needed to avoid our feelings – often because we thought they meant that something ‘bad’ was going to happen or that we were ourselves in some way ‘bad’.

​

Working with your therapist will show you that ALL feelings are welcome – sadness, rage, disgust and fear as well as joy, happiness and exuberance.

​

Unfortunately, when our feelings have been minimised or dismissed in the past, we can develop an unconscious belief that feelings are dangerous – that they will cause us to be rejected, overwhelmed or we will just be left to deal with them on our own.

​

So we develop very ‘clever’ strategies to avoid our feelings and to prevent others from seeing them:  changing the subject, saying something humerous, using substances or other behaviours to distract us.  This is often a completely unconscious process.  We are so defended against feeling emotions that when our brains pick up the slightest hint that we are about to experience an emotional feeling, they bring our compulsive or addictive behaviour to mind before we have even consciously registered the emotion.  So we don’t even realise that we are using the behaviour to self-soothe.

 

And this is why is emotion so important in therapy – and also why therapy can be demanding.  Because many of us hold deep, unconscious beliefs that emotions are dangerous.  This might actually have been the case at some time in our past, but it is certainly not something that applies with your therapist –and probably in your current life, you will have other relationships where this isn’t the case – if those relationships are given the chance.

 

 Often our unconscious defenses get so tuned in to the start of any difficult feeling that they have brought our compulsive behaviour into our minds as an idea before we have even consciously registered the emotion.  So we don’t even realise that we are using the behaviour to self-soothe. This false belief that our feelings are dangerous and need to be avoided lies at the root of most of our suffering.  We can learn that we don’t need to suppress, avoid or distract from them with substances or other harmful behaviours.

​

Therapy will give you the chance to learn that it is not dangerous to feel your emotions.  Your therapist won’t judge or reject you whether you cry in despair, scream in rage or laugh with childlike silliness.  As you learn to trust your therapist to be witness to your feelings, then you might understand yourself a little better; perhaps you feel a little more inner freedom and energy – You will have disconfirmed your brain’s predictions about emotion being ‘bad’.  This can be a start of really 'coming home to yourself', developing self-acceptance - even self-love, and breaking the pattern of reaching for distractions.