Hello again!

I wrote an article about this a while ago, and now I’ve made a video!

CLICK ON IT to watch it!

 

I love this way of seeing feelings!

The three types are:

1. Needs Feelings.

These are the feelings that we have when we have unmet needs – such as feeling lonely when we need connection, or feeling hungry when we need food.

We are born with these feelings. That means that babies and children feel them, as well as adults.

(In our culture, we tend to think that babies have only these one type of feelings – that all uncomfortable feelings express an unmet need.)

The most apt response to these feelings is to meet the needs.

For a baby that will mean holding her when she needs closeness, and feeding her when she is hungry.

For a child that will mean listening to her when she needs to be heard, and giving her things that interest her when she needs stimulation.

For us, that will mean reaching out when we need support, or going to bed when we feel tired.

2. Feelings Feelings.

These are feelings that emerge when we have unmet needs, or where things happen to us that are frightening or overwhelming, including physical and emotional hurts. 

We all have these kinds of real feelings, right from birth (and before birth).

As babies, we can experience fear, terror, rage, and powerlessness during the birth process. We can feel grief and terror and overwhelm if we are separated after birth or have medical procedures. And just during everyday life, we can feel overwhelmed, frustrated, lonely, powerless, scared, confused (as well as joyful, curious, delighted, happy and contented.)

As children, we can feel frustration, confusion, powerlessness, sadness, fear, loneliness, grief, overwhelm and many more, even during every day experiences that we take for granted as adults.

And as adults, we can feel all these feelings too, including all the feelings from infancy and childhood that we didn’t get to express and have heard.

The most helpful response in these situations is to be present and listen.

With a baby, that means holding them in our arms, and listening as they cry, (when all their needs are met). They then get to express all the real feelings that all babies have. They get to heal from their birth experience, any separations or challenges they’ve experienced, and they get to tell us about the feelings feelings that they experience every day, just as a part of life.

With a child, that means being close and listening. We might be holding them, or we might be right there with them as they cry or rage and express any feelings that they didn’t get to express as babies, as well as all the day to day feelings that are natural for all children to feel. If they feel frustrated or confused, we can listen to them with empathy, and reflect back their feelings with compassion. We can also help them release feelings of frustration, powerlessness and fear using attachment play.

With adults, that means either asking someone to listen to our feelings with loving compassion (these might be feelings feelings from now, but also feelings feelings from our infancy and childhood and earlier life that didn’t get to be express and heard with loving compassion). Or we can listen with our own Inner Loving Crew, or whatever your own version of that is. 

3. Thoughts Feelings.

We are not born with these, which means that babies don’t feel these types of feelings.

These are the type of feelings that are created by ways of thinking in our culture that imply wrongness.

Punishment, ‘shoulds’, shaming by saying that there is something wrong with you, judgment of badness or naughtiness or sinfulness, ‘have-to’s’, these create thoughts feelings of shame and guilt and deep discomfort.

Often these don’t start to be applied until a baby becomes a toddler, depending on what parenting paradigm is used.

Thoughts feelings are so powerful because we internalise these ways of thinking and then start doing them to ourselves.

So by the time we become adults we are often judging ourselves, shoulding ourselves, telling ourselves about our wrongness, and feeling shame and guilt and emotional bruises from these emotional sticks.

The most helpful response to these for children is to avoid punishment, shaming, and judgment, and if they have experienced those kinds of things from you or others, to listen to their feelings through listening to their crying and tantrums, and to do power-reversal games and nonsense play to help them release the feelings.

The most helpful response for ourselves as adults is to set loving limits with others speaking to us in those ways; changing our own inner dialogue by setting loving limits with harshness and replacing it with compassionate listening, and expressing the feelings that we have from the past around being responded to in those ways.

(For me, my Inner Loving Crew respond to me with compassionate inner dialogue, and they also listen to past hurts around being told there was something wrong with me, using my Inner Loving Presence Process.

So, there are three types of feelings.

In our culture we tend to think that babies only feel Needs Feelings, but in this way of thinking, they experience both Needs Feelings and Feelings Feelings.

Children and adults experience all three types of feelings.

The most helpful response to Needs Feelings is to meet the need.

The most helpful response to Feelings Feelings is to listen compassionately and calmly to the feelings.

The most helpful response to Thoughts Feelings is to prevent them in the first place, set loving limits with those ways of thinking (both external and internal) and listen compassionately and calmly to the resulting feelings that are there.

I’d love to hear if this resonates with you.

Love,

Marion 

xxx

P.S. As I read through this again, I realise that I have courses for all of these –

 

The Aware Babies Course and the Aware Parenting Babies Q and A Vault for differentiating between the two types of feelings for babies and listening to the feelings feelings of babies,

The Making Friends with Children’s Feeling Course for listening to the needs feelings and feelings feelings of children and avoiding judgment and shaming of them,

The Attachment Play Course for attachment play for children,

The Living Aware Parenting Course, The Love Being a Mother Course, the Power and Powerlessness in Parenting Course and The Inner Loving Presence Process Course for listening to our own needs feelings and feelings feelings and sweet spots with loving compassion.

 

(See the Courses pages for more info. about them all!)

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