When Feeling Is Too Much
Cuando el sentir es demasiado
A student describes oscillating between observing emotions at a distance and being overwhelmed by them, and the teacher suggests examining the belief that full feeling will be "too much."
When Feeling Is Too Much
A student describes oscillating between observing emotions at a distance and being overwhelmed by them, and the teacher suggests examining the belief that full feeling will be "too much."
Otherwise, all the feeling is just too much.
And that's the other side. There's creating space by observing, the distance you're talking about, and then there's diving fully into it, where it feels like it's too much. The suggestion would be to explore: how is it really too much?
It's like it takes over the group, or takes over a conversation with my mother where it needed to be about her.
Containing and releasing
Yes, but you can regulate that. When you're with your mother, you contained yourself. And in a group, you can decide when and how much to contain. But then there are other times where you could fully make space to go the other way.
One direction is to create space through a certain distance of paying attention. The other is to fully let yourself be taken by it, where it would feel like it's too much. I would suggest looking at the "it's too much" or "it will be too much" as a worry, an anxiety, and something to, in a sense, test or ignore. Because that is what's going to keep you from actually fully feeling.
Yeah. Okay.