Feelings expressed

A kind friend has responded to my need or anyone's need to express feelings. It is so apt.

    They are real and it is only in giving in to them that you can begin to deal with them.

I think acknowledging feelings and mood by watching / listening to what happens internally, can bring one to a level of acceptance of what is truth and reality. Then, when they, the feelings, have been externalised and not suppressed with the stiff upper English lip, one can begin to treat the cause of the thoughts, which in actual fact, are I believe, the feelings.

I remember.
Whilst having responsibility for children's well-being in the school environment,  I often used to ask them "How do you feel?" and "How do you think the one you have been unkind to feels?  I used to sit the children together when they had hurt each other and get feelings out into the open... even angry ones, which seemed to help find a resolution towards understanding and forgiveness, so that, usually, they made up with a hug!  I nearly always asked the ones who could not express themselves to draw a picture. That helped too. I was heavily criticised for this during my last 3 months at school.  The new manager in that time, possible goaded by those below me who were unhappy with me, said it was a punishment to keep a child in from their playtime and make them draw a picture.  I never saw it like that. They were allowed to cool down, have time out, and had a choice to write, draw or leave a blank page! Then, if there was time they went back to their playtime or sometimes wanted to help me prepare the classroom.
It wasn't as easy as I make it sound! Discipline in schools became a contentious issue.

It was a pity that this method did not apply to the adults in the school, including me.  It might have stopped the endless mindless chatter, gossip and dissatisfaction with others.

I never really learned about relationships with people because a) I FEEL that my parents never taught me nor modelled positive behaviour and b) that as an adult, I was always REACTING to events, circumstances. I regret that. I knew I had to be more proactive but TIME never seemed to be on my side.  Always as a working single parent, I was struggling to climb out of the abject poverty we had been in and make a better life, a middle class life, a life of opportunity, a life of fewer struggles. Since early retirement and in the last 3 to 5 years I've read a lot about emotions / feelings, people and relationships on the internet.  Some stuff I dismiss but I try to learn something from all that I read. There are a lot of troubled individuals in relationships and one feels for them.  There is also some wonderful insight and info on behavioural models to emulate.  It would be easy to blame emotional matters on our parents but I don't.  Mind you, I DID.  Yet, I haven't blamed them for about 20 years, ever since I forgave them in my mind. They did the best they could after the war. They probably never learned to be self-aware. They had their own struggles in the face of adversity which was probably better then than now for younger families. My mother, now in her 80s, certainly cannot understand why I am so emotional.  She has been very wronged in her life. She  had to become hard and abrupt to stand up to my father's depression and who knows what else. He is not here to ask and now I woudl talk to him but not then, not 15 years ago. I am very sad about that!
Although my emotional outpourings have been an absolute pain, I am grateful for them.  They have brought me to a better place in my mind, heart and soul, despite blips!!!!!!

I've been cautioned in the past not to write about personal matters but it does not concern me.  It is who I am. I've been wronged in my life and am  thinking that the blogger fraternity is comprised of all sorts of very interesting folk and we learn from each other.  The internet = a library!