Feelings vs Sensations
Nope, still no new baby yet. I did go to the hospital last night though. For a broken arm, not for a baby birth. Trampoline incident. Yesterday we “talked about” allowing our children to feel their feelings and not be so quick to buffer them away or try to fix them like they are problem. But what about sensations? Say, a fractured arm for example? That is an actual physical hurt in the body. I use feeling and emotion interchangeably and both of those come from thoughts. Starts in the brain and goes down to the body. But sensations are the opposite. They start in the body and move to the head. The bone fractured and told the brain that there was actual physical pain. That is a problem that needs to be fixed and literally taken to the emergency room. But there is also a lot of feeling work to go with also. A lot of allowing emotions last night. Calmly enduring the crying instead of madly trying to make it stop so that I can feel better.
We tend handle sensations a little bit differently than emotions. We expect that when our child is physically hurt, that they will cry and we might have more empathy for that. We could try those same thoughts with emotional pain. Feelings can feel just as physical and “real” and need to be respected in the same way. So they are not a problem to be fixed but if we just sweep them under the rug, eventually we are going to trip over all those covered feelings. Our rugs are going to get really bumpy and hard to navigate. So, just like there are procedures we can follow to help with the physical pain, there are emotional pain tools also. Which we’ve been discussing. And can be just as important.
I asked the Dr at the ER what would have happened if we hadn’t come in. (Cause I thought that she was fine) She said that she might have been fine, could have healed on it’s own but it would have been really fragile and easily could have broken all the way through with any other bang. Same could be said for how we handle the emotional feelings. If we don’t wrap them up and take care with the right splint or cast, they are left out to be fragile and more easily breakable next time. So that’s why all this work matters.
