Welcome to the Jenni Carroll Perspective. Today we continue focusing on the parts of us, the emotional and psychological parts, that help us both to function and also to deal with all of the many experiences we have, every day. In previous episodes we have discussed emotions and thoughts and the significance of choices and decision-making. But for today, I would like to jump a little deeper into some specific emotions. Emotions that significantly impact our relationship with others, and not just the important others in our lives, but our relationship with all other people, the world at large so to speak. We will also talk about some feelings that significantly influence the relationship we have with ourselves, because at the end of the day, that is where it’s at! So, let’s get started.
What are the best feelings? What are the worst? Excitement? Joy? Satisfaction through accomplishment? Those are all great. There are feelings that we love having and then of course, there are feelings that are horrible, that we hate; sadness, fear, grief? But for a moment, I’d like for you to think about this question in a different way. What feelings speak to our best selves? Our true value? Our authenticity? Our kindness? And at the other end of the spectrum, what feelings showcase or most represent our pain, our wounding, our struggle?
Our first answer might be love... and hate. And we wouldn’t be wrong. But as we know, the opposite of love isn’t hate, it is fear. So there’s that. And while love is a wonderful emotion, it also has the potential to be sort of a selfish one. Because, feeling love, has everything to do with ourselves. Don’t get me wrong, feeling love is wonderful, in fact, it really is all that we need. Yet, I think that how we interpret “love” doesn’t always align with what it actually is, at its core. In order to really understand the emotion of love, it’s helpful to consider the feelings and behaviors associated with it. What does love look like in action, and what other feelings are necessary in order to demonstrate or embody love? Because when it comes to the people we love, for them, the value of our love is really only in what we do with it.
I would argue that the feelings that are the necessary to love and be loving, the building blocks of love per se, are compassion and empathy. We think of compassion and empathy as very similar, and we often use them interchangeably, but they really are slightly different.
Compassion is a feeling that also generally includes the desire for action, if we are compassionate, we DO something compassionate such as giving money to a good cause. Empathy, on the other hand is arguably only a feeling. According to Miriam Webster:
Compassion and empathy both refer to a caring response to someone else’s distress. While empathy refers to an active sharing in the emotional experience of the other
person, compassion adds to that emotional experience a desire to alleviate the person’s distress. (M. Webster)
So you can have empathy for someone, you can have an understanding of how they feel or what they are going through, and honestly, this is a really important emotion. It is crucial to work at finding a way to connect or at least appreciate what other people might be feeling or experiencing. People who struggle with empathy, tend to, unfortunately sort of live on the surface of life. But if we can feel empathy, it is then compassion that adds in the desire to alleviate another’s distress through action, OR I would also argue, through our own thoughts and feelings which ultimately change the way we respond to someone. Without empathy and compassion, I think it is almost impossible to really respond to people, including ourselves, with love.
So, if empathy and compassion are representative of our highest, most authentic selves, what represents our lowest selves? Fear is at the heart of all negative emotion, and something we continue to need to bring awareness to... But sometimes the feelings that manifest more readily when we are considering the wounded side of us are anger and guilt and I would also argue judgment. Judgment is generally experienced as a thought, although I think it also can be embodied in feeling as well. Judgment arises from anger, anger motivated more deeply by fear. Anger is always motivated by fear, but in general we are much more aware of feeling anger than the underlying fear, as fear is usually hiding in our subconscious. So, anger turned outward is judgment and anger turned inward is guilt. Both emotional experiences serve to keep us stuck in a negative, inauthentic place creating an obstacle to love AND to our truest self.
Anger is a reaction to our frustration, fear and lack of control. When we are unhappy with our external circumstances, we look to place blame as a way to cultivate some sense of control. Of course, the reality is this is a façade, and the condemnation of other people or other things in our mind, truly has no bearing on our ability to have control or have power over anything.
Judgment is very human experience, one that is often hard wired. It is so easy to default to negative, critical assumptions about others, holding firm to the idea that what is right for us, can and should be applied to those around us. Clearly, there are times when we observe behavior from others that is not at all in alignment with our own perspective, but what does this mean and what should we do about it?
First of all, it is important to understand that standing in a place of judgment of others where we bask in self-righteousness is always a façade. We are judging others because of something within us that is not healed and is connected to fear. This is such a powerful understanding. We often go through life feeling tied to our external circumstances like being handcuffed to the back of a 747. We go anywhere and everywhere the world takes us, flying with the wind, having no control or power over what we experience. All of the unfairness and injustice in the world... from what we see happening on the news or on social media, or the injustice that we observe or experience at work, school, church, the gym, in our friend groups, with our family.
We become frustrated that the world and the others in it don’t operate the way we think they should. We react to this injustice with anger and then, often, judgment.
Here’s the thing. It’s not that our perspective is necessarily wrong. We may indeed have legitimate concerns, grounded in truth and love about the damaging, painful and impactful behavior of others. But the wisdom is in understanding where our power is and how feelings (and certainly actions) of judgment are only adding to the negative both outside and within us.
So what do we do instead of ruminating on what is wrong with the world and placing judgment? First, we have to allow ourselves to process. After all, we are here. We see it, we experience it and we may even be directly in the middle of it. It’s okay to have thoughts that help us understand and come to terms with what we are experiencing or observing. It’s okay to have feelings too. Remember, we must allow for our feelings, any feelings, in real time. Its’ okay. The important part is what happens next.
What is next, in the wise words of Disney’s Elsa, is to “let it go.” Let it go, BECAUSE, it is not ours. And as such, we don’t need to be burdened by it. BUT, you might be thinking. What do you mean, I can’t just sit by and let people do things that aren’t right? Alas, yes you can. In fact, it is your responsibility to refuse to tie yourself to things that are not only beyond your control but also have nothing to do with you. To acknowledge that while you may not like what others do, it is not your ballgame. As a result, you are not tied to anyone’s actions but your own. Now before you tell me that this is a total cop out, let me explain what is next. Compassion.
The world is actually filled with people who devote themselves to making it a better place. Those that make it their business to offer kindness and help and alleviate pain. In other words, they are bringing compassion to the world. Whether it is through leaving their comfortable homes and traveling across town or across the world to help the sick, cold and hungry. Or, maybe they just make a point to smile, with patience and ease while they shuffle along in the slow-moving line at the post office.
It is hard to access compassion when you are focused on judgment. An interesting thing about the whole point of compassion, is that it doesn’t just include understanding, empathy, the desire to alleviate pain for the victims, the “good” people, the people you admire, or care about or love. Compassion needs to be for everyone... the jerks, the criminals, the people who do bad things and yes even people who hurt others or hurt you. This is where compassion truly makes a difference. For the great majority of us, it is easy to have compassion for people that are hurting, or who we see as “good” - it is much harder to access the same compassion for the people we are angry with, see as wrong, the ones who trigger our deepest fears.
But if we can begin to replace judgment with compassion for everyone and everything outside of us, our lives begin to change. Because, our experience with the environment changes. We no longer feel powerless in a world filled with constant pain and injustice. Instead, we understand that first of all, we always have the power to be okay regardless of anything and everything that can happen to us or around us. We also begin to realize that when we replace negative emotion
and negative thought with empathy and compassion, we feel better. We feel good. We experience peace. We embody love.
So, if judgment is anger and fear directed at others, guilt is anger and fear directed at ourselves. Guilt is just as damaging as judgment and in my opinion, just as prevalent. One of the defining features of guilt, is that it serves absolutely NO purpose. What it does do is to hold us down, keep us stuck and create emotional if not behavioral paralysis.
Why do we feel guilt? Where does it come from? Guilt is emotion that comes from an inability to see past our own mistakes and errors to the innate value within. Feeling guilt, especially frequently, is a huge sign that we are disconnected from our Intrinsic Worth. I generally see guilt manifest in two different ways. First the guilt people struggle with when it comes to a specific mistake or failure that they perceive is so bad it is unforgivable. Even though the guilt is directed at a specific behavior that is felt to be awful and unforgivable, the guilt from this experience is woven into the fabric of who they believe themselves to be, and it shapes their ongoing sense of self, making it impossible to find any freedom from the past. Then there is guilt that is habitual. A feeling that frequently comes up, or probably more accurately, never really goes away. Here, there is often a lack of awareness around where the guilt is coming from or what it is about, and instead just becomes a persistent feeling that is as comfortable as it is unsavory and again serves to create the fabric or backdrop of the person’s life.
There is most definitely a reciprocal relationship between judgment and guilt. The more we experience one, the more we experience the other. And really, guilt is just judgment we hold towards ourselves.
Just like judgment, guilt is one of the most damaging emotions we can have. Why? Because it keeps us in a place where we are tied to our past, to what is not within our control, and interferes in what is present and where our power lies. When we feel guilt, our perspective changes, it becomes negative and fearful and even toxic. The choices we make are influenced by the lack of compassion we have towards ourselves. In this state we can easily find ourselves making decisions that if not overtly self-destructive, create a slow burn towards a negative future.
What is your relationship with guilt? Is it something that you notice frequently? Or perhaps constantly? Even if you feel guilt only occasionally, it is too much. I’m here to tell you that you never need to feel guilty. Really? you might be thinking? Won’t that like make me a bad person? The answer is no.
And here is the caveat, although slight, we do need to have a healthy self-awareness with regard to the choices we make and the impact, good and bad of those decisions. We need to take ownership of where we fall short, and how we hurt ourselves and others. We need to acknowledge and work to make new choices that are more representative of our true selves and the people we want to be. But, no feeling guilty does not make us better people in any
way. And not feeling guilty does not make us arrogant, conceited, egoistic, narcissistic or bad. Guilt merely keeps us separated from living life in an easier and more extraordinary way.
Just like empathy and compassion can and should replace judgment when it comes to our perspective and experience of others, we must also bring empathy and compassion to ourselves. There is always room to approach ourselves with compassion, even in our lowest days, where we are struggling with our deepest fears, our worst mistakes. Empathy and compassion are actually what will assist us in making better choices, helping us to avoid paths that take us away from our true selves while changing our perspective and our direction in a positive way.
Consider for a minute the path you’re on. How much do judgment and guilt play a role? How often are these feelings present and how much do they influence how you see yourself, the world and the choices you make? Do you want to have a different experience?
The answer to a better experience, of course, is our Intrinsic Worth. When we embrace our Intrinsic Worth we are present with our own value, and that of others. We see the frustrations we have with other’s behavior as just that - frustration. We let go of the need to justify our own mistakes against the errors of others. Behavior that we don’t support or even detest, holds less power, and eventually becomes meaningless. It’s lack of meaning doesn’t represent apathy or a lack of care, it represents deep wisdom and freedom from what we can’t control and an assertion that despite all that is around us (including our own mistakes) we have the ability to be free, to find peace in the here and now and let go of the burden of anything outside of OUR present.
As humans we will continue to have an emotional response to everything we experience on the outside, but our feelings can come and go, and we can move on without holding onto that which doesn’t belong to us and that which we cannot control. This is true freedom; this is living life in an easier and sweeter way. It starts with choosing to replace anger, judgment and guilt with empathy, compassion and love.
My loving suggestion is to pay attention to any place in your life where judgment or guilt surfaces. Consider why you are having these emotions. What purpose are they serving? What benefits are they offering? Are you willing to consciously choose compassion instead? If so, see what happens next.
You are light and you are love.