Expressing our feelings

Sometimes people suggest that we need to learn to express our feelings. The truth is, we're expressing them the whole time. People know as soon as we walk in the room what we're feeling.

The feeling is expressed in the body, in our voice, in our facial expressions, in our own feeling. If there's something we're not doing, it's this: we're not articulating them. The question, if any, is not learning to express our feelings but learning to articulate them.

But to what end? When feelings stem from errors in perception and understanding, articulating them can feed back into, warp, and reinforce the perception and understanding. Ever notice how, every time you complain about something, it drives the complaint, the sense of offence and injustice, deeper?

In my experience, the job is not to articulate feelings but to critically examine the beliefs, thoughts, and actions that give rise to them. That's what Steps Four and Eight do.