"Can there be a 'feeling block' as well as an action block?"
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Paul writes: "Is there a difference between a block that keeps me from doing something, and a block that keeps me from feeling something? Let me explain about my feeling block:
"I notice signs of my being unhappy and sad, but I don't actually feel unhappy and sad. The signs I see are feeling less, kind of deadened inside. My body is more tense (for me lately my lower belly has been in an uproar).
"I recently examined my upbringing, and realized that my parents both were very uncomfortable with anyone in the family feeling sad. My dad would try to distract and chase sad feelings away in his children; my mom, when she would acknowledge it, would swoop in to fix and take care of it – there was a clear message that her children can't handle their own sad feelings, and that sad feelings are overwhelming. That's how I grew up: sad feelings were either to be chased away, avoided, denied, or needed to have someone to fix them, but I couldn't simply be with them.
"I try to have an open and accepting, and self-responsible relationship with my sad and unhappy feelings. But I'm having difficulty about that. I focused last night on what might be keeping me from my sad feelings. I found it really difficult to be with 'It' in a compassionate and listening way. There was something that is pretty upset with anything that would get in the way of my freely feeling and being who I am. Yikes! It seems like too much for me!"
Dear Paul,
Certainly there can be a block to having feelings! In fact, blocks to action are almost always blocks to feeling as well.
I think it's great that you have come to recognize the signs that something in you is sad. Those are bodily signals, something you are feeling now.
To do Focusing with a block to feeling, I'd recommend starting with the feelings that ARE here. You called it "a kind of deadened inside," and your body feels tense.
In the feeling of "deadened" is more. In the feeling of "tense," there is more. I'd suggest bringing gentle curious company to the feel of those, in the body now… or whatever you are actually experiencing in the body now.
For example, you might start to there is "someone" in that deadened quality, someone afraid to feel, or trying not to feel. There might be a sense of "shoulders hunched" or trying not to feel bad. There might be a sense of worry about pleasing or not pleasing someone else. These are only guesses, to show the kind of qualities you might find there.
What actually is there will be unique and fresh, and your allowing it to come, and then being with it, will be a key part of the healing and change.
"No wonder" that part of you has a hard time with sad feelings
When you get in that state where you say, "It seems like too much for me!", it sounds like you are getting identified with a part of you that is eager and longing to be free of this block. It's very understandable to want to be free of a block… but the blocking part itself needs our compassionate empathy if it is ever going to find its way forward.
You've made great progress in understanding the roots of why it would be hard for you to allow yourself to have sad feelings, in your family upbringing. Now you just need to go a little further, and have compassion for the little guy who had to go through that.
Perhaps it will help if you see the blocking part as the child, the younger you, stuck in that distracting, fixing family. You can sense how hard that was for him, to never have support in just being with his own feelings of sadness.
No wonder it would be hard for him to have sad feelings! If he has them, they are just going to be taken away!
Then perhaps sense what kind of contact he would like from you, right now. I suspect he might like your support in being able to simply be with sad feelings. He might like you to give him what he didn't get from his parents. Your body knows what would have been right, back then, and can give what was missing, now.
