Feelings

Feelings come in enormous variety and nuance. But we're all born with four primary feelings: sad, mad, scared and glad. All of our feelings are constructed of these four, just as all colors are some combination of red, yellow and blue.

There is a common pattern that occurs in a deep psychodrama. The protagonist (the client) usually starts with fear -- do I dare face this? It's been blocking me for so long, and my resistance has been feeding its power. As I confront my fear and moves through it, typically I'll go into anger. No! It's not okay what you did! It was wrong! Never again! This anger is healthy, and helps us set our boundaries in the world. After the anger is expressed, then comes sadness. I turn to comfort my inner child, and the tears flow. It's okay, I'm here now, I love you. Finally, I break through to joy. I feel safer, stronger. My psychodrama is complete.

This pattern isn't unique to psychodrama. We live it all the time. And it's been my observation that getting stuck in a certain feeling state often indicates that there is unfinished business in the previous state. If a client is stuck in anger, it's often because they have unfinished fear work. If a client can't feel any joy, it can be due to untapped grief.

Sad

Sadness, grief, loneliness, despair. We all have felt this. It is the feeling of loss, of separation from love. But sadness is not to be shunned. All love ends in grief, but the depth of our grief is the measure of the love we lived. Men, especially, have a difficult time touching sadness in our culture.

Mad

Anger, irritation, fury, rage. This is the feeling of violation, what we feel when someone crosses our boundaries. Anger is healthy, and we all need to feel and express our anger. Violence and abuse are distortions, inappropriate expressions of anger. Men in our culture often use anger to mask other feelings (especially fear), whereas women may find expressing anger difficult -- in large part, because women are penalized in our culture for expressing anger.

Scared

Fear, anxiety, uneasiness. This is the feeling of being threatened; fear is ultimately about death, whether literal or metaphorical. But change involves undergoing the death and rebirth process. Moving through fear is a necessary first step to making any change in life.

Glad

Joyful, happy, glad. This is the "good" feeling (I put it in quotes because I hold that all our feelings are good and necessary). But how often we sabotage our happiness! How we resist it! Shame is the great saboteur of happiness, but also fear -- if I embrace my joy, my power, my beauty, then I can't get away with hiding in that small, safe victim-box.

Shame

Shame is not a primary feeling. Primary feelings are present at birth. Every baby will feel sad, mad, glad and scared. But no baby feels ashamed. This is learned. There is always a toxic story attached to shame. And without the story, the shame disappears.

Some complex feelings

The primary feelings combine in our complex feelings. Here are some combinations to ponder.

Sadness and anger combine to the "hurt" feeling. There is a mixed sense of loss and violation.

Sadness and fear combine to feeling "needy". A sense of impending loss mixed with a desperation to cling to what you expect to lose.

Sadness and joy combine as nostalgia.

Fear and joy combine to excitement or fun (depending on the proportions). Kids love this combination.

Fear and anger combine to form rage. There is always an element of helplessness, of fear, in rage. Violence is always an expression of fear, a way to disown fear and try to have some sort of control over it.

Anger and joy combine to form self-righteousness. Another name for this is cruelty. This combination plagues our political sphere.