“When I believe my feelings, and those feelings misrepresent reality, I am headed for a self-referential pit that will get deeper and darker as I dig myself into my home-made delusion.” © Copyright D. Riddell, 2012 Book Reference: Personal Insights (P 253)

Another way to look at this is to realise that many of what we call feelings are judgments and, therefore, thoughts, not feelings. Unheard, Rejected, Abandoned—these are all common ‘feeling’ words that have a blaming and judging element to them. They are actually all thoughts. They are just very short ones, and they distract from our feelings, perhaps scared, anxious, sad, etc.

If we call our judgements what they are, then we can be open to realising that our judgements can also be wrong. This gives us more possibilities for dealing with our pain. It also means we have not yet discovered the real pain that lies under our judgements. This indicates that we are still strangers to ourselves, which means we will be strangers to others.

If you are curious, my online course about NVC goes into much more detail about this.