Troubles with our internal world

It can be hard to fathom just what’s going on within our bodies (as well as trying to work out what’s going on inside other people).

One thing that makes matters of the head and heart especially hard to understand is that we don’t have a language to describe all that we’re experiencing.

Our thoughts can be dishonest and deceive us; they can be confusing, obscure and hard to understand. They can lead to uncertainty and doubt, and we can forget them in an instant. They can be unreliable, losing their impact or changing over time. They can overwhelm us, burden us, worry and disturb us. They can make us fall prey to fears and make us anxious, depressed and stressed. They can contradict themselves or lead us away from our true self. They can be easily manipulated by power-mongers and abusers.

Our feelings and emotions can also be problematic. One of the biggest issues with them is that we can misread the signs. We can, say, interpret excitement as a cue for anxiety. Feelings can be intense and overwhelm us or cause us great hurt, pain and suffering. They can also misguide us.

Emotions signal how we’re feeling at any moment in time and assist us to make decisions. However, sometimes emotions from the past (emotions that we didn’t or were unable to process at the time) can combine with a mild current feeling to produce an overwhelming response. Sometimes this can result in us getting angry with a person we are with, even though they’re not the cause of our anger. Sometimes a huge amount of fear can surge through us, even though we aren’t particularly fearful at that moment in time.

Many people mistrust their feelings, don’t like their feelings or seek to deny them. It’s estimated that one in ten people have a great deal of trouble recognising what they are. This has its own recognised status: alexithymia.

Our actions and behaviour can also get us into a lot of trouble, as you cannot undo what you’ve done. You cannot go back in time and do what you didn’t do. We can then end up consumed by guilt, shame, blame and regret over our actions or non-actions, as well as be punished by others, which then makes it hard to move on in life.

Do you have any thoughts or feelings on this subject?