Feeling Substitution: Tit for Tat
Feelings are essential to our lives and well-being, because they give us information about what is going on around us and inside of us. We learn from an early age that there are acceptable feelings and unacceptable feelings. Many families have only one or maybe two feelings that are understood and accepted by its members.
For example: a child grows up in a family where the only acceptable feelings are sadness or depression. When someone expresses joy and excitement, (s)he is met by a lack of enthusiasm, perhaps is even told to “calm down.” Children in this family quickly learn that excitement, joy, and enthusiasm are unacceptable.
In other families, the unacceptable feelings could be anger and unhappiness. Those families would tell you that happiness and perfection are the only normal ways to feel. The Harsh Inner Critic aids in the process in both families by supplying messages about how wrong it is to have these feelings.
In order to survive in this family, children learn to do what I call “feeling substitution.” In this process, an “acceptable” feeling repl