The Greatest Conspiracy of them All. And we’re doing it to ourselves all the time.

And it is: DENYING FEELINGS!

When you feel bad - what do you do?
When you get angry, feel miserable, upset, unhappy, sad, do you fully allow yourself to feel such bad feelings? Or do you do things to try and stop or limit yourself feeling them?

For example, your beloved cat or dog or child or parent or friend dies. Do you allow yourself to feel the pain as fully as you can and for as long as need to feel it - days, weeks, months, years... Or do you perhaps feel it for a time, but then start working on yourself to ‘get over it’.

And if a bad thing happens to someone you love, do you try to make them feel better, trying to make them get over, dismiss, ignore, ‘take their mind off’ their bad feelings?

Do you CONSPIRE against yourself (or another person) to stop yourself (or them) FEELING all your feelings? Bad feelings and even good ones.

Please share ways you deny your bad feelings, because we all do. We’ve all been trained through childhood how to deny many feelings, all of which makes us sick and causes us all our problems.

Denying any part of ourselves its full expression is rebelling against our self, and it’s the greatest conspiracy we’re all unconsciously participating in. And it’s the root cause of all other conspiracies and problems with the world.

So, are you denying any feelings? And how are you...

Hello!

Your post reminded me of this.

"People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bull#. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain." ~Jim Morrison~

D.

reply to post by zuimon


I let my feelings take their normal course. Of course their are times when you need to control your feelings, not deny but control.

reply to post by zuimon


Great question...not sure I have a great answer. However, I use to drink alcohol too much back in 2007 for a couple of months while witnessing my father pass rapidly of the prostate cancer he got due to serving in Vietnam. At that time, that's how I dealt with that pain. Until, I got a DUI, while trying to drive up a highway called Angeles Crest (which is a treacherous drive to most). Actually, it was life saving that I got arrested for the DUI. As it made me realize that I was not facing the inevitable...my father would soon die. Also, I could have plunged a few thousand feet to my death or assisted in causing an untimely death or injury to another human being. It was an eye opening experience for me personally. I even thanked the CHP officer for pulling me over and arresting me. I was barely over the legal limit.

That was the first and last time I have ever tried to "run" away from any issue I have ever been presented with. I had always normally, faced everything I encountered head on, no matter the outcome. I no longer run from a thing...nothing. Besides, I stopped immediately drinking so much.

Works out perfectly for me this way...to face everything no matter the outcome 👍

reply to post by zuimon

Please share ways you deny your bad feelings, because we all do.

Generally I'll try to consume large quantities of bourbon.

If I have no bourbon then it's just muddle through.

bitsforbytes
reply to post by zuimon

 

I let my feelings take their normal course. Of course their are times when you need to control your feelings, not deny but control.

Totally agree with you on this. In my job, I have to be careful not to let my feelings take over and stop me from being professional in dealing with many clients who are really suffering. They are having a much more horrible day than I can even imagine, so yes, I do suppress those feelings a little. When I go home, I vent to my wonderful husband, sometimes cry, and sometimes have a beer (or three) to process what I'm feeling in a constructive way. Sometimes that's all one can do. I guess it depends on your personality and that.

Can you please explain where the conspiracy is ?

I've known a lot of people who have died over the years. It doesn't phase me much anymore. If my daughters or grandchildren died I would probably feel bad though.

reply to post by zuimon


For your first thread, I think it's pretty good. You hit upon the whole reason we need to be mindful of our feelings; because we then master them. Congratulations!

dananni
Hello!

Your post reminded me of this.

"Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain." ~Jim Morrison~

D.

I grew up denying so many of my feelings, I was so out of touch with them. Overall I felt bad - unhappy, this much I knew about myself, but I didn't want to go into it - not that I would have known how to. Then I became interested in spiritual things; then I met my wife; then everything changed. She pointed out to me that if I wanted to be my true self, then I would have to accept and acknowledge and FEEL all the feelings I was refusing to feel. And through the process of accepting them - accepting myself - I am slowly understanding the truth Jim says here: that my feelings are part of myself - I AM MY FEELINGS; and so if I'm refusing to feel them, then I am in a way, killing myself. I'm stopping myself live by trying to block out all my pain. I'm still trying to stand up for my right to feel and express all I feel.

Thank you Dananni for the quote.

Bassago
reply to post by zuimon

 

Please share ways you deny your bad feelings, because we all do.

Generally I'll try to consume large quantities of bourbon.

If I have no bourbon then it's just muddle through.

Thank you for being honest. Drink, drugs, sex, work, posting on forums… many, many ways we all avoid what's going on deeper within ourselves. Cheers - bourbon was my first choice too! Then I found the weed… and you know it is.

bitsforbytes
reply to post by zuimon

 

I let my feelings take their normal course. Of course their are times when you need to control your feelings, not deny but control.

Yeah I like that, it's actually something I've had to learn - again I thanks to my wife. When I started to allow myself to feel angry, well, what was I to do with the raging bull I suddenly felt I was? So with her coaching I've come to understand that I can still allow myself to feel my rage, keeping it under control as you say, but still fully acknowledging it to her, ranting and raving at her about it all, but not going around punching everyone, and especially my parents in the face - even though that's what I sure wanted to do. I suppose it's about owning it, and being responsible for our feelings… something like that anyway.

ChiefD

bitsforbytes
reply to post by zuimon

 

I let my feelings take their normal course. Of course their are times when you need to control your feelings, not deny but control.

I vent to my wonderful husband...

You're lucky to have such a good friend in your husband, so you can get it all off your chest. If it stays in, that's when, as I'm sure you know, it starts to cause problems. If you couldn't vent it, I guess you'd not be able to do your job and keeping being sympathetic and doing what you need to do to help. I imagine in your own way you're probably a good friend to those people too.

sayzaar
Can you please explain where the conspiracy is ?

As acknowledged above, feelings are very important. This might be obvious to those people already aware of this, however for me it came as something of a revelation. I was very 'retarded' in the feeling department of life.

And the Great Conspiracy I am wishing to point out, is that we generally are all in one way or another made to deny some of our feelings, so some of our selves. Individuals, families, societies, cultures, nations and the whole world - we all in some way deny feelings - and usually lots of them. And so why is that? What happened - and is indeed still happening - to make us do that? Is it that it's how we're meant to live, has God made us so we're meant to deny certain feelings? And if so, then why don't we all feel gloriously happy in our feeling-denying states?

So can you see what I'm getting at, something is going on, something mysterious, something that we're all apart of, that we do every day, and yet mostly we're not even aware we're doing it or that it's a bad thing to do to ourselves - and so why aren't we aware?

You feel bad, you go to the doctor to take your pain away - why? Why do you have the pain in the first place? Why have we made our lives be dependent on requiring a stranger - a doctor - to help us deal with our pain, why can't we deal with it ourselves?

So is there something or someone who's stopping us deal with it? What happened to our ancestors to make us go down this track of feeling-denial? And humanity as a whole are experts at it now. We've had a long time to evolve and perfect it. So much so that when our child falls over we might say: 'stop crying, you're all right, nothing bad happened'. But what is this doing to our child? We are telling it, it's wrong as it is, it's wrong to keep crying, it doesn't know itself, the parent knows better than it, the parent says there's nothing wrong, the parent takes the child's own feelings out of its control, making it stop feeling bad, making it suppress and then repress such feelings, all stopping it living true to itself, all forcing it into being as its parent is - untrue to itself. And we even call this: being a loving parent!

And this is not right. Yet why don't we understand it's not right? Why do we keep accepting it as being even: 'good parenting'? What is really going on here? And the further you look into it - into the truth of your own feeling-denial, the more you'll come to see there is something very unloving at work.

And that's the conspiracy. Our parents, mostly through no fault of their own, are conspiring against us as their child, as shown by their stopping us having our feelings. And having learnt from them, so we now keep doing it to ourselves, as we pass it on doing it to our children. And that's bad, it makes us feel bad. And it's at the root of all our problems, and all out pain.

And on a spiritual level, Feeling-Denial, has been artfully inflicted on humanity, and we're none the wiser, so it's the greatest conspiracy of all… however that's possibly a topic for another thread.

Where is the conspiracy?

con·spir·a·cy
kənˈspirəsē/
noun
a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.
synonyms: plot, scheme, plan, machination, ploy, trick, ruse, subterfuge

I don't know if this is applicable, but here goes....

I think there is pressure on us from many directions to deny or at least internalize our feelings to conform or fit in to society's expectations a great deal of the time. Society is good and has a responsibility for some things but not all, and I believe people are taking it way past it's limits and natural boundaries.

Put on a different face at work, play the politics, not say what you feel is right, because if you do, you're criticized and judged for it constantly. Toe the line or keep your mouth shut.

If you express your real feelings on religion in this deep south hole I live in, no one will socialize with you, and you're criticized and judged for it forever.

This kind of societal pressure is a very subtle yet very real type of control that seems to be more prevalent than it used to be...it seems to be getting worse, not better when the opposite seems like it should be true.

Why? Maybe because people are more open now and there is more to judge. People seem overall to be getting more intolerant instead of less. Maybe that's because they're internalizing too.

What this is forcing people to do is to stay away from people altogether or just fragment into self-interest groups that don't let anyone in. Kind of like high school was but on a much larger plane.

It almost feels like you have to put on different masks for different things and soon you start getting the masks mixed up. Deny your feelings to fit in or find another way to express them and hope for the best.

The conspiracy might be the continued polarization of humanity. For the usual reasons.

Great topic. I've never really thought about this that deeply. The truth I see in it now is astounding though. It is surely the cause of a lot the depression, anxiety and mood swing problems I have. Being taught to bottle it all in and being told that I have no reason to be experiencing those feelings in the first place. As many people have said in here we need to learn how to manage it, not completely suppress them so that they end up coming back with a vengeance.

PoetLaureate
It is surely the cause of a lot the depression, anxiety and mood swing problems I have. Being taught to bottle it all in and being told that I have no reason to be experiencing those feelings in the first place. As many people have said in here we need to learn how to manage it, not completely suppress them so that they end up coming back with a vengeance.

Being taught to bottle it all up IS why you feel depressed, anxious etc. Think of it like this, as it all starts from conception. Imagine you're a toddler, and you're not allowed to do what you want to do, and that makes you feel bad. You protest, trying to scream the roof down, then you're told that's not acceptable behaviour and made to STOP IT. Now you're four, and you feel very angry about something your parent is doing to you. But again, no, you're told - taught - that's not acceptable behaviour, you're not allowed to 'throw that tantrum'. Now you're thirty-six, someone does something to you and you feel very angry, but no, you're still not allowed to express and show your anger, so you stop yourself, you have learnt how to 'master' or 'control' such 'bad' feelings. So you're doing to yourself what your parents did to you - what they taught you to do.

Okay, now in each of those situations - and how many of them do we go through during our forming years, for some of us many each day - we feel masses of bad feelings, however we're not allowed to fully express them. So what happens to them? Do they just go away, we've all seen the child who is in agony being wracked with bad feelings, only to five minutes later be up playing and laughing, like that 'episode' didn't happen. But it did. It's just that the 'recovery' power of ourselves when we're little is astounding. Which really means, we've got a huge capacity to deny feelings, yet still, what happens to them? Do they all just evaporate into thin air?

And what we are to find out about ourselves one day is, no, they don't. They all remain within us, all repressed in us giving rise to the term: Childhood Repression.

And they are all in us desperately wanting to come out, wanting to be heard, we are still that little child wanting someone to listen and care and love us, to fully accept ALL our bad feelings - ALL that we are. And they are in us like a poison, deep within us, in our formation, and so cause all our problems, illnesses and other bad feelings.

So to try and manage them, is still keeping them all inside, just keeping them under control - keeping the lid on firmly. It's still being the good little boy or girl doing what you were taught to do. But the difficulty is, if you lift the lid off - AHHHHH! up they will all come… and then what will you do?

reply to post by Snoopy1978


Your parents and all the carers in your early life perpetuated it, albeit mostly by default - without even knowing they did, but they still did. They were the secret group. Now you've taken over from them. And we keep it a secret from ourselves.

It's an 'inner' conspiracy if you like. And one much more insidious than the outer ones.

We manifest in our adult lives all that was in our early lives. So because we grew up being overpowered by those who shouldn't have overpowered us, so we manifest that in our adult lives giving rise to people seeking power over others, and all in covert ways.

If we weren't subjected to this inner conspiracy, then we'd not manifest it - either being the perpetrators of it or the victims, we'd all be in the dream world of only doing good unto others and all loving each other. But we're not like that with ourselves, we're not doing good to ourselves as shown by our denying so many of our feelings, so in no way can we manifest that which we're not ourselves

So conspiratorially we go on denying feelings. And we don't even understand that we're all in it together, all helping each other along in it.

reply to post by zuimon


Wow. Isn't it amazing? Thank you for posting this thread, it is so true.
Feelings are life itself and yes people are always seeking other than what is actually appearing as life. Each arising feeling is like a flower flowering - there is nothing to be frightened of. Who knows what feeling will appear next?
If one is fearful of the feelings that arise one becomes numb by not allowing them.
We learn to numb ourselves as children, because like you have said, parents are scared of feelings too, they deny their own so teach children to deny them also.
That which is actually arising is aliveness and it is denied most of the time - in favour of other. 'Other' is never here so life is denied - no wonder there is so much suffering for the human being. Being is denied in favour of what should be - but who says you should be anything other than what is?
Know thyself.