How to think about feelings.
One way is to recognize that feelings are almost always embedded in meanings. Feelings are most often "emergent", that is they arrive in consciousness, we don't order them up willfully, they arrive. In a sense feelings are a surprise to the self because of their emergent nature.
Sometimes we try not to experience a feeling, we try to block it out, ignore the feeling, attend to something else. One consequence of trying to avoid experiencing a feeling is that this method of not experiencing something begins to extend to other feelings. The reason for this denuding of experience is that the best way to make sure that the pain full feeling doesn't arrive is to make sure nothing arrives (since feelings are emergent and a surprise to the self, the goal of avoiding a feeling is accomplished by not allowing any surprises - we don't know what's coming so we don't let anything come).
There use to be a tv show "The Bob Newhart Show" in which he was a psychologist. The "pet" line in the show was "How do you feel about that" and this delivery usually evoked a laugh. So it seems trite to ask this question. Yet, this is a critical question to ask one self, to check out whether we are open to the feelings connected to the meaning of the moment.
