How do you feel about being single? How do you feel about your life? How do you feel about your future? How do you feel about allowing someone into your life and heart again?

As you read through those questions – what feelings came up? Were they positive or were they negative feelings? Is it possible that your feelings are sabotaging your getting a great relationship?

Are you one of those people who believe that how you feel is just the way it is and that you don’t have any control over what you feel? Do you, like many others, have this belief that feelings are some objective entity floating around outside of you - that you are kind of stuck with whatever you feel- whether it be about a person or a situation?

Your Feelings Belong To You – They Come From Within

It can feel like that because feelings are so instant. Someone says or does something and you have this immediate emotional reaction. It’s easy to conclude that your feelings are about a particular event.

If that is the case, however, why is it that two people can experience the same event and react emotionally different to it? Let me give you an example:

I was watching the X-factor last week. Some of the participants who were about to go on stage were being interviewed and asked how they felt. One woman said she was extremely nervous while the next woman said she was really excited. The same event engendered a different emotional response. .

The difference in the responses of these two women was a result of the meaning they each gave that event. Your reactions have everything to do with your interpretation of your experiences and the meaning that you have attached to those experiences. Your feelings are essentially your reactions.

Your Feelings Are Conditioned By Past Experiences

Feelings aren’t just something you have or don’t have. Your beliefs about feelings and your feelings, themselves, are conditioned by past experiences Let’s think about your feelings about love, for example.

Do you remember the first time you fell in love? Wasn’t it wonderful? Those magical moments when your heart skipped a beat and when you couldn’t stop thinking about your lover. Can you remember how happy you felt just being in their presence? And then it happened . . . You got badly hurt.

Off came the “rose colored” glasses and your feelings about love and relationships were forever more changed.

“Relationships Don’t Have Problems, People Do”

Morrie & Arleah Shechtman (Love In The Present Tense)

Much of how we feel and react is rooted even further back in our histories and relate to our experiences while growing up. We actually react from past “stuff” more than we are aware of.

* Your partner make some comment and you have a bad ‘knee jerk’ reaction – it was what your parents used to say to you
* Your employer asks you, out of the blue, to come to the office – you suddenly feel liked being called to the principal’s office when you were in school
* When you and your partner fight about “silly” things that arouses strong emotions, you can be sure the conflict is rooted in the past
* When you and your partner argue about the same thing over and over again but never find resolution, you can be sure, the issue is rooted in the past.

I have a few sensitivities of my own that I’m aware of and have been working on. One big one for me, in my past relationships, has been when a boyfriend or partner, promises me that they will do something for me and they let me down in the end.

If it happened all the time, I would have reason to be dissatisfied but even when it only happened on a few occasions I experienced quite a powerful emotional reaction which was completely out of proportion to the event (a great sign that the issue is rooted in the past, not the present).

Looking back from a logical, ‘factual,’ and emotionally detached position, it’s easy to understand that the poor soul simply got caught up in something else, got distracted, or forgot. He was just having a human moment.

The meaning, however, that I attached to the situation was rooted in my past. It felt like he was doing this to me – and it hits lots of old buttons about absent and unreliable fathers.

Feelings – Friend Or Foe?

Feelings can be profound and insightful, like the intuition of a wise parent and they can also be blinding and limiting as in the case of people who are fearful of leaving their homes, or of flying . . . or of love. Feelings can teach and empower you or they can cripple and disempower you.

Feelings can cripple or disempower you when you:

* Label feelings as bad, undesirable or see them as a weakness
* Ignore them, hide them, suppress, deny and not deal with them
* Allow them to control your choices, decisions and life
* Blame others for how you feel
* Don’t believe you can change your feelings

Feelings can teach and empower you when you remember that:

* Feelings aren’t good or bad – it’s what you do with them
* Feelings are a communication about you
* Feelings are a signal that something needs attending to
* Feelings may be telling you something needs changing
* Feelings alert you to old ‘wounds’ still need ‘healing’

Let’s liken feelings to your warning lights on your car dashboard. When the red lights start flashing, you don’t cover them up, you don’t smash them to stop the flashing, do you? Your first thought most likely is – “what’s wrong?” You then go about locating and resolving the problem. Your feelings are like the flashing lights trying to get you stop and think about what needs attending to.

If you ignore, deny, supress or try to hide your feelings they will just take another form – like physical illness for example.

If you embrace your feelings as your friend not your foe you will learn, grow, be able to heal old wounds and have a better relationship with yourself ,which will result in better relationships with others. Two “half” people don’t make a “whole” relationship. Two “whole” people do.

“Confident people who have a healthy sense of who they are……

become magnets of attraction”

Susanne Jorgensen (Get Real! Relationship Success Is An Inside Job - http://tinyurl.com/yjfbjk3 )

Author's Bio: 

My name is Susanne Jorgensen of the Singles Gym – I am a relationship coach and professional psychologist who works with single people to help them develop the beliefs and strategies for creating successful lives and attracting successful relationships.