Meeting Three – I Feel that I Feel
Opening the Meeting
The last meeting covered three aspects of awareness but did not cover one of the most important aspects of awareness: Emotions.
Emotions for men are sometimes difficult and we are generally not very well trained in recognizing them. We are taught that thinking is more worthwhile than feeling, so sometimes we try to define our emotions as reasons. In this meeting, we will complete several exercises to contrast thinking with feeling.
First Exercise: Thinking and Feeling
In this meeting, the men work with expressing their emotions and understanding the contrast between feeling and thinking.
Emotional Feelings are body response that might be triggered by sensation, intuition or thinking. They occur within us; therefore it is an internal awareness rather than an external awareness. Are they created by us or do they arise within us? The emotional reactions of different men to identical data might be diametrically opposed: even when they interpret the data the same and have the same intuitive understanding. By being aware of our emotions and what the triggers are behind them can we control them? Or, do they always control us? If we can control our emotions, what would be the advantage and what would be the disadvantage? Is simply understanding them, in order to make clearer decisions, a more reasonable goal than control?
Four Categories of Emotions
1. Happy: glad, delighted, joyful, cheerful, blissful, pleased, in high spirits, warm, excited
2. Sad: depressed, gloomy, miserable, cheerless, heartbroken, distressed, discouraged, worried, dismayed, upset, mournful, sorrowful, somber, doleful
3. Angry: mad, annoyed, irritated, fuming, livid, heated, incensed, frustrated teed off, enraged, seething, furious, irate
4. Scared: frightened, afraid, terrified, fearful, petrified, nervous, worried, anxious, uneasy, fretful, apprehensive, troubled, disturbed, perturbed, tense
Following a discussion, the men complete several rounds in which each man first makes thinking statements and then feeling statements. This exercise is design to clearly distinguish between the two.
Second Exercise: Awareness of Deep Personal Emotions
In this exercise each man begins to reveal his emotional self to the others. Four slower rounds are completed. The men learn to be aware of their feelings, share them, trust and know each other.
The first round focuses on what prompts each man to be Scared, followed by similar exercises about Anger, Sadness, and Happiness.
Closing the Meeting
The meetings typically end with a short round in which each man says how he is feeling and takes can of any unfinished business. The manual also contains various rituals that groups use to close a meeting.