I use a pyramid to illustrate a healthy relationship between feeling, thinking and deciding.
We feel more settled in our decisions when the thinking that supports them is grounded in our emotions – which tell us what matters to us. Emotions are grounded in body sensations.
But most of us have learned that we won’t be loved and included if we show the true range of the the lower parts of the pyramid. As young children we are unable to pretend to have an outer emotion while feeling a different inner one, so we learn to not experience the lower parts of the pyramid in a rich way. We learn that only certain emotions are safe enough to feel and express, so our range of emotional experience is narrowed.
If we can’t feel or trust our feelings, we’re left only with thoughts that aren’t grounded in emotions and body awareness, so it’s harder to make decisions with confidence. This can create an endless internal conversation called rumination. Things can seem forever arguable.
Our close relationships then become prone to arguments (or to distancing to avoid those arguments). But when I can see that my partner’s position is really based on feelings (that they don’t choose to have), I can move toward curiosity: how do my partner’s feelings give rise to their priorities and ideas? That is the basis of connection.