From the author: Many feelings are quite painful for a person, and he tries to avoid them and not notice them. In the hope of protecting himself from difficult experiences, he causes himself even greater harm. The article describes the mechanism of avoiding feelings and discusses the consequences of ignoring feelings. We all revolve in a cycle of emotions. Some feelings create a positive background in our life, others bring discomfort, and some emotions act quite neutrally, without having a significant impact on our sense of self and current events. Theoretically, we agree that every feeling has the right to exist. But when it comes to us personally, the opinion changes, and some emotions are deprived of their equality. Ask someone whether he would like to feel shame or disgust, and you will hear only a negative answer. However, these feelings can unexpectedly overwhelm a person without asking his consent. Fear, suffering, irritation, and anger are not always desirable. Therefore, when one of these feelings appears, a person often pretends to others that he is completely calm. And he doesn’t even admit to himself that he is annoyed because of ruined plans, or he is torn by anger that a loved one has decided for him without even asking his opinion. What causes such denial and ignoring of his feelings? First of all, because they are painful and unpleasant for the individual. And if you repeat to yourself, for example, “no, no, I’m not at all angry with my mother for telling my friend that I couldn’t go with her,” or “my husband is right that it’s better for me to be at home with the children - what kind of grievances are there,” or “I’m not at all afraid to speak in front of this audience,” then somewhere you yourself will believe it. But, an interesting twist is observed. You seem to convince yourself that everything is okay. But then, completely at the wrong time, painful feelings will remind themselves, they need something, like a hungry cat, they are right there and you can’t get rid of it. If you go to sleep, the cat will wake you up; if you sit down to work, the cat will lie on the keyboard; if you push him out the door, he will scream. Keep in mind, true feelings will always find a loophole to remind you of themselves. How the mechanism of avoiding feelings works Avoiding feelings is a well-developed psychological defense mechanism. Well-developed in the sense that the process of avoidance has been brought to automaticity. As soon as a person feels a threat to his Self, he pushes away his traumatic experiences, not wanting to comprehend them. These rejected feelings seem to fall into some kind of reservoir, which is marked “Danger!” The man himself falls into a trap that he himself prepared. Subconsciously, he will compare any experiences that disturb him with those that he once repressed into the reservoir, and at the slightest similarity he will avoid them. If a person once, for example, experienced terrible fear, then he develops a fear of fear, and he will avoid not only the manifestation of the emotion itself, but also situations that could frighten him. How did it happen that the protective mechanism of avoidance, instead of protecting the individual, forms its dependence? The fact is that all mechanisms are good only if they are used extremely rarely. If you resort to them every time you experience anxiety or discomfort, then an automatic attachment is formed. And a person, instead of gaining new experience and developing new skills to cope with experiences, spends colossal energy on maintaining his own completely conditional calm. What is the risk of ignoring true feelings1. In order for a person to finally pay attention to previously ignored feelings, he will, with enviable regularity, find himself in situations that give rise to the same feelings. It’s like with the same cat - well, pay attention to me! 2. Problems with sleep appear. Sleep is a kind of litmus test. It is always violated if something bothers a person.3. Concentration is impaired. A person tries to mind his own business, but the necessary thoughts slip away. The brain constantly replays that situation,