Feelings and Facts

by Charity

Our T is home this week recuperating from a medical procedure.  She told us that we could call her at the time that we would usually go to see her.

I haven't felt as panicked during the last couple of days.  I think that maybe Mary's encouragement is finally resonating with me.  I don't want to get too optimistic; I can hear the other shoe dropping.

One of the things that Mary and I talked about is the relationship between feelings and facts.  Our T has said that feelings are not facts, and this notion really upsets me.  Feelings are real.  Today's support professionals (and consumers) go out of their way to remind people that "feelings are neither bad nor good; they just are."  Which means that feelings are always real and valid.  But saying that they're not facts makes it seem that feelings aren't valid.

What Mary said was that both feelings and objective facts are valid, that they are two different aspects of reality.  Subjective and objective.  And both are present in the meta-reality, the overall, universal reality that we see more easily when we at least try to step out of our emotions and our subjectivity.

This is a view that I can live with.

We need to leave work and catch the train home.  The cold pills are working, but the cold itself is stubborn and has left us with a temperature.  We'll have a decaf coffee on the train, as we often do.  And we'll call our T when we get home.