The rehab facility that I went to (twice) was very big on feelings.

Which, at the time, was very uncomfortable. At the start of every day, and at the beginning of every group therapy session, everyone was required to state out loud their first name, the reason they were there (for instance drugs, alcohol, depression, anxiety) and then how they were feeling in that moment. 

That task was made slightly more difficult (that task is already fairly difficult when you are in the throws of a mood disorder or detoxing from drugs or alcohol), by their insistence that you can only choose from one of eight feelings: joy, anger, love, guilt, shame, fear, loneliness, and pain.

Pretty bleak.

I really struggled with that for the first couple of days. Firstly, because I had trouble identifying any feelings I was having really, and then secondly because once I could actually identify and name a feeling, it wasn't one of those eight. Hope, despair, and frustration had to be renamed joy, pain and anger. 

I felt denied my feelings, my brand new and newly-acquired feelings weren't even correct?

Once I stopped letting my child-self have control over me, though, I could see the rational for both focussing on feelings and limiting them to just a handful: ordinarily we don't.

In this episode, I talk about those feelings, and why the Snowflakes have the edge over other generations with their ability to name them, feel them, and own them.