Being the Beloved - A Monthly Blog from CFDM Northwest
By Mark Cutshall, Spiritual Director, CFDM Board Member
Sometime ago I was struggling to wrap my brain around an emotion I couldn’t quite name to my spiritual direction supervisor. As I hummed and hawed, she wondered if I might check out The Feeling Wheel. I told her I had suggested this resource to a few directees. Actually, I had been on a roll with The Feeling Wheel doing my own work. Recently, this tool has helped me see my feelings of apathy and indifference stem from boredom and the primary emotion of sadness.
The Feeling Wheel helps me identify and name my own individual feelings during spiritual direction sessions. It’s like an interior compass designed to help me locate how I’m feeling, pausing, shifting and perhaps already traveling with a directee, and with God.
The Feeling Wheel has helped me admit to, and accept, my changing emotions in a direction session I see as an evolving thread. The directee starts out with the when, where, and how of what they’ve been doing. This “thread of reporting” becomes a “thread of self-awareness” where one’s story is told through unedited questions, desires, a burst of joy, a thought that tails off into doubt.
Early on I have no sure idea where the story is taking the person. So, I keep listening. I may repeat a word, or phrase where the story turned, or took on new meaning. My inner trail guide comes up beside me: “Give them room, room to roam, to speak, to look, perhaps to see and hear and feel for the first time. What started as a thread of knowing—catching up of recent events—becomes a thread of self-awareness and God-awareness, a “thread of being and belonging with God.” The thread of a person’s ever-changing story—freely spoken and guided by a director’s wondering questions—can help create a rich fabric of possibility that welcomes one to sense and feel and receive how welcomed, accepted, forgiven, and cherished he or she truly is now and forever.
The Feeling Wheel can certainly help us and our directees name authentic feelings of the heart. Listening carefully and intently with another person in the intimate company Holy Spirit, readies us, empowers us to more freely belong with our triune God.
“The Feeling Wheel,” created by Gloria Wilcox.
What books, media, activities are nurturing your heart, soul, mind, strength in this season as we are loving God and our neighbor as ourselves? Post in the comments below or hop on over to our Facebook page and share with one another.