Charlotte Cummings

This is it.

This is the thing that is behind why you do what you do when you know what you know.

This idea that we all have one or sometimes two feelings that we are completely on the run from, that we structure our lives around avoiding and we just don't want to feel this feeling.

I've stayed in jobs too long.

I've accepted less pay than I should.

I've not taken opportunities because I haven't thought I was good enough to put myself out there for them.

So, welcome to Making Sense.

Well, it's something that I learned about in my counseling training 20 years ago, and it's probably one of the most powerful things that I work with people around.

And it's this idea that we all have one or sometimes two feelings that we are completely on the run from, that we structure our lives around avoiding, and we just don't want to feel this feeling.

It is absolutely unbearable to us.

So there are a whole lot of feelings that are universally, you know, nobody likes them.

Nobody wants to feel unheard.

Nobody wants to feel left out or rejected or that they've failed or let people down.

But for all of us, there's one or two feelings that we hate more than the others that we actually find unbearable and not just unpleasant.

And what we do is we set up our lives so that we don't feel that feeling.

Sometimes in that process, the things we do to avoid the feeling, we actually end up, they cause pain in our life as well.

And we get into trouble as our life goes on around the impacts of the strategies we have to avoid this feeling.

But it shows up in our lives in so many different ways and causes people a lot of heartache.

Yeah.

So, you know, some of the common ones are an unbearable feeling of failure, of disappointing others, of being disappointed, of feeling unheard, feeling left out or not good enough or rejected.