Clarity is the ability to identify the beliefs and feelings that influence our actions so that we are not a mystery to ourselves. This might seem unusual, but people are not always able to identify what they think or feel, or even sense in their body. Yet if they can’t they are stuck, unable to work on resolving problems, as they’re working in the dark.
When this happens in child and adolescent counselling, it can help to provide a handout of different facial expressions to assist them to identify what they are feeling. At times this could also be helpful to adults too. Am I happy, sad, anxious, confused, concerned, winding down etc.
Clarity is where there is enough mental space to clearly see what thoughts and feelings are occurring. If someone is fearful or emotionally bottled-up, they can often struggle to identify what feelings they are having. They could feel numb, emotionless, or blank, which out of the fight, flight or freeze survival responses is closest to freeze.
There is actually a term for this, alexithymia, or emotional blindness. This is a neuropsychological condition where people have difficulty in recognizing, expressing, and describing their emotions. Seen to occur in approximately 10% of the population, it can also be described as having “no words for emotion”. It can translate into having trouble knowing what either you or others feel, and how to tell others what you feel, which can lead to awkwardness or social anxiety.
Yet there is still something going on under there, it just can be hard to access. Interestingly, our brain is wired so we can have multiple feelings at once, both positive and negative. Can you pick some of the feelings you are experiencing right now?
Someone also could be so angry that they can’t see the emotion underneath it. This is possible because anger is often a survival response (fight) to a perceived threat. That is, there is something being threatened underneath the anger which has not been identified but needs protecting with the weapon of anger.
In other words, underneath anger, there is the original feeling that has not been seen, as sometimes it’s fleeting. This can range from feeling let down, insecure, inadequate, and so on. Once this belief and the feeling that went with it when it was threatened is uncovered, we have clarity about the fear underneath, not just the defence of anger sitting on top of it.
Clarity means we have the ability to see, or at least look and then find, the underlying beliefs that caused those feelings in the first place. For example, if we have seen in the past that we have an anger reaction to feeling let down, rather than just reframing it each time (accepting that people do this), we could look at the root belief so that it doesn’t keep on happening.
For example, if we’re let down, perhaps it triggers a belief that we’re not important. If we just reframe it and let go our anger each time, the underlying belief doesn’t get seen and challenged.
Once we develop the skills for this type of clarity or self-insight, we can work on it or talk it through with someone. In our example, we could become clear on both the rule that this person broke, and on the underlying beliefs causing such a reaction. Only then do we have choice about it. So, clarity is both mental and emotional awareness of what is happening within you.
The goal of the following exercise is to look objectively at the range of thoughts and emotions that you can have. By practising this you will get better at picking what thoughts and feelings are driving your behaviours. This exercise helps you to see what they are and observe them objectively with a bird’s eye view. To recognise them simply as your thoughts and feelings, rather than actual truths.