Feeling some kind of way. If you’re like me, you use this rather imprecise phrase to describe a rather pointed feeling that you have. For most, it’s just another way of saying that something’s bothering them. For me though, it goes a little deeper, and it has some heftier subtext to it.
When I’m feeling some kind of way, I’m usually experiencing one of three things. I may be experiencing emotional/cognitive dissonance, or I may be having a bought of mystic melancholy or divine discontent. On rare occasions, I’m just straight up pissed off and grumpy about something, but for whatever reason I’m trying to be a bit more polite or tactful about expressing it. (That tends to be a rarity for me NOT because I’m too enlightened to experience such negative moods, but because I tend to be more vocal and less concerned about putting it as politely as ‘feeling some kind of way’.)
While we all occasionally experience a case of cranky’s, that’s not really the focus of this article. Let’s look at these other shades of feeling and go into some detail though.
Cognitive and Emotional Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is the experience of holding two conflicting viewpoints or beliefs at the same time. Emotional dissonance is basically the feeling that you get when you’re examining something that threatens your sense of identity. I am lumping these two together for the purposes of this article because I tend to have the most experience with them in the same context. (And I suspect that many of the folks reading are of the intuitive leaning, so I imagine that you may be having these experiences without realizing it.)
Empaths and intuitives will have impressions or experiences that make them question their own sanity. Many of these experiences are actually cognitive or emotional dissonance. Many (if not most) of these experiences are triggered by over-identifying with someone else’s energy – be it emotional, mental or experiential. So we just need to be able to say “This isn’t my crap! I don’t have to deal with it! Yay!” and then move on, right?? If only it were that simple!
Being open enough to experience another person’s perspective frequently means encountering emotions, opinions and ideas that are foreign to your own. Identifying when these thoughts and feelings originate with someone else is truly an art-form that empaths in particular have to develop for survival. Dissonance occurs when something gets stuck in works. This can only occur when it’s illuminating an aspect of our own experience that strikes some sort of resonance with the ‘guest thought/emotion’.
When such a resonance occurs, it becomes your responsibility to explore this territory. This is one of those beautiful moments that you get to learn something more about yourself! And guess what? A lot of times, we don’t greet these moments with leaps of joy because they tend to be uncomfortable.
Let me give you an example that I got to witness a few years ago. A heterosexual male friend of mine was present while I was discussing the attractiveness of a guy that had come into the shop I was working in with a female co-worker. The straight friend piped in and agreed that the fellow in question was indeed attractive. He even went on to disagree with my co-worker and I about what the fellow’s most attractive feature was. Then I saw it wash over his face. Blessedly, he felt comfortable enough with me to be able to talk through the train of thought causing him some dissonance. He questioned how he found the cute guy attractive, and started to really wonder if he may have some latent gay feelings, and it was making him rather uncomfortable. He explored this sensation, and over the course of about a week was able to confidently affirm that he is indeed straight, but falls a little more towards the middle of the Kinsey scale of sexuality than he originally thought. The struggle for him was visibly uncomfortable as he wrestled with how he defined his attraction, but he walked away from the experience feeling more enlightened.
This kind of moment is all too common for intuitives and empaths. That said, it is an invitation, not an excuse. It’s an invitation to know yourself more deeply, which my personal belief says that this is the prime reason for our experience in the human day-to-day world. This is by no means an excuse to belittle or berate others’ views, or worse yet, martyr yourself. (I see this waaaaayyyyy too often.)
For me, just knowing that this has a name helps me to navigate through the experience of dissonance. I’m not usually happy when it’s occurring, but I’m always grateful for the growth that it brings.
Mystic Melancholy and Divine Discontent
These are two terms that I became familiar while reading an author named Orion Foxwood (fantastic author on fairy traditions, southern conjure and witchcraft). Both of these experiences are driven from the level of spirit. It isn’t uncommon to feel down or to feel like things need to change. Sometimes though, the feeling surpasses what we normally experience as depression. That’s not even necessarily that we’re feeling lower than usually do, but that there’s a difference. The feeling runs deeper, and there’s a sense of longing with it. I describe it like my soul is singing a song that I can’t remember the words to. This is mystic melancholy.
Mystic melancholy occurs when your soul is longing for a connection that’s missing. A lot of times this can be confusing because we often don’t have a conscious idea or experience of what it is that we’re missing. We just know that part of us is reaching out for something that isn’t there in the moment.
Conversely, Divine Discontent occurs when change needs to occur, usually because we are out of our soul’s flow. Most often, we are doing something to gum up the works, and this will manifest as an anxiety or nearly compulsive need to change something around. Many times we displace the feeling into changing things that we have more immediate control over, but this is just a coping mechanism. Divine discontent presents itself when we are just plain out of alignment with our deeper purpose.
Let me give a current example through my own personal sob story. (I am a good Pisces, so I’m great at martyring myself and whining, so why not put it to good use in my writing, right?) So, some time ago, I decided that I needed to have a more normal working experience than to be a full time psychic reader. (Just believe me when I say I had my reasons, and the financial aspect was not the most driving one – but definitely did factor in.) I felt like I needed a normal job with a steady paycheck. So I found one, and then promptly found a much better one. I took the job and I love my coworkers (and I even love my supervisor. As a matter of fact, I love most of the supervisors there. The people I work with are kind of amazing!) I set my intention with the Universe, and this job very quickly manifested and was everything I could’ve wanted in a ‘normal’ job. Unfortunately, it wasn’t too long before I started getting antsy. This rapidly progressed into dreading having to go into work. All the while, I’m trying to adjust other factors of my life to compensate. I adjusted my schedule, my diet, rearranged furniture – I projected my discontent into every other area of my life. And what does it boil down to? I’m out of alignment with putting more time into a job than into my calling.
That’s right – my desire for normal and predictable completely screwed me over. Now, does that mean that I’m going to completely screw someone else over in turn by just up and quitting? No. No amount of personal pain or struggle entitles you to be hurtful to someone else. And just because I stepped out of alignment doesn’t give me permission to be irresponsible to step back into my alignment. I have plans in place to be able to transition back to my full-time magical lifestyle, and I’ve been open and honest with my supervisor about my intention. We found a date range that will be the least detrimental for me to leave the company, and I intend to stick it out until then (unless the Universe gives me a huge clue-by-four across the head that I need to not wait it out).
So, when I’m feeling some kind of way, the first thing I try to do is dig a little deeper so that I have a clear picture of my motivations and where my feeling is coming from. When I feel this way, I usually know that there’s something else brewing under the surface. I may not be able to slap a band-aid on it and call it good, but once I’ve acknowledged the complete picture of what’s happening with me I find some peace. This peace comes from the fact that moving through my discomfort has led me to deeper and more satisfying experiences of joy in my life. And while it doesn’t usually make the experience any less intense, this does seem to grant me enough strength and patience to see my way through it. It is my hope that this article can help you with recognizing this process in your own life, so that you can take the reigns and embrace the change instead of getting in your own way.