STEP
2
Allow Feelings to Surface

“Feelings are not supposed to be logical. Dangerous is the man who has rationalized his emotions.”

—David Borenstein
Polish artist

In the first of the Seven Steps, you opened your eyes and ears to observe a situation of broken trust and acknowledge its impact. Step Two is about opening your heart. Everyone—including the person who unintentionally or even intentionally hurts another—has feelings about a disappointment, letdown, or betrayal. Those feelings can range from a quiet sense of vulnerability and hesitation to a deep pain. And everyone is entitled to have and honor those feelings.

The second of the Seven Steps—allowing those feelings to rise to the surface—often comes as a “package” with Step One, where courage was your partner. Now, with compassion as your partner, you become fully aware of—and present to—your feelings so that healing can begin.

People we work with often experience Step Two as the “messiest” Step. Feelings surface in visceral and sometimes physical ways. Because surfacing feelings exposes your vulnerability, you may feel sad and discouraged in this Step. The Seven Steps for Healing graphic captures this sensation by depicting this Step plunging down—just like your energy. But like the graphic, you’ll start to emerge from this difficult place in Step Three. The support you’ll find there will be your stepping-stone to move into reframing the experience and find the lessons inherent in your situation.

While all of the Seven Steps are important, Step Two is perhaps the most important for true healing and renewal. Feelings do not go away by themselves and time alone will not heal pain. You cannot heal that which you have not expressed, most importantly to yourself. When you do not allow yourself to express your feelings, you fail to acknowledge yourself and the impact of a situation. In that way, you betray yourself. Un-surfaced and unresolved feelings may then hold you back professionally and personally, even years later. How?

You may overreact to situations, leaving your co-workers scratching their heads and your boss wondering if she can trust you in high-pressure situations.

You may be inclined to shift blame to others or your organization for a responsibility that is yours to own. It’s likely that much of the lost employee satisfaction, eroding levels of engagement, and declining cultural health that many organizations face are the result of unresolved hurts, disappointments, or emotions that were left to ferment after a betrayal situation.

You may be more likely perpetuate the cycle of betrayal and end up hurting people who were not involved in the original situation. Issues from home might seep into your work relationships, and problems at work may surface at home.

You may hurt yourself by engaging in behavior that hurts others. Case in point: gossip, which is one particular form of reactionary betrayal. Un-surfaced feelings tend to seep out when you talk about situations behind people’s backs. If you participate in such behavior, you impact the reputation of others and you ruin your reputation as being trustworthy.

You run the risk of becoming a prisoner to the victim posture and the anger, bitterness, resentment and, ultimately, apathy, that come with that posture. These emotions will cloud your thinking, burden your heart, sink your spirits, and de-energize your body. When you remain a victim, you lose your confidence to act, your commitment to go the distance, and your personal power to do what you have the potential to accomplish.

In short, if you do not allow your feelings to surface, the hurt will live on inside you, taking up “space” that you could otherwise use for connection and compassion towards others. When you are in pain, you contract and begin to lose touch with yourself. You may forget who you really are and what you have to offer others. In that way, you cut yourself off from healing, relationships, and yourself. Ultimately, you betray yourself.

But if you do allow your feelings to surface, you will begin to heal. It’s likely that you will notice a release as your feelings come out. Many times, people describe that release in physical terms (as described in the box on page 35).

Some other aspects of the release are:

The pain inside you will begin to subside.

You will feel yourself open up, and your doubts will begin to ease.

You may have the peaceful sensation of returning to yourself; feelings are the window to your soul, and you will have opened up that window. You will remember who you are and what you have to bring to the situation.

You see “light at the end of the tunnel” and believe that hope can take the place of hurt. Only when you have hope can you reconnect with yourself, reconnect with others in empathy, and thus fulfill your highest purpose at work and in your life.

You become aware of that which is asking to be healed. Your released feelings let you know what you need in terms of support (Step Three) and guide you to a place in which you can reframe the situation and take responsibility.

Feelings are the window to your soul.

The release makes room for you to learn from the experience. Insights and life lessons will come as you embrace the possibilities inherent in healing.

Because feelings come in waves, you’re likely to return to this Step as you progress through subsequent Steps. Remember, healing is not a linear process. You will experience emotions in each of the Seven Steps. We often use the metaphor of the onion: when you peel back the layers of an onion, you cry. It’s the same with healing. As you move through the process and peel back the layers of the hurt and disappointment that come with broken trust, you may get in touch with subsequent waves of emotion. As you do, you are releasing your pain and making room for renewal.

Ways to Surface Your Feelings

The process of allowing your feelings to surface is essentially the same whether someone else hurt you or if you were the one to hurt another. Coming to terms with your feelings is personal work that nobody else can do for you; there is no one-size-fits-all model for how to get in touch with your feelings. What this Step “looks like” will vary depending on the severity of the breach of trust and your personal preferences.

Essentially, you need to give yourself room and permission to feel your feelings. When you allow your feelings to surface, you honor your relationship with yourself. If you feel anger, give voice to your anger. If you feel afraid, pay attention to your fear and vulnerability. If you are grieving the loss of a relationship, it is okay to be sad—even very, very sad. The more significant the relationship, the deeper the sadness. Know that it is okay to be in pain.

If you feel anger, give voice to your anger. If you feel afraid, pay attention to your fear and vulnerability.

Self-Reflection

In our experience, Step Two always involves some kind of a pause. When people are in pain, they tend to keep busy, as if to say, “If I keep moving, I can avoid facing my hurt.” That approach doesn’t work. You need to pause and reconnect with yourself. This pause may be moments, hours, days, or weeks. Sometimes you may need to take time off, as one of our clients, Marisol, did when she was faced with a hurtful situation that knocked her off her feet:

Marisol, a well-respected manager who had been identified as a strong performer with high potential, was given the opportunity to serve on a year-long special project team. She gave her all to this out-of-town, full-time assignment, and when the time came to plan her next move within the company, she spoke to her division head about a promotion.

The division head explained that she wasn’t in line for a promotion because he had received feedback that her performance on the special project had been “substandard.” Members of the team had complained about her.

This news came as a complete shock to Marisol. She simply couldn’t get over the fact that none of her team members had spoken to her directly and that her boss had not brought their dissatisfaction to her personal attention. “What else are people not telling me?” she wondered.

Reeling, Marisol took two weeks off. In addition to reaching out to her medical doctor, therapist, and career advisor for support, she spent time alone walking, thinking, and writing. She allowed herself to feel the anger, hurt, and deep vulnerability emerge to a level that would have been difficult for her if she had continued with life as usual.

A pause gives you time for self-reflection. You find quiet time when you can allow yourself to feel your feelings and express them to yourself. You connect with yourself. Many people find that activities such as meditation, journal writing, or some form of physical movement help them reflect; we’ve described our personal processes in the box above. What’s important is that you ask yourself the following questions out loud, in the privacy of your own space with uninterrupted time:

What am I feeling right now?

What sensations am I feeling in my body right now?

Where am I feeling tension or tightness?

What feelings related to my tension would I like to express right now?

Physical Expression

Because healing feelings is a visceral experience, the process to bring them forward may be quite physical. Sometimes, the expression of feelings may be instinctive and immediate. While fishing one Saturday afternoon, one manager we worked with learned of a hurtful work situation via an e-mail on his Blackberry. He swore out loud and then threw his phone into the river!

Depending on the intensity of your pain, shouting, screaming, or crying may all be ways you let your feelings out. It goes without saying that there is a time and place for these kinds of reactions, and you’ll want to find an appropriate, and perhaps private, place to surface your feelings. Sometimes, constructive physical ways of expressing feelings—such as running hard, whacking a bucket of balls at the driving range, kickboxing, weightlifting, or volunteering to smash glass at a recycling center—can bring about a release.

Talk It Out

Sometimes, people need to talk with someone in order to surface feelings. You may have a trusted coach, counselor, colleague, friend, or family member who can be there for you. If so, that’s great. If not, and you would like to find one, reach out for support as described in Step Three, which often goes hand-in-hand with this part of Step Two.

Your organization may provide venues to talk about your feelings. Professionally facilitated focus groups, time with coaches, and even anonymous surveys represent opportunities for you to express how you feel about trust-breaking situations in the workplace.

When You Have Been Betrayed

I was livid! Yet, deep down I was really hurting. I hated Mitch, my coworker, for what he had done to me, and I despised myself for being so naïve that I didn’t see it coming. All day long my head was throbbing and I couldn’t concentrate on my work. At lunch, I couldn’t eat; my stomach was in knots.

I knew I needed to do something to surface my pain. So after work I headed to the gym, got on my kickboxing gear, and pounded the punching bag until I dropped from exhaustion. Afterwards, I felt bushed, but better, and was able to think through my options more clearly.

When you are hurt, you need to find a way to let your feelings out. If physical exercise isn’t your outlet, try one or more of the other methods covered here. Through those methods or through the writing exercise explained in the box above, you become able to surface your underlying feelings related to disappointment, letdown, or betrayal.

While sometimes you can process your emotions with the person or persons who hurt you, many times this is not possible, for a host of reasons. The person may, by choice, not be available for discussion. She may just want to move on. He may be shut down and checked out. She may not be willing to take ownership or responsibility for her part in the betrayal, an avoidance mechanism that in and of itself is a further breach of trust. Or, he may not be able or willing to work it through with you because he is not as aware or in the same healing stage as you are.

When You Have Betrayed Others

Nina was one of the very few people who managed to move between divisions of a large corporation located in the city in which she lived. She made a name for herself and “climbed the ladder” while making the kind of valuable connections that opened doors such as this latest assignment.

In her new job, Nina looked for opportunities to connect with her new colleagues to find her place. Because she was very observant and easy to talk to, she began to develop relationships quickly. Soon, people were confiding in her.

One of those people was Ted. He, like Nina, was excited to advance his career. He told Nina that he had applied for a job in a sister company.

The next day, Nina was in a meeting with her boss, Evan, to whom Ted reported as well. Evan presented a short list of people he wanted to put forward for the job in the other division. “Ted has applied for that job, too,” Nina blurted to demonstrate that she was “in the know.”

Evan hadn’t known of Ted’s intentions. In that moment, Nina had betrayed Ted’s confidence. When he found out, Ted was angry and hurt, and distanced Nina completely.

Nina was filled with remorse. She cried over her mistake, and asked herself repeatedly, “How could I have done that to Ted?” She withdrew from the connections she had made, lost sight of her strengths and confidence, felt shame, and came face-to-face with her vulnerability.

When Nina recounted this story to Michelle, tears came to her eyes—even though it happened over twenty years ago.

When you betray another person, the first person you betray is yourself. The betrayal of “the self” can be the most painful form of betrayal. It never feels good to see that you compromised your own integrity, as Nina did when she violated Ted’s confidence. When you begin to acknowledge to yourself that you have indeed betrayed a person close to you, you definitely have feelings.

Those feelings, which are often named guilt, remorse, shame, and embarrassment, need to be surfaced and dealt with. Until you allow your feelings to surface, and work through them, you will not be emotionally available to hear the person you hurt, take responsibility, learn, and move on. As you allow the feelings associated with your role to rise to the surface, you may find that other, more deep-seated feelings come up as well. For Nina, it was her vulnerability that surfaced.

This is the time for you to get in touch with your feelings. You are coming face-to-face with your own humanness: You made a mistake and your actions hurt another. Be open to the emotions that surface and be vulnerable. When you are vulnerable, you are in a precious space to feel your pain, and hear and feel the other person’s pain. You are most open for healing to take place. As you move through those feelings, you will regain your footing and a sense of being grounded will return.

It is your responsibility to work through your pain. It clearly is not the burden of those you betrayed. Filled with remorse, betrayers often run back to the betrayed and try to work through the feelings with the person they hurt. Resist the temptation to approach him or her until you are fully ready to take responsibility, as described in Step Five.

When You Want to Help Others Rebuild Trust

Have you ever had an experience when someone reacted with intensity much greater than the incident at hand? You and those around you were so thrown by the intensity of the person’s emotions that you wondered, “What in the heck just happened?”

Un-surfaced, misplaced feelings that your co-workers bring into the workplace can derail your workgroup’s performance and well-being. Perhaps you want to help because of the effect those un-surfaced feelings are having on your team’s productivity. Or maybe your intention is to help the individual who is acting out her hurt.

Either way, as someone who wants to help, your role isn’t to have all of the answers. In this Step, which is about allowing feelings to surface, your role is to create a safe environment, be present, and listen. You are not expected to resolve the feelings for others. No one can resolve another’s feelings. When you simply hold a compassionate space, the channels for healing will open and feelings will surface. Because the approaches you will take will vary depending on the number of people you are trying to help, we’ve split the advice into two sections: when you want to help one person, and when you want to help an entire team.

Helping One Person

We have learned that at times people who are feeling betrayed or coming to terms with having betrayed another just need some one-on-one time with someone who cares. Thirty minutes over a cup of coffee can nurture significant movement. At this stage in the process, when emotions are very raw and just coming to the surface, it’s very important to find a private space to have these conversations.

Your role in this Step is to provide an opportunity for the person you are helping to express the impact of the trust-breaking situation: to talk it through, vent frustrations, and express disappointment or anger. Resist the temptation to say, “Everything will be fine” or some other expression to get the person to positive emotions.

Some phrases that do work at this stage are:

“It’s okay to let it all out.”

“It is okay to vent your frustrations.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You don’t have to make sense: just say whatever comes up.”

“I’m here for you.”

“Whatever you say or do will be between us; I know you are hurting.”

Helping a Group

Perhaps you are in a position to help a group of people, be they coworkers, teammates, subordinates, or internal “clients.” A team or unit that shares a breach of trust may need to heal together. Giving group members constructive ways to discuss their feelings and experiences, whether on your own or through the use of an outside facilitator, helps them let go of the negativity they are holding.

In our work supporting organizations healing from broken trust, we use different kinds of tools and experiential exercises to help people identify, give voice to, and release their feelings. Several such tools are summarized in the box on the next page.

Trust TipPeople have feelings regarding business decisions, particularly those that impact their jobs and their lives; the larger the changes, the greater the feelings. People’s feelings don’t go away by themselves: people need constructive forums in which to share their concerns.

Sometimes, people have pain they are afraid or feel unable to share. When you compassionately give your attention to understanding others, you are letting them know that you respect their pain. You demonstrate that you care when you listen, observe, and acknowledge their experience of disappointment, letdown, or betrayal. This open availability is an important step to heal the wounds and rebuild trust.