For me it's kind of like the difference between tasting something new and actually eating a few bites :-) You know how when you are tasting something new you have preconceived ideas about how it will taste and whether you'll like it and whether how you like it will show and please/displease whoever is asking you to taste it, etc.?

One should be "at home" in one's feelings as they belong and start from one's self, don't come from the outside. I know I always felt feelings were something that happened "to" me, like a bad surprise :-) instead of something that came up "from" me.

Feeling are extremely useful as they can orient you and let you know where you are with something, can anchor you to yourself and help center you.

My T had to "teach" me what my feelings were (as often I'd run too fast to identify them). One day near the end of a session she asked me to think about "humiliation" for the next week. Well, naturally I hit humiliation everywhere I turned that week :-) I actually hit it bigtime at work when a VP yelled at me publicly for trying to help him :-) That led to "anger" and I experienced and "worked with" what was going on and formulated a wonderful plan of what I'd say/do if he ever did it again and how to stay out of his way and why, etc. It was extremely empowering and my T was so thrilled she gave me "disappointment" for the next week -- LOL!!!! -- you guessed it, within 24 hours I was disappointed big time. But I had the same "good" experience and worked out a lot of my transference relative to my stepmother that I was putting on my poor husband.

Those are the only 2-3 feelings we did that way because I "got it". One thing I did/do on my own that seems to help is, when I'm miserable/unhappy about something I asked myself, "what else would you rather be feeling in this situation?" I feel a bit better usually because of the old no-laughing-at-funerals rule; feelings are almost always appropriate (when they are, when you're not laughing during a funeral :-) so looking harder at them and what they're "for"/are doing helps in that case.