How To Feel Your Feelings
Many of us spend a lot of time in our heads, thinking thinking thinking. Thinking is valuable! It helps us to make decisions, plan our day, be strategic, and reflect on ourselves, our experiences, and our relationships. However, when we spend lots of time in our heads, we tend to build up our cognitive abilities and forget about our other abilities. Feeling our feelings is important. We tend to make better decisions when we use both our cognitive and emotional processes together. Not only that, but feelings contain significant information about what our needs are and about how we can take better care of ourselves.
Humans are sensory creatures. An ability to connect to our senses requires an ability to be in the present moment, and vice versa. But with so many distractions in our modern world, many of us move compulsively from one thought to another, from agonizing over the past to compulsively planning the future. This is often referred to as “monkey mind”. This way of being can feel exhausting and can cause stress, rumination, and suffering. Most of the time, we don’t even realize we are doing it.
But there is another way! Instead of moving from thought to thought , we can build up the muscle that allows us to move from thinking to feeling, and from feeling to thinking. Again, one is not better than the other. Integrating both feeling and thinking by working on building up the muscle that allows us to transition between them is the goal.
How to feel your feelings (instead of intellectualizing them):
Observe your body. Take time to pay attention to your body throughout the day, not just when you are in a heightened state. Notice how your body feels when you feel happy, calm, and content. Notice how your body feels when you are hungry, thirsty, or need to go to the bathroom. Notice how your body feels when you feel tired, cranky, or stressed. What physical sensations do you feel? Where in your body do you feel it? (See here for more ways to practice tuning into your body)
Don’t distract yourself. Allow the physical sensation to be there for a moment, without trying to change it. You might be surprised how much you can tolerate when you don’t automatically try to avoid a difficult feeling.
Name the feeling without judging it. For example, “I feel disappointed” or “I feel embarrassed”. You can try using a feelings wheel to practice.
Ask yourself what caused this feeling. You might assume that the overflowing trash can has caused you to feel angry, but when you sit and listen to yourself you realize that you really feel angry about an argument you had with your partner this morning.
Feel the physical sensations. Sit with the physical feeling and just notice it, or express it physically by stamping your feet in frustration, crying, screaming into your pillow, curling your fist into a ball, or allowing yourself to make grumbling sound.
Use a coping skill. Do something that usually helps you to come back to feeling regulated, calm, and neutral or close to neutral. For example, going for a walk or run, rollerblading, taking a shower, listening to music, dancing, drawing, sitting under a tree, calling a friend to catch up, journaling, or breathing exercises.
If you are struggling to feel your feelings, or if you are experiencing anxiety, depression, rumination, challenges with numbing out, difficulties in relationships, problems with intimacy, eating disorders, or substance issues, Lunasa Counseling and Wellness can help. Reach out to set up a free 20-minute phone consultation. Our therapists are trauma-informed and offer both in-person sessions in Boulder, Colorado, and online sessions for folks in Colorado.