How To: Feel Your Feelings

What does it mean to feel your feelings?

As we learned from the wise characters in the movie Inside Out, all emotions are important. They are all working hard at their little switchboard in your brain to keep you safe. Some, like happiness or excitement, can seem easier to feel. The emotions that get labeled as “bad” often feel sooooo uncomfortable. 

So, I have some good news and some bad news. 

I’ll start with the bad. 

The bad news is there is actually no way not to feel hard or uncomfortable emotions. 

Waves of discomfort - anger, grief, frustration or jealousy, to name just a few - are a part of the human experience. No amount of therapy will teach you how to get rid of them, fix them, or delete them. 

So it’s not that you aren’t working hard enough at feeling happy. 

It is just that happiness, like anger or sadness, is also a temporary wave we ride. 

Which leads me to the good news. 

Your feelings mean that your body is operating exactly how it is supposed to. You are a human who is human-ing! Hooray! 

At their core, emotions are signals we receive from our body about our environment. Those signals can give us some important information about what we need, what we want, or what to do. 

For instance, when we feel angry - that could be a sign a boundary has been crossed. It could also be a signal that something is unjust or unfair. It might also mean that our body is protecting us from another uncomfortable feeling, like sadness or embarrassment or pain. 

For example, let’s say that your coworker forgets to complete their part of your joint presentation and your boss chastises you both for it. Anger might come up as heat in your face, or tension in your muscles. It may feel like a knot in your chest. Those sensations are information that you don’t like getting in trouble for someone else’s mistake. It could also be protection from the feeling you feel when you are in trouble: shame. 

Shame is the body’s fastest way of saying, “Maintain connection!!” Shame is an evolutionary response, and its main responsibility is to keep us safe. This can sound like, “Preserve belonging at all costs!” .  Shame is one of the most painful feelings because it is our body's loudest warning signal that we could lose connection with others, which is a direct threat to our survival. 

Getting in trouble with your boss might flare up those warning signals that tell you the connection is at risk. It might sound like “I am not loveable,” or “I am not enough,” or “I am too much.” 

No matter what the signal is, it does not change the fact that these emotions can feel uncomfortable. Human-ing is no picnic. Even for a therapist who has training in supporting people human-ing!