The Energy and Power of Feeling your Feelings

When you are used to numbing, feeling your feelings can be scary, but will free your heart and mind.

If you are a regular reader of my essays, you might know that I am a Type A recovering perfectionist who has a history of numbing my feelings. That might be why you are here. You might be saying, “me too.” Alcohol, food, games on my phone, busyness, and more have been my vices over the years and have kept me small, quiet, and disconnected from myself. You can read more about that here, here, and here.

The problem with numbing your feelings is that emotions are energy. Emotion is thought to stand for “Energy in Motion.” This implies that emotions need to move. If they don’t go out of your body in some form, like tears, shouting, or laughter, then they can only go in.

“Psychosomatic” is the term that many Western doctors use to make you believe your symptoms are “all in your head.” In reality, this term refers to the Psyche (mind) affecting the Soma (body). When emotions aren’t released outward, they affect the body and create symptoms such as tight muscles, headaches, stomachaches, insomnia, depression, anxiety, digestive irregularities, and more. Any symptom that is worse with stress, is a psychosomatic reaction of the body falling victim to the mind.

Emotions are normal

Feeling emotions is a normal, natural part of the human experience. However, it doesn’t always feel natural. While everyone is born with the capacity to feel emotions, somewhere along the way, you may have had parents, caregivers, or people in your life who were unable to tolerate your emotions. They may have “shushed” your crying, or yelled at you for acting out when you were stressed. You may have learned to “not feel” so as not to bother anyone.

I felt like “too much” for much of my life. As a deeply feeling person with parents unable to tolerate my feelings, I learned to be small and quiet. I learned not to feel by numbing my emotions with food and TV, and eventually boys, sex, alcohol, busyness and more. As long as I shoved down my feelings, I was fine. Well, I was fine until I wasn’t.

Garbage can analogy

I like to use a garbage can analogy. We all have an “inner garbage can” where we store emotions that we are unable or unwilling to feel. Each emotion is like a little slip of paper that gets placed in the garbage can, stored away, deep in your body so that you don’t have to feel it. Eventually the garbage can fills and you need to work harder to stuff down the papers (more food, more alcohol, more online shopping, etc).

At a certain point, there is no more room in the garbage can and your emotions spill out all over the place, leaving heaps of paper all over the floor. A huge mess. You feel so many things simultaneously and don’t even know why. Have you ever had an outburst of anger or sadness and felt like it was incongruous with what just happened? This is your garbage can exploding all over. If you are used to numbing, this might be your rock bottom, or perhaps a bottom. Feeling your feelings is the only way through.

A few years ago I was listening to the podcast “We Can Do Hard Things” with Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle (it’s so good, I highly recommend it). They were discussing emotions and Amanda said that anger is like a guard dog, protecting you from deeper hurt. This is true. Anger is a secondary emotion, often covering up fear or grief. It’s much easier to feel angry than it is to feel the other two, although, for some people (especially women), getting angry is also a challenge.

Feeling your feelings

Can you teach yourself to feel your feelings? The short answer is yes, but it’s not easy. It starts with being vulnerable and honest with yourself. Start with Compassion (Karuna) for yourself. All humans were built to feel all the emotions, but if you struggle with this, you may have conditioned yourself not to feel.

Self-Compassion, according to Kristin Neff, is a blend of Self-Kindness, Common Humanity, and Mindfulness. In her book “Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself” (a book I highly recommend), she discusses both why it’s challenging to show ourselves compassion, and how it’s a skill we can learn.

Start with being kind to yourself. Having feelings doesn’t mean that you’ve failed in some way, or that there is something wrong with you. Recognizing our common humanity accepts that all humans have feelings and it’s okay for you to express them in a healthy way. Finally, apply Mindfulness to yourself: become aware that you are having feelings, allow yourself to feel them, then let them pass through.

In my experience, I have found it to be much less effort to feel my feelings than to suppress them. Suppressing them gets harder over time, requiring more energy and effort. Allowing your feelings to arise, express themselves, then release is, in the end, much more comfortable, leaving you feeling more at ease.

Breathe. Relax. Feel. Watch. Allow. ~Kripalu Yoga teachers Sandra Scherer ( Dayashakti) and Grace MacLeod ( Menka).

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In practice

• Sit comfortably and close your eyes. Bring your attention to your heart center and see what sensations you feel there. Notice what is there, let it arise as it’s ready, and allow it to exist. Create space for your feeling(s), letting the sensations wash through your body. Breathe. Let your tears flow if they’re there. You won’t cry forever, that’s just the story you are telling yourself. Keep breathing until the sensations dissipate. Sit quietly for a few minutes to settle back down.

• Journaling can help you process whatever comes up. Don’t think, just write down whatever comes into your mind, whether it makes sense or not. Allow your words to flow from your heart onto the page. No censoring, no editing, just raw, true words.

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In community

Join Sangha Sundays, this Sunday, October 27 at 6:30pm ET online to discuss Ahimsa, the yogic principle of Non-Harming in thought or action. Click the button below to learn more!