We often hear “feel your feelings” on social media, but what does it really mean? Mental health professionals often tell their clients to “sit with it” when talking about an emotion – and I can already tell you that every person needs to learn what that means and what it looks like for themselves. It is therefore not the intention of this article to generalize about people’s experiences of their emotions and the way in which they relate to them. However, clinical practice does highlight common fears about feeling emotions, not to mention beliefs about emotions that often prevent people from engaging with their feelings in a way that might be helpful.
- Myth 1: Feeling emotion means they will consume and control you.Truth: When we think about emotions, we immediately feel overwhelmed by them. One of the reasons you may feel this way is that you’ve been repressing/avoiding an emotion for perhaps too long, so that when you start to pay attention to it, it comes out overwhelmingly because it’s been waiting to be seen all this time. But if you regularly make space and consider your emotional experiences, you won’t necessarily feel as overwhelmed because their intensity will be different.How many times have you “snapped” because there was an accumulation of emotions? That emotion might have been less intense if you’d faced it as soon as you felt it, instead of waiting weeks or months before revealing your honest truth This is why it’s better to address disagreements when they arise rather than avoid them, as leaving them unaddressed will only intensify your feelings and may even add resentment towards the situation and/or the person concerned.
Paradoxically, what you decide to ignore emotionally doesn’t just go away. It continues to influence the way you perceive the world, others, and the decisions you make, whether professionally or personally, without you being aware of it. In this sense, not being present to your emotions means letting them control you. But if you start to listen to your feelings and give them some space on a regular basis, you’ll become more aware of how they contribute to your decisions and how you can manage them.
- Myth 2: It means that I am weak and have no self-control.Truth: Avoidance and withdrawal behaviours are a survival mechanism that we all possess internally (to a certain degree depending on the individual due to their differences and life history, but avoidance is nonetheless common to all). It’s MUCH harder to immerse yourself in the emotion you’ve been avoiding, because of the discomfort it causes, and to face up to what it represents. Learning to feel painful emotions is a SKILL that must be learned – especially if you want to live an authentic life true to yourself and minimize repetitive patterns from the past due to untreated emotional wounds. It takes effort, focus, bravery, perseverance, discipline, reflective skills, self-compassion, and acceptance. It’s much more intentional than letting the defensive part of you take over to protect yourself by adopting withdrawal behaviours or suppressing emotions.
- Myth 3: If I feel feelings I won’t make logical decisions anymoreTruth: I often hear this, the fear of no longer being a “logical person” if we start being more in touch with our emotions, or of becoming unable to make “rational decisions” if we consider our emotional experiences in a specific situation. So, let’s tackle the issue concisely and simply: logic and emotions are linked to each other, they coexist. Ignoring emotions leads to BAD choices because you’re ignoring crucial information. Your emotions inform you of your emotional needs and guide you towards an authentic life. If you don’t learn how to listen to them, you risk not being authentic and continuing to disconnect from yourself, making you more vulnerable to mental and physical health problems.Furthermore, when making choices, most people anticipate and try to consider potential outcomes and anticipated emotions. So, it’s hard to take emotion out of the equation. And it’s even worse when you actively suppress an emotion because it means you’ll be making choices based on that avoidance at some level, which limits your options. If you learned to cope with that emotion (and/or whatever that is attached to), your choices wouldn’t be limited because they wouldn’t be guided by avoidance/fear of not wanting to feel that emotion again. In this sense, emotion stimulates thinking.
When you’re aware of your emotions, you can factor them into your decision-making and the impact they have on the decision-making process, but if you suppress them, you risk missing out. What’s more, suppressing emotions and the resulting fatigue has an impact on how well you can retain information. In that sense, you can even argue that your cognitive skills are impaired. So whether you like it or not, emotions are involved and you’d better start LEARNING them rather than trying to cling to the illusion that emotions don’t exist and that you can cling to your logic because the bad news is that your logic is skewed by unprocessed emotions that you’ve suppressed for so long that you don’t even realize they’re there anymore – but your body never forgets, it’s there.
- Myth 4: If I feel my feelings I will dwell in self-pity.Truth: There’s a difference between the emotion itself and what we decide to do with it. Letting yourself feel an emotion doesn’t imply knowing what you’re going to do with it or what meaning you’re going to give it. If you’re feeling sad and start blaming other people for your sadness, it’s the way you react through that blame that puts you in a victimization mode, not the emotion ITSELF. What’s more, acknowledging that others have hurt us doesn’t necessarily mean we feel sorry for ourselves or victimize ourselves. That said, if you never engage in deeper inner work than this and just blame others, life, or the universe, you can start to worry that you’re stuck in victimhood because you don’t yet know how to take responsibility for yourself. But this isn’t the result of allowing yourself to feel this way – it’s part of the process of asking yourself what you can do about it, how you can cope when it’s too painful, or what meaning you can make of it all.To feel your emotions is to BE with the emotion, not what you do with it. You can simply feel it. If you’re sad and it makes you want to cry? Then cry. Be with the crying. Feel the tears. Note your physiological sensations linked to the experience of crying. You’re in your body. This is what it means to feel your emotions. You recognize this experience for yourself at that moment. You can also leave it as it is – just for a moment – or you can approach it in a way that will enable you to make decisions to move forward; but that’s a subject for another time.
But let’s take the worst-case scenario for a minute, let’s say you’re a little stuck in self-pity or victimhood mode…. what’s the worst thing about all this? What does this mean for you? Often, people who fear this are afraid of how it defines them, but that’s human, and not all experiences are meant to last forever. If it happens to you, it may mean that you needed a little more time before taking responsibility and learning from it. But if you never allow yourself to feel your emotions, you’ll never learn to take responsibility for them, or listen to what they’re trying to communicate to you and find what works best for you to soothe yourself and make decisions that work for you.
Myth 5: Feeling my feelings will make me feel worse.
Truth: This question often comes up, and it’s important to stay grounded in reality: we’re human beings made to feel and experience a whole range of things. We can’t lead a life without discomfort, so yes, we must be prepared to feel pain, to experience emotions that may be uncomfortable or make us feel a little more vulnerable. That said, your emotions aren’t your identity, they aren’t forever, and you can take care of yourself when you feel some discomfort to minimize it. It’s like when you have the flu, you don’t feel well but you do something to help yourself as much as you can. It’s the same thing, when you’re feeling emotions, they are not here to dominate you. You can choose to take care of yourself when you’re going through them, remembering that they’re temporary and they’re not there to hurt you, they want you to pay attention to something important. I mean, how many people have felt better after crying, for example? The issue is that a lot of people have no idea what they need to be okay when they feel certain emotions, so they shut it down of course and it makes perfect sense – but it does not need to be this way.
Learning how to feel your feelings can be taught in therapy.
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