Embracing Our Emotions: The Journey to Feeling Fully
In our journey through life, many of us have learned to disconnect from our emotions. Whether as a defence mechanism from childhood or through societal conditioning, this disconnection can often feel like a survival strategy.
As children, if our emotions were overwhelming and not effectively managed by our caregivers, we might have deemed these feelings as unsafe. However, embracing and connecting with our feelings enriches our life experience, helping us make choices that are true to our desires and needs rather than decisions solely driven by rational thought.
Our relationship with our emotions mirrors how our caregivers handled their feelings and ours. When emotions were acknowledged and validated by our caregivers, we likely learned to manage our feelings in a similar fashion. Unfortunately, many parents, not having had this experience themselves, could not model this emotional intelligence to us. This lack of emotional attunement can lead individuals to fear, shame, or even ignore their emotions, sometimes resulting in extreme behaviours or risk-taking as desperate attempts to feel something.
A sign that you might be out of touch with your emotions could be an impressive ability to talk about them without actually feeling them, or a tendency to stay busy to avoid quiet moments that might bring these emotions to the surface. Feeling our feelings sounds simple, yet for someone who has been disconnected from their emotions, it's a profound and sometimes challenging journey. This process requires deep compassion, a sense of safety, and immense patience.
To truly feel an emotion is to experience it directly in your body, without the interference of thought or action.
Consider this exercise: take a finger and gently run it down the palm of your opposite hand. Notice your initial reaction—perhaps your mind immediately jumps to describe the sensation. This reaction is a form of disassociation from the actual feeling. Try it again, but this time focus on experiencing the sensation without labelling or analysing it. You might find your mind trying to step in again with descriptions; however, with practice, you can learn to just feel the sensation.
Our nervous systems have varying capacities to handle emotions, and part of reconnecting with our emotions involves gradually expanding this capacity. When a strong emotion arises, observe your immediate reaction. Do you seek to distract yourself, analyse the feeling, or do something to avoid it? These responses are natural, but they also represent opportunities to gently expand our emotional capacity. Next time, try to stay with the feeling a bit longer, reminding yourself that it is safe to do so. Extend this period as much as feels secure, and then you can engage in a soothing activity as a reward for your system’s bravery.
Such exercises are not just about enduring discomfort but about relearning to inhabit our bodies where a wealth of emotions awaits our recognition and understanding. The more we practice, the more we can handle life's challenges with emotional resilience rather than avoidance.
If you find yourself intrigued by this journey or recognise a longing to reconnect with your deeper feelings, you are not alone. Many have walked this path and found profound fulfilment in becoming more attuned to their emotional worlds.