What does it mean to feel your emotions? How do you do that?

In a nutshell, feeling your feelings is the art of decoding what’s going on with you beneath the surface. Beneath the smile. Beneath all the doing and distractions that you could bury yourself in as an attempt to avoid what’s really going on emotionally. Beneath the part of us that’s not being truthful when saying, “I’m good,” “I’m fine.” “Everything is great,” when it’s really not.

It’s easy to get in the habit of ignoring or disconnecting from our inner world, especially if past situations have brought up big, intense emotions. If we’ve experienced a past situation that brought up emotions that were too much for us to handle at the time, we might have picked up the habit of shutting off emotionally in order to self protect. If we didn’t have the skills or support to cope when hard experiences presented, it’s a natural response to shut down and numb out emotions that are too painful to feel.

The issue with this tactic is that shutting down emotions consistently can become a bad habit and lead to a permanent disconnect from our emotional state. Many problems will arise with this way of coping as a permanent solution. Lost relationships, strained relationships and a disconnect from yourself are a few to mention. If you want to live a life that’s filled with meaningful connection and a solid relationship with yourself, it’s important to hone the skill of expressing how you feel. Both to yourself and others.

The skill of expressing ourselves can be challenging and is not something that we all do with ease. To go further, unless we’ve put some time and energy into building a foundation of “Self,” our expression will be limited. “Self” meaning the relationship between you and you, which aligns with your ability to connect to your inner truth.

If we’re not in tune with who we are and how we feel, then expressing how we feel to others will be nearly impossible. Have you ever drawn a blank or became tongue tied when someone was trying to engage in a conversation that involved exploring and expressing your emotional world? If this has happened once or twice you sound pretty normal and human to me. However, if going blank and having nothing to contribute consistently when your emotions are being called toward self expression, it could benefit you to learn practices to help you express yourself with more clarity and confidence.

My hope for this post is for you to, first and foremost, honor where you’re at self expression wise.

Let’s recap real quick: As I mentioned earlier, the reason why self expression can be so hard is because difficult things have happened that have caused us to wall up. Overtime, a continual habit of shutting down and walling up our emotions will cause permanent emotional blockage. This could be a conscious or unconscious reaction to uncomfortable feelings. The end result of doing this continually is an inability to connect with ourselves and others emotionally.

Here’s the good news. Self expression is a skill that you can practice and get better at. You can remove inner walls and become a more open, self expressive person. It’s not too late and it doesn’t need to take 20 years for it to happen.

Are you in? Great, let’s do this!

In this post I’m going to point out 2 initial steps that you can take to begin exploring your internal world. Change always starts with awareness, so using these 2 steps to begin to tap into your emotional self will help you begin to feel. If you are intentional about putting awareness and energy into this area of your life, the concept of momentum and focused energy will help you become more in tune with your emotions in time. With practice you will be able to begin to feel your emotions and then hopefully start understanding them from there.

Our emotions are always communicating to us through our physical symptoms, feelings and moods. Our job is to decode what these signals or symptoms are trying to tell us. Knowing what’s going on with you will help your relationships greatly because it will allow you to self express with more confidence and truth.

Step 1: SLOW DOWN.

Assess how fast you’re going in your life. When we’re constantly busy with tasks and “to do’s” we’re not creating the time to feel our emotions. There’s a fine line to distinguish between being productive and being distracted. In order to tap into how you’re feeling you need time to “sit with and process your emotions.” (We’ll go over this in Step 2)

An inability to connect to what’s going on with us emotionally creates a disconnect from our ability to self express. How can we be disconnected from ourselves and articulate our feelings clearly and successfully? Not very well, if at all, my friends.

The first step is to create the space for emotions to come to the surface and be heard and felt. Basically, the initial step is an inside job between you and you. It can take some time to become reacquainted with your disconnected self. This step is calling for you to get back in touch with the neglected pieces of you by exploring past experiences that were difficult and were left unprocessed. Slowing down will help you to create the space to spend some time sitting with and sifting through unresolved emotions that you left behind. “Unresolved emotions,” meaning emotions that were too hard, too uncomfortable or too big to be felt, for whatever reason, at the time.

I hear you and I know that what I’m pointing you toward may be extremely uncomfortable, maybe too uncomfortable. Please listen to that if that’s the case. If you’re feeling like you want to jump out of your skin by reading this, then I would point you toward finding a professional to help you through this first, very important step. See more about finding a professional to talk to whose a good fit for you HERE. Without the connection to our truth and the space to explore what our emotions are trying to tell us, we will chronically be unable to express our full truth.

Step 2: LEARN TO SIT WITH YOUR EMOTIONS.

It’s amazing what we do to avoid our feelings. We distract with all sorts of numbing agents; unhealthy relationships, alcohol, drugs, binge watching tv, overuse of social media, over eating, over working, over scheduling, etc. It can get sneaky to detect our specific form of distraction because it can appear in the form of overdoing good things; over cleaning, over organizing, etc. Note to self: Over doing anything is imbalanced and excessive.

The thing with emotions is that if we push them down, they don’t go away; They just become repressed. Repressed emotions are emotions that we unconsciously avoid in order to not feel their discomfort. Like I said, difficult emotions don’t disappear. They manifest into other things like over reactions, short tempers, snippy comments, passive aggressive behaviors and, overtime, symptoms like depression or anxiety.

Sitting with our emotions means allowing them to come up and move through.

So, the question then is:

Q: How do we allow for emotions to come up, move through and be processed?

A: We allow emotions to move through and be felt by allowing the space and welcoming the “hard” emotions to be with us. “Be with us,” meaning right by our side. Hanging out with us like having dinner with a friend.

That doesn’t mean sitting in your home and staring at a wall in agony. It means allowing “pain” to be sitting at brunch with you without drinking $20 bottomless mimosa’s so you start numbing out. It means going on a walk and allowing yourself to feel your emotions without asking 3 friends to join you that you know will fill the space with gossip and excessive talking. It means having a free weekend ahead of you and not over scheduling it minute to minute with social activities and tasks so you have no time to face what ’s really going on with you beneath the busyness.

I know that if avoiding your emotions is what you’ve been doing to cope, I might be asking for too much here. In this case, if all you do is become more aware of the difficult emotions that are rearing to get your attention, then that’s enough. Continue to practice your body and mind awareness, so you can start acknowledging what your emotions feel like and where they are sitting physically within. As you notice this, as hard emotions arise, you can begin to pin point what you specifically do to distract yourself from feeling them by paying attention to your immediate reactions. Do you grab for a drink? Do you start booking classes and trips to keep your calendar busy? Do you find the latest Netflix series to get lost in? What do you grab for when you start to feel uncomfortable? Keep in practice by paying attention to your emotions in whatever capacity that you can. Keep trying to identify and feel your feelings. Keep practicing and in time you will become more in tune. You will eventually see results in where you continually focus your energy.

Below is an exercise for you to practice to help you identify and get more in tune with your feelings. This is an exercise that you can do when you have 10-15 minutes and a quiet and uninterrupted space.

Step 1: Name the Feeling

When you become aware of a feeling, pause. See if you can notice the general tone of the emotion present. Is it positive or negative? See if you can name the specific emotion that you’re experiencing without judgment. (For example: Is it sadness? Is it fear? Is it shame? Is it excitement? Is it anxiety? What are you feeling?

Step 2: Tap Into the Feeling Physically

Emotions are called “feelings” because we feel them in the body. Close your eyes and see if you can observe where the emotion is lying physically within. Is it in your chest? Your throat? Your stomach? Encourage yourself to “allow” the sensations to be present without trying to control, reduce, or escape them. If the feelings are difficult, this requires the courage to stay with an uncomfortable emotion. (I know, I know, it’s hard.)

If you’re having difficulty tapping into what’s going on for you, it can help to bring in curiosity. Be curious about the sensation you’re feeling. Be present by following your curiosity and asking internal questions. Is the sensation pleasant or unpleasant? Is the energy you’re feeling light or heavy? Give the body permission to feel whatever is there. Stay with this experience for as long as you can. A minute or two is suggested.

Step 3: Explore What’s at the Root of Your Feelings

Shift your attention toward connecting what event or circumstance could be driving the emotion. (A loss, a transition, a fight with a friend, a hard conversation, a break up, etc.) Avoid thinking about assumptions or getting stuck in a story about the event or circumstance that’s creating your feeling state. Rather, stay present by focusing on facts. Keep it simple by asking : What’s at the root of my emotion? Why am I sad? Why am I nervous? Why am I angry? Why am I hurt?

See if you can feel without self blame or pointing the finger at another. The goal is to go beyond surface emotions to get into the root source of your particular emotion. Stay present and with your breath in order to do this.

Step 4: Ditch Self Criticism With Kindness

As you allow your feelings, bring kindness and self compassion to your experience (especially if it’s a tough one that’s causing you a lot of pain and suffering). Refrain from self criticism and judgement. Do your best to hold space for self compassion. If this is difficult for you to do, think about what you would say to your best friend If they were feeling your specific emotion. You might say to them: “I’m so sorry you’re going through this,” “I know this is hard,” or “I’m here for you.” This step is about actively bringing a self loving stance to your experience. One of the most important things you can do in this life is learn how to treat yourself with respect and kindness. This respect that you give to yourself will be reflected back to you in all sorts of ways in this life.

I know that being in tune with your emotions and expressing yourself effectively could be really hard to do. I hope that these initial steps help you to chip away at the blocks and avoidance mechanisms that may have built up overtime. With practice your desire to understand what’s going on with you emotionally will help you in all areas of your life. Things will feel a lot lighter and conflict will be less and handled with way more success when you know how to self express.

Good luck friends! Below is a quick video that sums up what was just discussed via this blog post. Feel free to subscribe to my youtube channel for more videos HERE.

*Above image is by Photographer, Renata Amazonas.

Blog | Licensed Therapist | Self Discovery | North County San Diego, CA