“I Don’t Know How To Feel My Feelings”

Typically when my clients come to me, it’s because they’re having a problem. I hear complaints like “I’m drinking too much,” “I’m eating too much,” “I can’t stop snacking,” “I’m over-exercising,” “I’m undereating.” Which really means, “I’m doing something that’s allowing me to not feel my feeling. 

These habits are all behaviors that we do to get rid of a feeling we don’t want to feel. It’s called buffering: using an external source to create neutrality or even pleasure so that we can get rid of uncomfortable feelings. We do it because our feelings feel uncomfortable, but also because we just haven’t practiced feeling them enough. 

Frustration

Recently, a client described a situation with her children in which she would get really frustrated and just want to scream. But she couldn’t name the feeling. So we talked about the thoughts that were going through her mind. Things like, “Why can’t they just do what I ask? Why does everything have to be so cumbersome?”. The thoughts told my client that her expectations weren’t being met. How frustrating.

So after she learned to name the feeling, we worked on learning how to describe how it feels in her body. Knowing how our emotions show up in our individual bodies allows us to have great insight into our lives. Eventually, you’ll be able to know exactly what’s going on with you when you feel a particular feeling. Instead of saying, “I just feel lousy and I don’t know why,” you’ll be able to understand what’s happening.

For my client, her head felt like it was going to explode. The feeling felt burnt orange, fast, and sandpapery. And it makes sense that a burnt orange, high-pressure, fast, sandpaper feeling in your head makes you crave release as fast as possible, which my client did in the form of yelling at her kids. Then an hour later, she would beat herself up for it and go into a downward spiral of guilt, comparison, and self-doubt.

So how could she allow the frustration without giving into an action that she wouldn’t be happy about?

How to Process Emotion

The first step is just allowing the feeling so you can later channel it into something different. Allowing the feeling is letting your guard down. It’s letting the feeling in, allowing the frustration to dissipate throughout your entire body. You’re not avoiding or resisting it. It’s knowing that the feeling can’t hurt you. 

What if you can’t allow the feeling to dissipate through your body? If it stays all jammed up in your head? Well, that means you’re resisting the feeling. You’re saying, “No, frustration, you can’t come in.” Allowing it in means it can come through your head, flow through your body, and leave. But with resistance, you’re building more and more pressure that you’ll eventually have to release.

When we allow the feeling to come in, it can go away much quicker than if you resist it. All you have to do is believe that it won’t hurt you. 

Restlessness

A lot of my clients come to me when they’re buffering a feeling they don’t want to feel with overeating or overdrinking. Physicians, in particular, often feel restless. They have a million things to do and have to do them perfectly because lives are on the line. They’re expected not to make mistakes and can never take a break. It’s a lot of pressure, and it can cause restlessness.

We usually feel restlessness in our upper stomach. It’s fast. It’s orange or red.  It’s slippery. You can’t really catch it. So you’re chasing after it. You can’t slow down. You wonder if this is normal. This is the type of feeling that leads to buffering. Eventually, you can’t deal with it anymore. 

I had a client who buffered by overeating for decades. She had the hardest time slowing down the feeling of restlessness. So we made a deal. We said she could eat anything she wanted whenever she wanted. But if she noticed restlessness in her body, she had to allow it to slow down before she proceeded. That was the only rule.

When she allowed restlessness to dissipate in her body, she could understand what she was thinking. Thoughts like, “I should be doing something. I should have done that. I shouldn’t have skipped my workouts this week.” She was using the thought distortion of should statements, which is a way of telling ourselves we are not good enough. All of that led to tremendous restlessness and drove her to eat. 

Once she started allowing this to be there, she would recognize and reset and then decide if she wanted to reframe her emotion or her thought. She’d allow the restlessness to dissipate and notice right away that the intensity of the feeling went down significantly. 

Guess how many times she went to the pantry after the mastered this skill? Zero. As long as she could allow the feeling and decrease its intensity, she never went to the pantry, curing a decades-long history of overeating to overcome restlessness - and she did it immediately. Realizing that this was normal, that she could feel any feeling, and that she could have any result she wants, changed her life forever. 

How to Accept New Feelings

So let’s say you get really good at recognizing, feeling, and dissipating your feelings, and you’re ready to really take ownership of your life. Did you know that you can flip into any emotion you want, any time you want? 

It’s all about recognizing an emotion you don’t want to have, calling it out, realizing why you’re having that emotion, and deciding how you want to feel instead. 

Let’s say we’re restless and we want to feel calm. Calm is my favorite feeling. It’s in my heart. It’s soft blue and breezy.

For me to feel calm, I have to understand what thoughts make me feel calm. For me, calm is “There’s nowhere I have to be.” “There’s nothing that needs to get done.” “I can choose to slow down and still live the exact life I want to live.”

If I make the decision to feel calm, I go to that place. I feel calm in my body. I let it right into my heart. I think, “Everything is perfect. I’m perfect right here. No changes have to be made.” And what action does it make me want to take? Go outside, sit in a lounge chair, and pet my dog. Not running into the pantry and snacking. 

When you recognize, call out, and allow your emotions, you have all the power to choose how you want to feel. You can have anything in your life that you want. It all starts with feeling your feelings.