Feel Your Feelings

I’ve been really focused on feeling my feelings lately. I grew up in a family where strong feelings were subtly shunned. If you cried, you did it in private and if you happened to cry in front of someone else you said “I’m sorry!” over and over again until you stopped. It’s taken me a while, but I realize now how dangerous this has been for my mental, physical and spiritual health. Feelings are important and they are meant to be felt.

I bought a book recently (I’m always buying books!) called The Language of Emotions (Karla McLaren). I haven’t finished reading it yet, but it’s really making me think differently about feelings/emotions and how they are not inherently bad or good and each carry gifts of their own that you will miss out on if you don’t express them.

The most important takeaway I’ve gotten so far is that you can’t feel your feelings by reading a book; you have to put what you’ve read into practice. So I’ve been practicing this week. I want to get back to the connection to my emotions that I’m sure I had when I was a child. I want to just allow whatever I’m feeling to be ok to feel – no judgments, no censure.

And the funniest thing has been happening. When I felt my feelings, really let go and felt them and noticed how they made my body feel and what thoughts I was thinking to go along with them (with no self-censure or judgments), after a few minutes, the feelings got less intense and  then vanished. I was then left with a feeling of calm and clarity. If I had known that that would happen instead of the mental picture I carried of myself exploding from feeling anything too deeply I would have started embracing my feelings a long time ago!  

It’s amazing how many Americans have been taught to deny the full expression of their emotions. It’s amazing and sad. I now believe that you can’t censor one side of yourself without it affecting other elements of yourself from being expressed. It’s a lose-lose situation.  So, today I move forward noticing and practicing feeling my feelings. Like any new skill, practice makes perfect and I’m determined to get better at this day by day.