How do you do feelings?

Feel or flee?

Part of my work is aimed at an important problem I see generally present in so many of us: a disconnection from our feelings and needs. This often stems from childhood: if we experienced significant challenges at a very young age, we may have experienced overwhelm, fear, stress, and so forth. One common survival skill we may have implemented is the suppression of emotions, either because we didn’t know how to handle them at that young age (likely due to our caretakers also not knowing how to handle their own emotions, and so neither modeling nor teaching this), or because in our environment, showing certain emotions was unwelcome or led to something worse.

Our emotions point to our needs, so when we suppress or disconnect from our emotions, our ability to connect with our needs suffers, too. This leaves us, in a way, blind, navigating life without the important inner compass of our fully-present feelings and needs.

For some of us growing up, in some environments, only some feelings were “allowed” and others forbidden, like if you were not allowed to cry or show anger. Parents might have their own issues here, or be trying to teach strength, resilience, or some other skill, but in fact not teaching children to appropriately feel and deal with emotions leads to children learning instead to ignore these important signals. The result is that children do not learn how to feel and express their emotions in ways that serve life, or how to understand what their feelings mean or what unmet needs they may be pointing to. If we suppress our sadness because crying isn’t ok, or our pain and anger because showing it is not permitted, we lose our ability to feel and process disappointment, loss, and the difficulties of life. We lose access to vital dimensions of life, and essential tools for skillfully navigating the world and our relationship with it.

It’s also possible that we grew up in a rewards-and-punishment environment. This is still so incredibly common! However, this, too, can cause disconnection: if we were rewarded for doing what our parents or teachers told us, we were conditioned to seek approval, and our motivations become externally-oriented. On the other hand, when we were punished for not doing what our parents or teachers wanted, we might have prioritized our needs for connection and belonging by going along with the punishment, buying into the thinking that “I was bad.” Or, we might have prioritized our needs for authenticity, dignity, or autonomy, and rebelled. Both these strategies lead to disconnection from some emotions and needs in favor of others. While it’s true that under certain circumstances, we may not be able to meet all our needs in a given moment, we can connect momentarily with those unmet needs and acknowledge them. On the other hand, if we live disconnected long enough, we may develop deep feelings of numbness, shame, anger, or self-hatred, and this, too, has serious consequences.

The more disconnection we learn to maintain, the more likely we are to somatize our emotions. The suppression or ignoring of psychic pain may manifest as anxiety, depression, addiction, physical pain, or behavioral issues like violence. When we are disconnected from our feelings and needs, we don’t have easy access to compassion, care, and emotions like regret or guilt—emotions which can serve as a useful compass to orient us toward right living. (We feel guilt when we’ve done something not aligned with our values, for instance—which can become shame if we believe we’re fundamentally bad for doing something or being a certain way.) It’s common enough to hear of people using food, alcohol, drugs, or screens to numb out and disconnect from pain, or as a way to experience some strong sensory stimulus to distract from what’s underneath. Others may engage in hyper-productivity, serious sports, or overwork as strategies to avoid feeling pain.

To connect with our pain, which will eventually lessen it, requires mourning. This can be simply feeling the unfelt pain, little by little, and allowing it to move through instead of sticking and showing up maladaptively in our behavior or our body. It means letting yourself feel sad, or angry, or whatever it is, letting the feeling be without needing justification, and without rushing to soothe the feeling, distract from it, or try to problem-solve it.

Our society seems to only permit mourning when someone dies. Even then, there are apparently “right” and “wrong” ways to mourn. But mourning can be a regular emotional hygiene practice. It’s a powerful way to meet our very human need to be fully human. The mourning process is highly personal, so what it “looks like” or how long it lasts will vary. The less we resist the process, the lighter it tends to be.

Mourning as a practice can be particularly useful for feeling the “everyday things” (which is anything that feels like it wants your attention, even if “other people” might not think it mourning-worthy). We may feel tremendous fear at the idea of touching into sadness or rage, because we might think it will totally overpower us, or we're afraid of what we might do or feel if we allow those emotions the space to be. But what if we give that feeling a dedicated space, and follow through with it?

You can set a timer, and say “I’ll give myself 3 minutes to feel angry about that thing at work” or “For just 5 minutes, I’ll cry all I want about that breakup” and let that time be fully dedicated to the feeling. You can always come back to it, for another few minutes, and if you keep your word to yourself, you may be surprised that having a dedicated time for mourning can be quite effective at preventing it from fully incapacitating you at other times, while still allowing the feelings to live and flow and not stagnate as illness or dis-ease. And don’t be surprised if some feelings need lots of little 5-minute windows, or only a few—sometimes we carry the fear of a feeling for so long that the original feeling ends up actually being quite manageable in comparison.

Silent empathy can be a great ally in the mourning process. Accompaniment is enormously beneficial, especially if you’re really concerned about touching into your feelings, or having trouble doing so. Mourning helps restore balance and integrity to the body-mind system, and increases resilience. Mourning helps enhance our capacity for joy and meaning because it helps us reconnect with our inner guide, our innate wisdom. We can grow in compassion and care for ourselves, which leads to greater compassion and care for others: we aren’t “pouring from an empty cup.”

If you think accompaniment would be supportive, I’d love to help you. I offer non-directive, non-judgmental, presence-centered empathic listening. Drop-in or regular sessions are available. You can contact me directly or read more about me and my work here.