Feeling our Feelings
Kat Williams, MHC
In my work as a therapist, one of the most common themes I encounter is our collective human resistance to leaning into our feelings, especially the difficult ones like sadness, grief, and rejection. In a bustling city like New York City, we're bombarded with stimuli, often living on autopilot, making it challenging to slow down and connect with our emotions. Taking time to connect with our feelings can seem unproductive in a society that believes that our worth equates to our productivity. Our childhood experiences shape how we perceive and express emotions in adulthood. For instance, if you grew up in a household where expressing sadness was discouraged, you might carry that belief into your adult life, avoiding sadness at all costs.
As adults, we often go to great lengths to avoid feeling certain emotions, whether by distracting ourselves or numbing ourselves with substances or doom scrolling on social media. However, when we suppress our emotions, they manifest in various ways, such as headaches, gut issues, or intense emotional outbursts over seemingly little incidents like missing your subway train.
Learning to sit with our emotions is essential for our well-being. By allowing ourselves to experience and process our feelings without judgment, we can prevent them from being stored in our bodies and experience a fuller range of emotions, including joy and excitement which leads to more connective and fulfilling relationships and lives.
So, how do we sit with our emotions? One approach is somatic experiencing:
Close your eyes and visualize the color and shape of the emotion.
Focus on where you feel the emotion in your body and take slow, deep breaths.
Remind yourself that emotions are temporary and that you are safe.
Gradually increase the time you spend with each emotion, even if it's just a few seconds at first.
Journaling can also be helpful:
Use an emotion wheel (see this one I love below) to identify your feelings.
Reflect on the need communicated by the emotion and whether it aligns with the situation.
Consider how to process the feeling, whether through crying or deep breathing.
If you find it challenging to navigate your emotions alone, working with a therapist can provide support in tapping into and processing stored emotions.
