when {not to} feel your feelings

It is easy to get caught up in the idea that you should always be able to stop, drop, and feel all of your feelings. Especially if you are on a journey of personal healing and self empowerment, and looking to the world of the “self help” industry for tools and support.

But part of knowing how to truly feel your feelings is learning when it’s not appropriate to do so.

I have been teaching the art of feeling emotions for a long time. I teach it because I struggle with it and know the hardships of having big feelings very well.

Often when we are learning how to really feel our feelings and tapping into the wisdom of our feelings we struggle to know the difference between feeling and being overwhelmed in our feelings.

I have people say to me, “But I feel it TOO much! That’s my problem!”

And my response is, it’s not always appropriate to feel, especially when we are flooded and disregulated and overwhelmed (hear more of my thoughts on overwhelm in this podcast episode). In those moments, we are too caught up in our nervous system response to properly tune in and slow down and access the wisdom of our emotions.

When we are wildly overwhelmed, slowing down to feel may make things even more confusing and difficult. We may spiral even further.

The priority in those moments actually lies in bringing ourselves back to our center.

Whether that is through something as simple as splashing cold water on our face or deep belly breaths... or something more active like dancing or journaling or asking (a trusted) someone to be a witness for us in order to co-regulate... we are invited to do what is necessary to bring ourselves back to a more regulated state.

The good news is, when we learn how to feel our feelings during moments where it’s more accessible, we get flooded less often, or can keep our center a little longer when we are flooded. But that’s advanced stuff. In the beginning, getting ourselves back into a grounded state and then looking back at what happened and what we were feeling can be a powerful gateway to ourselves.

XO

Thaís