A topic that comes up a lot in therapy is the idea of “feeling your feelings.”

On first glance, that reads as seemingly pretty obvious—you just feel them.

But it’s actually harder and not as obvious as it sounds because a lot of us are not taught how to feel our feelings (this can sometimes be due to familial, societal, or cultural conditioning), or maybe we’re not taught how to do it in a way that doesn’t overwhelm us or send us into a downward spiral of more and more negative emotions (like we will just be swept out to sea and there’s nothing we can do about it).

There’s also the possibility that we were taught to ignore challenging feelings like anger, sadness or jealousy because they are viewed as “bad” or as character flaws.

Whatever the case, many of us did not have a class in school that explicitly taught us emotion management, plus, as this psychologist points out, there is an art to feeling our feelings.

“Feelings are NOT designed to have us slow down and really feel them,” Victoria Lemle Beckner, a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of California, San Fransisco, wrote in Psychology Today. “We may not even be consciously aware of our emotional state.”

So true.

Data Points

Lemle Beckner adds that feelings are essentially behavior drivers, so when we feel positive emotions (joy, excitement, pride, etc.) we will generally move toward or embrace whatever is stimulating those feelings. But when we feel more negative emotions (sadness, rejection, disappointment, etc.), we will typically move away from or avoid the circumstances that are generating those feelings.

“Our brain just needs to register a feeling just long enough to orient us to what’s important in the environment and to activate various physical and behavioral systems to fuel a move toward or away,” Lemle Beckner writes.

So feelings in and of themselves are pretty innocuous—they’re basically data points, or information, that we are collecting from our perceptions and environmental circumstances. Those data points will then elicit a response from us.

When we are less aware of this process, however, the more likely we are to react to the feelings from a place of conditioning or habit. For example, we may develop coping mechanisms that help us avoid uncomfortable emotions, and a lot of times we’re engaging in those coping mechanisms on autopilot.

Take intellectualizing as an example. It’s a pretty common coping mechanism that helps us to deal with emotional discomfort by focusing on rational or logical approaches to an issue rather than focusing on the feelings.

Or, we might develop a habit of avoiding feelings via things like work, shopping, eating, achieving (which is socially acceptable and oftentimes rewarded), or any other number of behaviors, or even addictive tendencies, that can distract us from perceived emotional pain or discomfort.

Why feel your feelings?

If, on the other hand, we can develop more awareness of our emotional state and increase our confidence with managing the uncomfortable emotions (a whole other topic for another day), then the better able we are to make different behavioral choices, which is pretty important if we want to make a change in our lives.

For example, if we’re working on reducing social anxiety, it’s important to be able to identify the feeling of rejection when it surfaces so that we can build up tolerance to it and even challenge the associated thoughts and beliefs and then make different behavioral choices to engage in social activities rather than avoid them.

That’s so much easier said than done, but developing greater emotional awareness by identifying and feeling feelings (even if it’s in small, baby steps at first) can provide us with more authority or choice in how we move throughout our lives.

So how can you start to feel your feelings, or building awareness around your emotional state, if it’s not something you’re used to?

Support and Self-Care

First, make sure you have solid self-care strategies in place. Whether that’s calling a friend, exercising, taking a nap, cleaning, doing something creative, it’s important to have some ideas for how you can self-soothe when feeling uncomfortable.

Depending on your past history and what’s currently going on in your life, you might also want to seek the support of a therapist or find a support group to help manage or work through discomfort that could arise as emotions start to surface more. Significant emotional processing may also be done best with someone who is trained to hold a safe space for you.

Build awareness, but start small.

If you truly haven’t felt your feelings in a while, it’s not necessarily advisable to go hunting for the most intense ones first. It could overwhelm you, and then you might shut down or be turned off from this experiment entirely.

So one small step is to start building awareness around what you’re feeling throughout a given day. Try using a feelings wheel to get as specific as you can and check in with yourself three to four times throughout the day—just make a note of the feeling that you can identify during those check-in points.

As an added layer, you can also keep track of your behavioral responses to the feelings. For example, if you’re feeling stressed, do you tend to automatically grab something to eat? Or if you’re feeling frustrated, do you immediately go into problem-solving (overanalyzing) mode?

Just notice and be curious (without judging, if you can).

The more awareness we build up, the easier (and faster) we can tune into our emotional states at any given moment, and then, with time, the easier it will be to choose different responses to those emotions. For example, instead of reaching for a donut when we’re stressed, we may instead chose to catch up with a friend, take a nap or go exercise.

Worth the Effort

There is so much more to say on the topic of feelings, including how to sit with and manage the more uncomfortable ones (stay tuned for that in future newsletters), but hopefully this was a helpful reminder that feeling our feelings in a conscious, skillful way is not necessarily innate and takes practice.

If we make the effort, though, we will often have more authority or control (And who doesn’t like the idea of having more control?) over how we are showing up and moving throughout the world.

Additional Takes on Feeling Feelings

“The Key Skill We Rarely Learn: How to Feel Your Feelings” via Psychology Today

“What Do You Do with the Mad That You Feel?” via Mr. Rogers

“How to Feel Your Feelings” via Therapy in a Nutshell

Do you struggle with the idea of journaling? Maybe staring at a blank page feels intimidating, or maybe you don't know where to begin and hate the idea of doing it "wrong?"​ 

If you’re seeking a structured way to self-reflect, the Non-Journal Journal removes the blank page and provides a roadmap with guided prompts to help you check in mentally, emotionally and physically.