Are You Thinking About Your Feelings Or Feeling Them?

Have you ever noticed yourself playing the same story over and over in your head? Have you found yourself trying to defend, make sense of, or justify your feelings? Do you get stuck processing the same feedback loop ad nauseam?

You definitely are not alone. I have recently noticed this within myself, as well as with my clients.

Intellectualizing our emotions is a defense mechanism that keeps us from having to feel the discomfort of our feelings. That’s not to say that the feedback loops we get stuck in aren’t uncomfortable. They certainly can be, and can keep us cycling through the same patterns over and over again.

Even though our thought patterns can feel uncomfortable, it can feel safer for us to use our minds to cognitively process our feelings than to actually allow ourselves to feel our emotions in our bodies.

Think about the last time you were upset by something. What was your go-to response? Did you take time to sit with yourself and be curious about what feelings and sensations were present? Did you start to think about all the ways in which you, or someone else, weren’t meeting your expectations?

It’s okay to go through the steps of processing our feelings out loud with the intellectualization process. However, when we do this we often bypass the also important step of actually feeling our feelings (in our bodies). Intellectualizing our feelings can become a protective way to keep us distant from the discomfort of sadness, grief, anger and vulnerability.

Learning how to feel our emotions in our bodies might feel foreign if it wasn’t modeled to you in childhood or other times in your life. Many cultures focus on stoicism and keeping tears at  bay as a way to not openly show vulnerability to others.

Instead, we are often taught to talk through our feelings – which has its place and is helpful as well – without pausing to allow our bodies input to also be considered and expressed. We therefore learn to rely on our minds to create expectations of ourselves and we rely on our knowledge for context and meaning. Neuroscientists and psychologists are now differentiating between the importance of this form of  processing (called top down) and processing information in our bodies (called top up).

Top up processing relies on sensory input and stimuli for information. We feel feedback within our physiological system instead of thinking about our feelings. Our bodies use our senses, through proprioception (our bodies in space) and interoception (our inner world of organs, muscles and tissues) to give us information about what is going on for us physically and emotionally.

Knowing the difference between thinking about our feelings and actually feeling them is helpful, however the question I get from clients is: How do I learn to process my emotions in my body?

Here are a practice you can use to access the sensory information in your body and to allow your emotions to flow through you.

1.      Create a safe space where you can be quiet and uninterrupted

2.      Place your hand on your heart or another part of your body you feel called to support

3.      Breathe into that space and begin to notice sensory information or emotions that come to the surface

4.      Allow your body to respond by sighing, crying, expressing through movement, rocking or shaking

5.      Let yourself come in and out of this practice as much as is needed, without forcing yourself to stay with it longer than what feels safe for your nervous system

The next time you find yourself ruminating on distressing thoughts, invite this practice in. By doing this, you allow your emotions to be fluid and move through you instead of continuing to stay stuck in your body. Discharging our energy and emotions is an important part of the stress cycle and helps us to get back to our baseline of emotional resilience and overall well-being.

Yogi sitting with her hand on her heart and belly.

By, Nicole Lovald, LMFT, E-RYT 500