How to feel your feelings-and why you might want to.

It was a revelation when I first learnt that emotions start as sensations in the body. Even when I understood this, I didn’t believe that this knowledge could help the way I feel. My focus was only on what I was thinking and what was going on in my head and it has taken a while to get to a place where I can do something different.

When people talk about ‘feeling your feelings’ I believe they mean tuning into your body sensations. So how do you do this? Try the following steps:-

Bring to mind a difficult emotion, such as sadness or anger. Observe the sensation in your body with curiosity and without judgment. Is it a tight feeling in your chest? An ache in your stomach? A constriction in your throat? Try to imagine what shape it is. Is it pulsating or vibrating? Light or heavy? Warm or cool?

Next, breath into and around the sensation. Slow, deep breathing is helpful, as it calms the body. Allow the sensation to be there, even if you don’t like it or want it. Don’t push it away.

You may need to focus on the sensation for a few minutes. If the sensation changes, notice this. If it doesn’t change, that’s fine: your aim is to accept it.

This is a skill which requires practice, and may feel hard at first. After a while, you may find that something shifts after focusing on the sensation. Perhaps a fresh perspective appears or a new idea comes to mind.

Feeling your feelings can be a way of reducing overthinking: rather than trying to figure things out in your mind about why the difficult emotion arose or what you might do to fix it, focus on the sensation instead. You might be surprised by what happens….

I recommend The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris, which is based on ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) if you want to dive deeper into this topic. The book covers a lot more besides.