Do you ever feel disconnected from your feelings?

I can remember talking to my therapist during one of my very first visits (which was about six years ago) and telling her that I felt like a muted-down version of myself. At the time, I was feeling extremely disconnected and out of touch with how I felt about anything, let alone what I really wanted in life. That truth is, I was stuffing down a lot of emotions back then. I was also experiencing a ton of anxiety. On the rare occasion when I did allow myself to feel and express my emotions (which was only once I’d reached a breaking point), they felt wild, erratic and kind of scary. I had no clue how to feel my feelings.

One of the most important things I learned from the process of therapy (and now continue to learn through my spiritual practice) is that it’s ok to feel your feelings. In fact, it’s not only ok, it’s essential. Once I started to allow myself to feel what I was feeling, I discovered that beneath the layer of anxiety and all of the suppressed emotion was the real me. 

Most of us carry around a (false) unconscious belief that we are flawed somehow. We take painstaking efforts to avoid expressing ourselves fully (because if so-and-so found that out about me, there’s no way he or she could ever love and accept me…) So we stuff down our feelings and we mold ourselves into a neat little package of who we think we’re supposed to be. The irony? All that any of us wants to experience is the complete and total freedom that comes from expressing ourselves fully.

Do you see the conundrum here?

So what happens when we avoid expressing ourselves and start stuffing down feelings? Well, to start, our emotions can only stay stuffed down for so long (emotions want to be expressed, remember?) so they present themselves as anxiety, depression, irrational feelings of irritation toward our friends, family, dogs, etc. We also start to feel disconnected from feeling emotional about anything because (here’s the kicker) we can’t preferentially choose to suppress one emotion and allow another —- that’s not the way it works. So we feel out of touch and disconnected, and our lives become muted-down and lackluster.

As the roar of our stuffed-down emotions becomes louder and louder, we become more and more uncomfortable, so we search for ways to distract ourselves from feeling our feelings. We distract ourselves with a bottle of wine and a Real Housewives marathon. We find ‘happiness’ in an entire bag of popcorn. We exercise, work, and intellectualize over our feelings. Now, this is not to say it’s wrong to veg out to TV or enjoy a glass (or several) of wine from time to time, but it is important to recognize that when we’re using these things as a distraction from feeling our feelings, it isn’t a healthy thing.

On the other hand, when we open up to our emotions and allow ourselves to start to feel, we reawaken ourselves to the beauty of life. We begin to experience depths of emotion long forgotten and life becomes vibrant and rich again. (We have to be able to feel the lows of sadness and disappointment in order to experience the heights of happiness and joy, right?)

How do you feel your feelings?
Simply allow them to come. Don’t resist them! When a feeling comes up, be the gentle observer. Ask yourself, why am I feeling this way?
Breathe through your feelings. For really uncomfortable feelings, try this trick I learned from my mentor Gabrielle Bernstein: Breathe into the feeling for 90 seconds. That’s it. Often, by simply allowing a feeling to be, it dissipates naturally.
Don’t judge your feelings. If you’ve been suppressing your feelings for quite some time, you may not totally understand why you’re feeling what you’re feeling. That’s ok. If you think that there’s something more to explore, journaling or talking with a coach or mentor can be super helpful. Sometimes, the emotion simply needs to pass and that’s all there is to it.