Many of my clients come to me with fears or uncertainty around expressing their emotions. We learn most of our conscious and unconscious behaviors early on in life. If some or all of our emotions were not validated growing up, it can seem daunting and overwhelming to begin to feel them as adults. In addition, witnessing certain patterns or behaviors from important figures in our lives conditions us to believe certain things about our emotions. For example, maybe you were taught to believe that certain emotions such as anger or sadness are “bad” and other feelings such as joy are “good.” It is also common to grow up in a household where no one talked about their feelings openly. As an adult, this can leave you clueless about how to regulate and understand your own emotional experience.
Regardless of what you were taught, it is important to learn about and understand your feelings and emotions, including how they feel and manifest in your body. Below I will discuss why this is an important skill. I will also outline some useful tips for how to get in touch with your own feelings.
Emotions are part of being human
Think of emotions as waves of energy that flow through our bodies and communicate to us. We are built to feel a full spectrum of core emotions such as anger, fear, joy, sadness, excitement, and disgust. These core emotions help us understand, connect, and communicate with others. They also help us to connect with ourselves. Emotions help us understand whether we should flee from danger, stand up for ourselves, or give someone a hug. Feeling our emotions has been an important part of our evolution and survival as a species and, when felt fully, these emotions can help us live a more connected and full life. Unfortunately, over the years, many humans have been taught to believe that emotions are the enemy and that they need to be tamed, pushed down, numbed, or controlled. We have even gone so far as to label someone “emotional” or “emotionally sensitive” as a negative connotation, instead of celebrating this incredible ability that lives within all of us.
Read more: How Being Vulnerable Makes You Stronger
Suppressing our emotions can lead to negative consequences down the road
Not understanding or being in touch with your emotions can lead to some unfortunate consequences. Studies show that suppressing emotions makes people aggressive and easily agitated. For example, if you push down feelings of anger towards your boss during your work day, you are more likely to snap or pick a fight with your partner that evening. When you are either blocking or trying to control an emotion that biologically needs to be felt, it can build up inside you. This means you may feel it unexpectedly later on, which actually makes many people feel more out of control. The more we pile up and ignore our feelings, the more overwhelming it can seem to actually feel them. This could also lead to unhealthy behaviors, such as using substances or turning to food to numb out. In addition, other studies show that ignoring emotional cues can lead to problems with our physical health, including higher rates of IBS, heart disease, and lowered immunity
Watch: What is Your Anxiety Telling You
Tips for connecting to and understanding your emotions
If you are someone who hasn’t felt their emotions in a long time, feels overwhelmed by them, or doesn’t understand what your emotions even feel like, you are not alone. Many people are simply not taught to be in touch with their feelings, and educating yourself on how to regulate and feel them in a healthy and nondestructive way is the first step.
Read more: Make Friends with Your Feelings
Below are some tips for how to connect to and understand your feelings:
- Take a pause and observe: One of the easiest ways to start to tap into your emotions is to take a pause during the day and check in with yourself, both physically and mentally. How are you feeling? Are you holding tension in your body. If so, where? What thoughts are running through your mind? These are some basic questions to ask yourself when you are taking a pause. It’s important to be nonjudgmental when you are taking a moment to observe what’s going on with your body and mind in the present moment. Picture yourself as a detective who is curious about your physical sensations and thoughts and how they might be connected.
- Take a breath: Once you begin observing the sensations that you’re experiencing and have named some of the feelings, take a few long and controlled breaths. Make the exhale longer than the inhale. Breathing deeply like this activates the vagus nerve, which is a part of our bodies that helps to regulate emotions and our nervous system. When you are breathing deeply in this way, you are helping to regulate your emotions and their intensity in the moment.
- Practice self-compassion: Remind yourself that you are human, and all humans experience a full spectrum of emotions. Notice when you feel ashamed or uncomfortable with experiencing one of your emotions. This is likely due to a belief or story that you were taught. Honoring all of our emotions is an amazing way to begin to accept ourselves and practice self care. Research shows that practicing self-soothing and self-compassion releases oxytocin in our bodies. This makes us feel calmer and more connected with ourselves and each other.
It might seem daunting and scary to begin to feel your emotions, especially if you have been out of touch with them. However, it is important to note that emotions are fleeting and need to be felt so that we can release them. No feeling lasts forever. The more comfortable you are with how emotions feel, the easier it will be to ride the wave. As Alan Watts says, “if, for a change, we would allow our feelings and look upon their comings and goings as something as beautiful and necessary as changes in the weather, the going of night and day, and the four seasons, we would be at peace with ourselves.”
What are some ways that you honor your emotions? Join the conversation in the comments below.
- How to Connect With Your Inner Child [Video] - December 27, 2019
- The Importance of Understanding Your Emotions - October 18, 2019
- The Effects of Chronic Stress - June 7, 2019
8 comments
Awesome blog, Jenna! Understanding our emotions can be so challenging. I appreciate you highlighting the fact that coming from a home in which talking or processing feelings was not the norm can leave adults feeling disconnected from their emotions. I value your understanding of anger and sadness as being real emotions that deserve space and time for processing. For me, I honor my emotions by understanding what I am feeling in my body as it is a clear sign for me that something is off. I will try your breathing suggestions to help with this.
Thank you for this Jenna 🙂
Therapy has been helpful for me and I feel very lucky to have you by my side. You help me understand my emotional spectrum and I love how you lead me to validate all my emotions and welcome them all.
Thank you, I am so glad it’s been helpful 🙂
This is an important topic, as so many people do not learn how to feel and express their emotions. I love how you frame emotions as a tool for survival and the simple tips for how to get more in touch with your feelings. I think self-compassion is particularly helpful for navigating an emotional experience. I can get so much relief from saying something as simple to myself as “I am feeling sad, it makes sense I’m feeling this way, and it is okay for me to feel this way.” Thanks for this post, Jenna!
I really like this blog, Jenna! I appreciate that you normalize and explain why it can often be difficult for people to contact and express their emotions. The concrete tips you offer are very helpful. Along those lines, I personally find it helpful to name what I’m feeling to myself when I pause to check in. Thanks for this!
I really like this blog simply helped to differentiate a lot of things which is applicable in our daily life
This is a wonderful post! I will be using it as a reading resource for patients. Clear. Concise. Compelling. Thank you! I look forward to read other posts by you!
Waving to you from Alaska,
MA, LPC
Great post with helpful concepts