how to feel a feeling

This morning I felt mad and grumpy. I know why, but I'm also not positive that any of my theories are correct. Heavy feelings, even when explainable, are difficult to sit in, despite having tools and holding helpful perspectives. Sometimes I feel that after 20+ years of work on myself I should have it figured out enough to not experience life's lows. That twist of shame on top of already unwelcome feelings makes them harder to admit, feel in to, process, and let go of.

It's the wildest thing. Don't want to feel a feeling? The fastest way to get rid of it is to feel it! we never get to entirely skip it. Sorry. In fact, I find suppressing or delaying confronting it leads to a general malaise and eventual blow out or melt down when the last little irritation hits. When I'm feeling bad I'm less patient with strangers and myself, mysteriously annoyed with my friends, and less enthusiastic or even capable of taking on new or challenging tasks.

Since I realized that feeling my feelings, whatever they are, is so important to my mental and social health and inner state, I built a few tools to whip out when these feelings come up. Even with practice, it's still hard. Tough feelings are tough! But, like taking my medicine at the first sign of a cold, I know it's ultimately the best course of action to tap into them.

Physical

I find my awareness usually begins in the body. It's important to have a groundedness in what 'good' feels like so I know when it shifts. It took me years and years to figure it out. I was so determined that I knew what good should look like I didn't admit that I never actually felt good. Once I flipped my approach and started letting myself be led by my 'feels good' 'doesn't feel good' compass, I got a good read on good. It felt great!

When something is going on inside of me I notice a weight and tightness in my chest and stomach, a sinking constriction. I feel generally uncomfortable, like I can't quite find the right food, activity or position. No matter where I put myself, it feels wrong. I feel like I'm revving my engine without being sure where to go. My breathing is shallow or absent for periods that make me wonder how long it's been. My posture will be more curled in and protective. I avert stranger's eyes and throw out an energetic brick wall to anyone who passes.

Somatically, I try a fake it till you make it approach. If I notice my breathing is shallow, I'll take some deep breaths. I do a body scan and relax my muscles, especially the ball in my stomach. I'll shift in to the posture of a calm, confident, relaxed person who is feeling great. Even if it's a character I'm playing, that's okay. Gentle awareness and physical shifts have an impact on our stress levels and even our thinking.

Mental

A shift in my mental state is inextricable connected to the feeling in my body. My thinking feels tighter, less creative, more likely to focus on the negative. I'm short in my interactions and get annoyed by people just going about their life, doing the things they have always done. I am more likely to be insulted by small oversights and desirous of special treatment, wanting to feel cared for more than another adult in my life should really take on. I have subtle expectations of those around me to notice that something has shifted and know what to do to help me feel better without me having to be vulnerable and ask.

I always try a logical/cognitive approach first. I acknowledge all the things that are changing or challenging. I look at my to do list, which invariably is heavily weighted by the tasks I really don't want to do and have been putting off. I give myself a bit of a pep talk. "That's okay. Those are tough things! I think anyone would feel that way in your shoes. We got this! It's all going to work out. You'll do everything you need to do when you need to do it."

It's especially hard to assess and admit to myself when what is troubling today are things I felt great about the day before because I now have to admit that I've emotionally done a 180 and the good feeling I was so proud of is gone. If the issue was logical or logistic, usually addressing it on this level and getting clear on the why and the what needs to be done empowers me to flip out of it.

Want to get it off your mind and out of your system? Write your stressors on a list. This is the self help-equivalent of complaining. Getting it down on paper relieves your brain of the task of holding it. If you want to remember what is bothering you, you can reference that note or email draft anytime. I can almost guarantee you won't. Sometimes it's easier to start writing if I pretend that I'm writing a letter to a trusted friend, just like I did when I sat down to write what became this essay.

Emotional

If my mind keeps going back and looping on my woes I know the issue wasn't a thinking one so it isn't going to have a thinking solution. When I was living from my conception of myself I had a list of yeses and no's. I decided in advance how I wanted to feel about things and shunned internal evidence to the contrary. Once I became more interested in getting to know who I actually was instead of being determined to be who I wanted to be, it got easier to approach these moments with curiosity and tenderness, the way I would if they were coming from a child.

"Hiiii, you aren't feeling good, huh? That's okay! There's a lot going on right now. Are you a little grumpy? Are you mad? What's happening for you right now?" This part of me feels soft, pure, and childlike. I’m not trying to change, just name. Fear and sadness come out as anger or frustration. Longing feels like regret. Desire or jealousy comes out as judgement. Something I don't want to see or admit about myself looks like an annoyance or intolerance of someone else doing it.

For some reason vulnerable feelings get a dark twist when I first touch them, as if the heavier feelings are a body guard for the tender ones. It always feels better to approach them in an accepting and disarming way instead of a critical one because I can more quickly relax my defense system and get to the heart of the matter - literally.

What's important with feelings isn't finding a solution, it's just being there with the delicate truth of what is. I don't need to solve anything, just be kind, patient and present. "That's okay, that's okay" I'll coo to myself. Maybe it was something my mother used to say to me when she would bounce me on her hip. It's okay that we are here. It's okay that I'm feeling this way. It's going to be okay generally. That small phrase does so much for me. I have also found that now that that is my go to response internally, it's the first thing I say when something goes wrong for or with someone else. I was never so kind to others when I was beating up on myself!

Relational

Emotional awareness and regulation are all important skills, but we aren't necessarily always supposed to be successful in this process on our own. We lead increasingly isolated lives, often not seeing the people we are closest to regularly in person. There aren't ample opportunities to drop in to a feeling space with friends if gathering are in public, in groups, or focused around activities. Personally, I need a bit of light connection and interpersonal foreplay before I'm willing to lay myself out. Another limiting factor is that everyone is having a hard time so there aren't many people we feel comfortable reaching out to with our struggle. Few people seem like they are in a position to they have excess space for emotional labor.

I have found that at the times when I have little to give, when I feel depleted, absolutely down, and quite 'in need,' the best thing I can do for myself is to call a friend who is having a hard time and earnestly ask how they are. Putting my attention on someone else takes my mind of my own drama. Usually when I'm sharing my 2c or just being there with them, I shift into a calmer, wiser, more spacious part of myself, one that is positive and tool oriented. I almost always say something to my friend that I need to hear myself.

It's also okay to ask a friend to regulate you by listening, going on a walk, touching, or simply being there in the room with you. We are wired for community and lacking it, which puts us as organisms in a tough position. We aren't supposed to feel good living like this. We've been tricked into thinking if our body, our job, our spouse and children, our friends, our home and collection of gadgets are just right, we finally be sustainably happy. Unfortunately sustainable happiness doesn't seem to be part of the 'human living on earth' package and success is more contingent on having the skills to bear the tough times with grace and self compassion.

A loving, stable partner isn't enough. We need a collection of stable people in our life that we like and trust to help support and regulate us. When I have been having a hard time, I called in my friends that I trusted, the ones who I knew would tell me the truth to reassure me it was alright. We need touch, something many non romantic relationships are short on. We need another heartbeat in the room, a body that viscerally feels safe, to reassure our body that it's alright. This is something we don't get automatically when we hit the societal success marker of being old enough and able to afford to live alone. Don't want to talk about it? Don’t need to! Just being around someone can be enough to make us feel better.

Venting has gotten a bad rap because some people make a religion of it. Sharing our load with friends can actually be a huge help! It helps and heals us to be vulnerable, to be witnessed, to be accepted. It also helps us to have an opportunity to get our thoughts out of our head. When an internal process is verbalized, it is given clarity in the process of selecting words to describe the feelings instead of sitting with the amorphous concepts in our brain. Sometimes saying it out loud is the part that lets me hear how silly I'm being or gets me to the core of the issue so I can address it.

Venting, to an appropriate person and with permission, can be an important part of emotional processing, but if we treat it like an entire solution it can become toxic. We burn out friendships by constantly complaining, especially about things we can't or aren't taking the steps to change. Instead of using someone's presence in our life as a processing tool, we are using them as an emotional dump. The problem with dumps is the more you put in, the fuller they get. Then you need to keep finding new destinations for your junk. New friends are great, but sustained friendships are transformational. Try not to burn out your support team! Unfortunately this is a lesson many of us only learn by doing, so don't be hard on yourself.

Try to make this relational approach a later step in your process. I regularly have to resist the urge to reach out to someone else to make it better for me before I've done my inner work. When you do tap in a friend, it's a good idea to specify whether you want advice or just to talk so the person doesn't respond in an unhelpful way. It's also wise to be aware of how much you are going to the same person with the same complaint and spread the love. Remember that it's okay to want to be witnessed and held. In fact, sometimes it's very necessary and effective. Like anything there are more and less effective ways to go about it.

Spiritual

In tough times, the times when I can't 'figure it out,' I have hit the limitation of my rational mind. That was when I learned to tap in a belief system, a concept of something outside of myself that I couldn't see. I was very resistant to having to grapple with a concept of god years ago when I was working a 12 step program. In fact, I was determined to get through without. Being around people who were going deep in to their shit to sort it out and hearing how they used the 'god' concept to help them through the tough bits was a big opening for. Hardly anyone I was around in my life talked about god. To bring it up would have one pigeon holed as an enthusiast and labeled with a slew of judgements. God wasn't cool. God didn't feel accessible. I wasn't convinced it could be useful to a degree that made it feel worth tackling the task of coming up with the ultimate imaginary friend.

I remember the first night that I was aware I had hit the edge of my my mind's capabilities. I was able to watch my mind running in circles searching for a problem it could define, an action it could take to control the outcome. It just wasn't going to be possible for me to come up with a strategy that would assure me the upper hand on the situation. By the time I admitted that to myself, I had really put myself through it. The lightbulb went off. "Oh. This is why people have god." I needed a teammate I could pass the ball to, one who was in a better position to hold it without getting pummeled and who could pass it back when the time was right and I was in the clear. Enter god.

At first I was very particular about what name and image I was going to use. I definitely wasn't talking to the bearded white guy in the sky. I came up with a concept I could stomach and started talking, mostly in my car and the bathroom mirror. I would list things I was grateful for. I'd send a shoutout to the people in my life who were having a hard time. I'd ask for access to specific qualities, like patience, clarity, or feeling comfortable in the times of not knowing. Having a belief in a grand plan and an all knowing orchestrator that cared about me and wanted the best for me really helped me get through periods of uncertainty. The more I held the idea in my mind and talked to it, the more I felt something on the other end of the line.

For the purpose of the 12 step program, it's important to have a sky buddy who loves and accepts you despite your shortcomings when you are working looking at your past, getting ready to own and share your mistakes, then reach out and apologize where necessary. Ouch. Not only is this inner work humbling, but it brings up feelings of guilt and, for me, inherent worthlessness, my sense of being intrinsically 'wrong' in some permanent and unforgivable way.

It's taken almost 10 years and many iterations, but I have a concept of god that feels unconditionally loving and accepting. After all, if I was made perfect, then even my flaws and mistakes were a part of the grand puzzle. When I'm feeling really down and remember or am reminded to reach for that presence, I always feel held and accepted in a way that eases my emotional load. I don't have to figure it out or bear it alone. This relationship has been reflective of the amount of time and attention I've put in to it. It has ebbed, flowed and evolved, but always been a home base I can return to, especially when things are hardest.