Anytime I start having anxious or nervous or fearful or overwhelmed thoughts, I have to remember that there is a big difference between noticing my feelings and actually feeling your feelings fully.
When I feel through an experience or emotion fully, then I will no longer have thoughts or any kind of anxiety.
Thoughts Are Signals
My thoughts tell me that there is something more to feel. Because when I am fully present, my emotions fully experienced, there is no thought.
If I am taking note of some event with my mind, but I am not actually experiencing the energy of it, then that bypassed energy clogs up my system and sits inside of me waiting for an opportunity to be released.
This is the difference between intellectual acknowledgment and somatic experience. I can know I’m angry without actually letting anger move through my body. The knowing isn’t enough.
Life Triggers for Release
Life gives me events that will trigger for release stuck energy in my nervous system which was not fully experienced in the past.
It is easy to avoid experiencing the emotional energy of my life and my thoughts, and continue to spin over them, because that energy is uncomfortable.
The spinning thoughts are a sign that feeling your feelings hasn’t happened yet. The thoughts will keep spinning until the energy underneath them gets processed.
Grapple With Discomfort
My work in feeling your feelings is to muster the courage to grapple with that temporary discomfort, not mentally, but experientially in my body.
The frantic thoughts that will not stop are a defense mechanism I use so I do not have to sit still with my uncomfortable feelings fully.
Thinking about feelings is a way to avoid actually having them. It feels productive but it’s actually avoidance. The mind loves to analyze because analysis keeps it busy and keeps the body’s experience at arm’s length.
The Difference
Noticing a feeling: “I observe that I am feeling anxious. I wonder why. Let me think about all the reasons I might feel this way.”
Feeling your feelings: “There is tension in my chest. I’m going to stay with this sensation without trying to figure it out. I’m going to breathe into it and let it do whatever it needs to do.”
One keeps you in your head. The other puts you in your body. Only the body version actually moves energy.
Burning Off Energy
If I can become still, then I can have a feeling-based experience in my body that slowly dissipates, rather than a thought-based noticing of my feelings that may last forever because I am not actually burning off or transmuting any of the emotional energy.
Feeling your feelings in your body, rather than just noticing them with your mind, has been the key for me.
This is the work that actually changes things.
Explore the Shadow Work practices for guided exercises that help you feel, process, and transform.
The Practice
I sit with the feeling until it is no longer present. And then I am fully present.
Try this: next time thoughts won’t stop, stop trying to solve them. Find the sensation in your body. Stay with that sensation without naming it or analyzing it. Let it move on its own.
The thoughts will quiet when the energy underneath them has been felt. Not before.