Talking about it helps
Talking about the thing gets us closer to feeling resolved about it. But I’ll be the first to admit that talking about it won’t always help us move through it entirely. At some point we need to put down the discussion of it and let the feelings catch up and be felt.
Talk therapy can be useful in so many ways. We are meaning-making creatures, we have a need to understand. Talking things through helps satisfy that need to organize our experience and settle our "but why?!" with answers that fit. But, this only tends to one layer of our experience.
Are you feeling it or just talking about the feelings?
This is where a lot of people get caught up - in the intellectualizing of their experience while avoiding embodying their experience.
The tricky thing with talking about it is that it can appear as though we are processing our experience, but sometimes talking can be used as a form of avoidance of feeling (which is a critical part of processing). Are you talking to keep the rush of feeling from flooding in? Are you feeling in your body through your intense experience? Or are you experiencing thoughts of emotions and thereby severing your body from your mind? Many people avoid the feeling part because they don't want to fall apart. Nevertheless, those feelings don't disappear, they get suppressed.
You’ve got to feel it to heal it. There’s no other way around it
Routine suppression of feeling makes us increasingly rigid in order to contain the building energy that exists below the surface waiting to be released. If we don't let it out, it finds a way out. And this unintentional leaking of our feelings is often messier than letting the initial emotional response out to begin with.
When we avoid letting our feelings find their full, unobstructed expression, we hold them hostage in our body where they attempt to find their release in all kinds of creative (and anxiety-inducing) ways. This can materialize as habits that feel out of our control:
“I can’t stop scrolling even though I should be sleeping by now!”
“I can’t stop ruminating about that conversation!”
“I can’t stop biting my nails!”
“I can’t stop binge eating!”
“I can’t stop my legs from fidgeting”
These compulsive behaviors are counterweighting the pent-up energy of neglected emotions. In other words, your unexpressed emotions are bottled up and because we are not made to completely suppress our emotions, they leak out in many different ways - namely as anxiety.
To move through an emotionally intense experience, we need to engage our body
Somatic work involves bringing the focal point down from the mind into the body where it can be primally felt, expressed, & released. This can look like deep breathing, crying, growling, shaking..etc. We were physiologically and psychologically designed to feel and hold intensity. No one is spared from grief, sadness, anger or trauma in this lifetime.
As scary as it might seem, feeling is liberating! Letting the thunderous quake of immense grief or the fire of anger to course through us is an incredible experience if we don't obstruct its flow. There’s even a certain kind of ecstasy that can be accessed by surrendering fully to an emotional release.
“Bliss is any any feeling fully felt."
"But how do I feel if I've cut myself off from it for so long?"
It starts with being aware of when you "check out" to avoid feeling.
Notice your behaviors, be mindful of when you're doing that compulsive thing.
When you catch yourself “checking out,” pause.
Put down the distractions.
Pivot inwards.
Be present with yourself.
Breathe deeper.
Soften the rigidity of the body.
Think of your hurt
and lean in.
I was terrible at feeling my feelings due to a tough upbringing that caused me to build steel walls around my heart. I couldn’t let go on my own, I didn’t know how to. Needless to say, I finally got to my breaking point with my counterweighting behaviors - they were wreaking havoc in my life and relationships. Something had to give. I was in a sabotaging sprial and couldn’t get myself under control. My therapist at the time gave me radical permission to let it all out - to feel my shame, my hurt, my truth that I had starved myself from feeling. I was terrified at first, but the rush after that first cathartic purge was so liberating. My therapist was able to skillfully facilitate my cracking open. She helped me name and validate my hurt which opened the floodgates. I let myself be seen by her, but more importantly, with her help I was able to let myself be seen and validated by my own self.
Sometimes we just need the space to be held by someone else so we can let go. Having a trusted loved one or a professional to hold space for you while you lean into your feeling is not always necessary, but it’s often helpful.