How to Feel Your Feelings and Not Drown in Them

Here’s how to feel your feelings and not drown in them or get stuck in them. Most of us push negative emotions away out of habit. Here are the reasons why it’s way better to feel all the feelings.

Yesterday I was working with a client and she was so excited. She had discovered the power of being able to feel, how she actually felt. Instead of pushing it away, she had let herself feel what was going on and it changed everything.

I know it can be scary to think of giving into feelings. But I’m going to tell you why this is so freaking good for you (it can take years off your face) and how to do it easily.

Another great benefit is this will help you with any addictions and bad habits you have. When you can feel your feelings; you become invincible and unstoppable. My client had allowed herself to feel a craving, one she had been giving into for years.

In my practice, women are often afraid to feel their true feelings, often because they fear they will get stuck in them or drown in them. So, we use a variety of methods to avoid feeling what comes up.

We really think that if we feel something, that we’ll feel that way all day, maybe forever. So we don’t give in to sadness, disappointment, anger, or even feeling an intense craving.

Or we’re afraid if we feel something like hope or optimism, we’ll just get hurt more later.

Some of us are even afraid to feel joy or happiness.

When my client allowed herself to fully feel her craving, it actually went away and she was able to easily pass on what would normally become a binge.

So whether you are binging on foods or feeling bad, I’m going to help you process those feelings so you not only don’t drown in them, you take your power back.

Why It’s Important to Feel Your Feelings

Because that is how our body works. We FEEL feelings. They aren’t all that bullshit that runs through your head.

Your feelings are something you can feel.

In your body.

And some of them hurt.

Hey Sara! Aren’t we supposed to avoid things that hurt us?

The answer is, not always. Yes, please don’t put your hand on the hot stove. But when you allow yourself to feel all your feelings, you become more resilient, have more energy, and have access to better thinking and options.

Also, as you become more practiced at this, your feelings won’t feel as foreign or scary.

You become more confident and surer of yourself.

You don’t do things to avoid certain feelings and you will be able to do things you were formerly afraid to do because of how you might feel.

For example, many of us don’t say what is on our minds or do things we want, because we don’t want to feel embarrassed or judged.

We give up parts of ourselves every single day because of our unwillingness to feel how we truly feel!

5 Ways We Push Away Our Feelings

While women are considered to be emotional; in my experience, they are in the habit of not feeling their emotions through a variety of ways.

What we think of managing our emotions is usually our attempt at not feeling our true emotions. We do this in a variety of ways.

The five ways that I most see are these:

• Buffer with substances or numb ourselves with activities
• Place the blame on others so we don’t have to look within
• Argue with reality. Not accepting what is
• Paste another feeling over it. You smile and laugh to not show how you really feel
• Make changes. Move, break up, throw away, or quit. We try to change the environment

We all do some of these things, so this isn’t criticism. However, when we do this more often than not, we end up feeling like we’ve lost part of ourselves.

And we have!

We end up losing our true connection to our heart and spirit.

Most of us think the goal is to never feel anything negative again. You know, the old pursuit of happiness things.

However, feeling good all the time is not a productive goal. We lose access to much of our innate wisdom when we avoid feeling our emotions.

Benefits of Feeling Your Emotions

• You become whole
• You become authentic
• You have access to your inner wisdom
• You get more out of life
• Relationships become better
• You feel better overall
• Things that used to bother you, won’t anymore

You will begin to be aware of what is really going on in your body. Awareness and acceptance of what is true and real for you is a game-changer.

You can spend hours, days, weeks going around in your head and never getting anywhere. Two minutes of feeling your emotions and you may actually find the peace you crave.

Emotions are truly interesting. Sometimes it seems like we just get hit by them. Something happens. A friend says something, and we feel blindsided. Our partner doesn’t do something and we feel abandoned.

Our pet dies and we feel sadness or grief. There’s no parking spots and our appointment is in 5 minutes, and we feel panicked.

Other times, we can bring up feelings by remembering an incident. We think about something that happened to us and we feel angry. Or we reminisce about our grandkids, and we feel infused with love.

This constant procession of emotions through our body is normal, as normal as breathing.

But here’s what happens. There are a lot of emotions we don’t want to feel and/or we don’t want to feel something about someone.

I call these the icky sticky feelings. We don’t want to feel anger, jealousy, regret, fear, rejection, humiliation, shame, embarrassment, or disappointed.

That list isn’t all of them but those are some of the more common feelings we avoid.

I’m going to share a secret.

None of those are pleasant to feel but you have the innate ability to successfully feel and process all those emotions.

The really cool thing is that you won’t drown in them. You won’t get stuck in them. And by feeling them, you will have access to more options, solutions, and eventually peace.

It is through avoiding and pushing away emotions that we get in trouble.

When my clients learn to truly feel what is going on in their bodies, situations change, they become more resilient, relationships improve, and they finally have some peace of mind.

How to Feel Your Emotions and Not Drown

Here’s how to do this. It doesn’t require any special equipment or weird process. Really, the bottom line is that you give yourself a couple of minutes to just feel your body.

You can do that right now. Think of something that recently happened that felt good. Now using your imagination, scan your body. Find any sensation you can.

You feel a warmth or cozy feeling. Where is it? In your heart, your chest, your gut? Describe it to yourself. And just enjoy it for a minute or so.

Next, think about something that didn’t feel so good that happened recently. Don’t go looking for trauma, just look for something that felt bad.

Again, using your imagination, scan your body. Negative emotions will have a different kind of feel to them.

Often there is pressure, squeezing, clenching, or some kind of low-key pain.

Feelings, that we identify as negative have a painful quality to them. While we think avoiding that kind of feeling is helpful, it doesn’t really help, except maybe in the short-term.

Once you’ve found the painful emotion in your body, just be with it. Acknowledge that it is uncomfortable. Describe it to yourself. Be with it until it dissolves. This happens within a couple of minutes.

Some emotions will be once and done. You’ll process, have some awareness or new insight and you’ll just move on.

Sometimes you’ll need to repeat as often as it comes up. I recently wrote about going through sadness in this post. I had to repeat many times, every single day.

Until I didn’t feel it every day.

The cool thing was that as I was processing my sadness, I also had moments of happiness, optimism, hope, and love.

Feeling your painful emotions doesn’t push away the pleasant emotions, it opens you up more fully to them.

This is important. When we habitually push away anything that feels negative, we also push away the good feeling ones.

Think of it this way. If you are passing something that smells bad, and you hold your breath; you don’t smell anything. If you keep holding your breath, you won’t smell the good stuff you might pass later.

What Happens When You Feel Your Emotions

I’ve been coaching women for almost five years, and I’ll share the changes I see and hear about from my clients.

The first observable thing is that my clients look better. Feeling your emotions will actually make you look better.

By processing your emotions, you have access to more peace, vitality, joy, and optimism. This literally changes your face.

Clients also report feeling more energy, feeling more in control, and feeling more confident.

Another thing that happens is that irritating situations resolve themselves. I’ve had clients tell me about how someone irritates them to no end. They don’t believe me when I tell them that the relationship will almost magically resolve itself.

I’ve seen relationships with coworkers, partners, children, mother-in-laws, and friends go from being painful, to being neutral, and often to being more connected.

(No offense to mother-in-laws, I’m one myself. However, this relationship does show up sometimes as painful or irritating.)

The third place I see tangible improvements is in quality of life. When you quit pushing away the negative feelings, you have to face the reality of your life.

We can get by in our lives pushing away our emotions for just so long.

Eventually, we don’t have more hours to work. Our health suffers. We look and feel tired all the time. It takes a ton of energy to not feel.

How to Move Through Your Feelings and Not Get Stuck

Feeling your emotions gives you access to your full self. We often think of ourselves as just our brains. But we have a body and spirit as well. Your emotions are how you access your body and spirit wisdom.

Becoming aware of yourself is the first step. Accepting all your feels is the next.

When you have balanced emotions, meaning you are just as willing to feel bad as to feel good, you will be able to take action that supports your best interests instead of just reacting to and trying to push away negative feelings.