One of the most empowering things you can offer another human being is a way to amplify their capacity to stay grounded in their own feeling. Agency comes from the ability to withstand the intensity of your own emotional reality without trying to flee from it or blame it on the outside world. When we are firmly grounded and connected to how we feel, we are able to create clear boundaries, understand the impact of our surroundings, to stand firm in our truths, and to trust our intuition.
This is how we can become sovereign over our own lives, through the process of re-learning how to feel. Expressing what we feel either to another, or to ourselves in the form of writing, can give us clarity about what is always there, what has arisen in response to a trigger, and what is an actual no, or an actual yes. For this we need an ample container and forgiving nervous system, one which allows us to remain centered in the midst of big emotions. The only way to gain a resilient nervous system is to train it by microdosing feeling. This can be done by gradually exposing your system to higher levels of intensity of feeling, and interspersing positive and pleasurable feeling while remaining present, resourced, and connected to yourself.
Everything in our culture pulls us out of feeling, and therefore out of ourselves. If I am unable to delve into myself by way of feeling, I will remain on the surface of my life, flailing about and swayed by every emotional breeze. An unfelt fear becomes an unshakable subterranean anxiety, an unfelt anger, a constant irritation and short fuse, an unfelt sadness, pessimism and hopelessness.
When we choose the diffuse version of feelings, when we choose to suppress and only experience the inevitable overflow and seeping out of these feelings, we need to constantly employ methods to keep us out of feeling, and we will never fully succeed. Every time it gets quiet, there it is again. These feelings are parts of us, knocking on the door, they are telling us something about ourselves.
In my experience working with people, and hell, in being a person I see that the absolute most difficult thing to get a person to do is sit still and feel. Let’s talk about it more, let’s analyze and understand, but when it’s time to enter there is an explosion of resistance, that shows up in a million ways; irritation, the sudden need to talk about something, judgement, restlessness, itchiness, spacing out, having obsessive thoughts – anything that sends energy out, and away from the core of pain that seems to much to bear.
Emotions are a specific frequency of energy, and energy is always changing. When we suppress the energy of emotions, we don’t allow them to change. The result is that we hold ourselves in the emotion that we are trying desperately to avoid. The more Netflix and ice cream and Instagram, the longer this will stay in my system. When I take the time to feel what is arising, not only do l deepen my relationship to myself, I also free this energy to transform and run its course. To change. To finish. To create space for something else. This is the inevitable end of every feeling. It’s a path for the brave, but it is possible.