Why Telling Someone To Feel Their Feelings Confuses People
I knew it was coming, but it still hurt like hell to get dumped by her text message. At least it was better than the slow fade of the ghosting she was giving me. At first, I felt relief that I was no longer stuck in the grey area of “Are we or aren’t we together?”.
Then it all settled in. It was over, and the pain sunk in. Like anyone would do, I reached out to my friends. They offered the standard advice of “she sucks” and “forget about her” with much more colorful language, naturally, but you get the picture. They also offered another gem.
Allow yourself to feel your feelings.
Everyone I mentioned my breakup to said I had to give myself time to heal and allow myself to feel my feelings. Caught up in the recency of the split and the emotions surrounding it, I accepted it and didn’t give it a second thought.
After a few days, I started to feel confused as things settled down and the fog lifted. I asked myself, “What does it mean to feel your feelings?”. We all walk around “feeling” our emotions and experiences all day. People are telling me to feel my feelings, and guess what? I am walking around feeling hurt, sad, and angry!
How We’re Taught To Face Our Feelings
I’m sure my parents will read this, so firstly, Mom and Dad, I love you both very much, and this following passage is in no way a slight to either of you. I’m fortunate to have had both of you as parents. You always gave me all the love I needed and everything I ever needed or wanted. I’m genuinely grateful for all of it.
There is no “but” here, I promise.
Our “feelings” were never talked about that much, and I don’t find that a failure on my parent’s part. I think that is more of a product of the upbringing of their generation and how it was passed along to my generation.
I’m 45. In talking to my friends my age, none of their parents spoke to them about feelings and emotions.
Like most dads in his generation, my dad wasn’t prone to displays of emotion. I knew when he was mad, which was generally caused by me. I knew when he was happy. I never saw him sad or distressed.
Part of that is also being a parent; you shield your child from those things. As a parent myself now, I have a better understanding of that.
On the other hand, my mom was more emotional but not overly emotional. I saw her display more range of emotions.
As a child, I think I internalized that to mean men don’t show much emotion. I also thought that meant we shove these emotions deep, ignore them, or refuse to acknowledge them altogether. Looking around at men my age now, I’d say that is a prevalent trait many of us picked up.
I have noticed the tide of this changing slightly; sadly, the cycle repeats until someone decides to change it.
The Culture of Positivity
Then you have today’s culture of positivity, which also seems to steer us away from allowing us to feel our feelings. It’s not all bad, mind you, but a lot of it seems to preach positivity above EVERYTHING. You aren’t supposed to take time to feel and examine your experience.
You’re supposed to shove everything aside and believe it’ll be better tomorrow. Don’t think about it or dwell on it. Kick the negativity in the rear end, and move on!
This gives some people the idea that you'll be fine if you push aside your feelings and replace them with positive thoughts. This is shoving many things in a closet only to one day have that closet explode.
I’m all for positive thinking and generally a positive thinker, but it’s almost becoming toxic to a certain extent. No amount of positive thinking will solve anything if you don’t figure out the problem, do the work to fix the issues, make necessary changes, heal trauma, or do whatever else needs to be done.
The Untethered Soul and Therapy
The breakup I mentioned was a “straw-that-broke-the-camels-back” moment for me. Aside from the split, I had other things come together at the right moment to create a tornado of emotional awfulness. The result of this made me decide to go back into therapy to help myself process everything.
Right around this time, I also picked up the book “The Untethered Soul” by Michael A Singer. The first few chapters of this fantastic book planted the idea in my head that I was using my feelings and thoughts about feelings to define myself and my worth.
My mental model had become: “I feel bad, so I must be a bad person.”
I took this idea to my therapist, which made for some excellent therapy sessions.
The self-inflicted problem I was creating for myself was that rather than having the idea that I was feeling sad or hurt, I was telling myself I was sad and hurt. Now, it’s a slight language change, but the difference in meaning in how you talk to yourself is gigantic!
Whenever I would have a feeling about a situation, saying the phrase “I am angry,” “sad,” or “hurt” would cause me to believe I was that person subconsciously. My mind would then spin like a hamster on a wheel to weave a story to match that belief about myself.
For example, I am mad. Being mad doesn’t feel good. I’m not a good person because I don’t feel good. These are all the ways I don’t feel good. I would do the same thing for any emotion I found to be negative.
Even worse, I had been doing it for years. In some cases, decades. I had a lot of negative beliefs about myself from this faulty thinking. A lot of it had been operating in the background on autopilot.
This changed everything for me. I finally understood what it meant to feel my feelings.
From there, I could process many things from my past that had just been simmering under the surface for quite a while. I could forgive myself for something I had no business blaming myself for and even do self-reflection and process a bunch of grief I didn’t understand was bothering me.
After the enormous personal breakthrough I had, it doesn’t mean I don’t still have hiccups from time to time. Life still throws curve balls and knocks me down. It’s just that now I better understand how my mind works and reacts. Having an awareness of the issue is what catalyzes the change!
I’m quicker to shake off the bad pitches, get back in the batter’s box, and step back up to the plate.
The Cliffs Notes Version
If I had to wrap a tidy little bow around it, I would do it like this:
Feeling your feelings means that you can accept your feelings as valid. You don’t judge them and know that you are not your feelings. You know you are not the wrong person when you have uncomfortable feelings or what you might label bad feelings.
You can try and understand the feeling, just if you aren’t spinning some story about why feeling that sense makes you an awful person. Then you can find constructive ways to express them to ensure you aren’t holding on to them.
Better out than in — My friend's Grandmother
Constructive ways to express your feelings include journaling, exercising, going to therapy, and channeling them into hobbies you enjoy. You are transferring the energy from them into something else, other than storing it inside for a potential blow-up where you might do something you regret.
Even bigger takeaways are just that you are not an awful person because you have what you think are bad feelings. We’re human, and different humans have different experiences that cause different feelings and emotions we can’t necessarily control. What you feel is valid. Don’t judge yourself for it. Seek to understand yourself.
