There are two ways we experience emotions and sensations. One is in connection with our thoughts and if we look for it we will usually feel a sensation somewhere in our body at the same time. We can also experience intense sensation/emotion that is activated by the amygdala as a result of the fight, flight, freeze response (survival response), which by passes the pre frontal cortex. This response can be activated by seemingly harmless circumstances as a result of past trauma.
Today I want to look at the thought-feeling connection.
Emotional self management is gained as a result of understanding our feelings and how they impact us. Learning how to effectively process our feelings is essential to over all health.
We all know or have heard of some one who has become so physically or mentally unwell they have been unable to work, and then after 6 months of rest or self care are healthier than they have ever been. When you ask what they did the answer is usually they gave themselves time, understanding and allowed themselves to enjoy life.
This approach changed the way they felt both physically and emotionally and this makes sense because how we feel drives our decisions and actions and our actions/decisions creates our results or experience of life.
So, let’s say your feeling whimsical, you might start day dreaming, you might start looking at old photo’s, reminiscing about old times. If your feeling angry, you might stop talking, start yelling or slamming doors. It’s important to understand that two people might both be feeling angry, however their action response may be different. So one might sulk and stop talking and another might throw an item and start yelling and yet another person may burst into tears yet they all feel anger.
We all experience emotions, sensations and feelings but we don’t all feel the same way about the same things or respond to our feelings in the same way. That’s how individual we all are.
Just to ensure we understand each other, a person may be sharing the loss of a loved one and we can empathise with them, but we can never know exactly what another person’s experience of a feeling is. I think this is so incredible!
We are all human and yet that human experience for each and everyone of us is so unique.
I think this is why so many of us often spend a lot of time feeling misunderstood, or at least not “understood”. Why we don’t feel listened to or heard. The good news is that when you start listening to you. Allow yourself to feel any sensations, emotions or feelings without resistance but with compassion and curiosity, we give ourselves the gift of feeling understood and heard and we no longer need to look outside of ourselves for it.
When you give this gift to yourself, the gift of time, of being interested enough in yourself to listen and feel, a real sense of joy, appreciation and love bubbles to the surface.
So find somewhere quiet and/or peaceful, go spend some time with yourself and just feel. Let what ever you are feeling move through you. It will intensify slightly as you first notice it. You don’t have to name it, just notice how it feels in your body. Is it restrictive, warm, open, tingling. Is it in your legs, your chest, or maybe your feet. Is it hard to be still. Be with it, notice how alive your body is, give thanks for it and smile. It will dissipate and transform.
