Learning how to feel your feelings starts with recognizing that emotions provide valuable information about your needs. Explore why emotions matter and get strategies for embracing your feelings – the good, the bad, and the ugly.
What’s Coming Up
- Getting in Touch with Your Emotions
- Understanding Your Emotional Alarm System
- The Costs of Emotional Avoidance
- Signs You Might Be Avoiding Your Feelings
- How to Feel Your Feelings
- The Courage to Feel
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Further Reading
Getting in Touch with Your Emotions
Getting in touch with your emotions sounds simple enough, but most of us struggle with this basic human skill. We notice when we’re happy, sad, or frustrated, but actually connecting with these feelings in a meaningful way? That’s where things get complicated.
I discovered this gap in the most profound way when I lost both my parents. The grief arrived like nothing I’d ever experienced – waves of sadness so intense they felt physical, emptiness that seemed to echo through my entire being, and a bone-deep anxiety about mortality that, up until that point, I had never struggled with.
I knew I was devastated, but I had no idea how to actually be with this magnitude of feeling. I found myself either drowning in the emotion or desperately trying to escape it, neither of which brought any real healing.
My healing truly began when I stopped fighting the grief and started getting curious about it. I learned to accept what was left behind after such profound loss – to feel the sadness without being destroyed by it. Each emotion became a messenger with something important to tell me.
In this article, you’ll learn how to feel your feelings. We’ll uncover the purpose behind your emotional responses, recognize the subtle signs of emotional avoidance, and discover a simple six-step process for connecting with your emotions.
Ready to uncover the truth about who you really are? Take our free personality test and gain deep insights into your strengths, challenges, and more in just 10 minutes.
Understanding Your Emotional Alarm System
Emotions aren’t frivolous or inconvenient interruptions to rational thinking. They’re sophisticated management systems that evolved to keep our ancestors alive and help them thrive.
When you’re facing any important situation – whether it’s a job interview, a first date, or a crying child – your brain needs to manage competing demands to respond to each different situation. Your attention, memory, energy, and behavior all need to work together rather than against each other.
That’s where emotions come in.
Think of your emotions like a skilled orchestra conductor who coordinates dozens of musicians to create complex music. Your emotions coordinate multiple psychological and physiological systems simultaneously to help you navigate life’s challenges.
Research carried out by evolutionary psychologists has shown that emotions actually regulate at least 14 different types of programs in the mind and body – from attention and memory to physiology and behavior – all at the same time.
This same research revealed something surprising: we’ve been underestimating the range of emotions that are fundamental to human nature.
Traditional psychology focused mainly on survival emotions like fear and anger, but scientists have discovered that our emotional repertoire is far broader and more sophisticated.
This expanded emotional tool kit includes:
- Relationship emotions like romantic love, sexual jealousy, and parental love that help us form and maintain crucial bonds
- Social emotions like guilt, shame, pride, and embarrassment that help us navigate complex social hierarchies and relationships
- Status emotions like envy and gratitude that guide us through competition and cooperation with others
- Self-protective emotions like disgust that coordinate our responses to potential threats and contamination
Each of these emotions evolved to solve specific challenges our ancestors repeatedly faced – from finding mates and raising children to building alliances and avoiding disease.
Rather than being random feelings, emotions are specialized tools that coordinate your entire being to handle life’s most important moments effectively.
The Costs of Emotional Avoidance
Now that we understand emotions serve important purposes, we can start to address what happens when we consistently avoid or suppress them.
While emotional avoidance might provide temporary relief – like hitting the snooze button on an alarm – it doesn’t make the underlying issue disappear.
In fact, research shows that emotional avoidance can lead to higher pain levels, increased risk of heart problems and cancer, as well as depression and social anxiety.
The challenge is that many of us have become so skilled at avoiding emotions that we don’t even realize we’re doing it.
Emotional avoidance often happens automatically, below the level of conscious awareness.
Understanding whether you might be avoiding emotions requires recognizing the subtle signs and patterns that indicate when feelings are being pushed aside rather than genuinely felt.
Signs You Might Be Avoiding Your Feelings
Emotional avoidance rarely announces itself with a clear sign that says, “Warning: You’re running from your feelings!”
The behaviors that help us sidestep emotions often look perfectly normal – even admirable – from the outside.
Learning to recognize these patterns requires honest self-reflection and a willingness to examine habits you might not have questioned before.
Below are some of the most common ways emotional avoidance shows up in daily life.
Excessive Busyness
When every moment is packed with tasks, meetings, or activities, there’s no space for feelings to surface.
If you find yourself uncomfortable with quiet moments or constantly needing something to do, busyness might be serving as emotional armor.
Digital Distractions
Scrolling social media, binge-watching shows, or diving into your phone whenever difficult emotions arise can prevent you from connecting with what you’re actually feeling.
Notice if you reflexively reach for your device when emotions start to surface. This automatic behavior often signals an unconscious desire to escape your inner experience.
Regular Substance Use
Whether it’s alcohol, food, shopping, or other substances or behaviors, using external things to change how you feel can become a way of avoiding authentic emotional processing.
Even seemingly harmless habits like excessive caffeine or sugar consumption might serve as subtle forms of emotional regulation rather than genuine feeling.
Intellectualizing Experiences
When difficult emotions surface, do you immediately start analyzing them?
This looks like creating detailed explanations for why you feel upset while avoiding the actual feeling itself. You might become an expert on your emotional patterns but remain disconnected from the felt sense of what’s happening in your body and mind.
People with the Thinking and Intuitive personality traits may be especially prone to this pattern.
Thinking personality types often process emotions by analyzing or rationalizing them. Because emotions can feel unpredictable or inefficient compared to logical problem-solving, they may default to fixing the issue rather than sitting with uncomfortable feelings.
Intuitive personality types often process emotions through the lens of ideas and patterns. Because they naturally live in the realm of abstract thinking, they may be more inclined to analyze or interpret emotions rather than experience them in a purely felt, immediate way.
Minimizing Your Feelings
Phrases like “it’s not that bad” or “others have it worse” might seem like healthy perspectives, but they can also prevent genuine emotional processing.
While gratitude and context matter, consistently downplaying your emotional experiences can keep you from honoring what you’re actually going through and learning from these important signals.
Trying to Fix Instead of Feel
Immediately jumping to solutions without first acknowledging the emotional reality of a situation bypasses the valuable information emotions provide.
This pattern often stems from discomfort with emotional states and a belief that feelings are problems to be solved rather than experiences to be understood and integrated.
This pattern especially appeals to Thinking personality types, who have a tendency to view emotions as inefficient obstacles to overcome rather than valuable information to process.
Avoiding Positive Emotions
Emotional avoidance isn’t limited to difficult feelings. You might dismiss compliments with “It was nothing,” downplay achievements by attributing them to luck, or interrupt joyful moments with worry about what could go wrong.
This pattern suggests discomfort with being fully present with positive emotions, preventing you from fully experiencing satisfaction, pride, or joy.
Turbulent personality types may be especially prone to this pattern, as their tendency toward self-doubt can make positive emotions feel undeserved or temporary.
Introverted personalities might also struggle with positive emotions that draw attention to themselves, preferring to minimize achievements rather than risk being in the spotlight.
How to Feel Your Feelings
Now that you can recognize the signs of emotional avoidance, how do you actually start feeling your feelings?
The process isn’t about drowning in emotions or being overwhelmed by them. Instead, it’s about developing a mindful approach that allows you to engage with your emotional experience calmly and compassionately.
Here’s a simple six-step process for feeling your emotions:
Step 1: Recognize That You’re Feeling Something
The first step is simply noticing that an emotion is present. This might sound obvious, but many of us have become so skilled at emotional avoidance that we miss the initial signals entirely. Pay attention to changes in your mood, energy, thoughts or physical sensations.
Step 2: Locate the Emotion in Your Body
Where do you feel this emotion physically? Are you sweating or shaking? Is there a knot in your stomach? Or heat in your chest? Emotions tend to have a physical component, and learning to identify these sensations helps you connect with the feeling itself.
Step 3: Name the Emotion
Try to identify what you’re feeling. Are you angry, sad, disappointed, excited, worried? Sometimes you might be experiencing multiple emotions at once. Don’t worry about getting it exactly right – the goal is emotional awareness, not perfection. And to help you name what you are feeling, you might try a feelings wheel – a tool that gives you access to a broader emotional vocabulary.
Step 4: Allow the Emotion Without Judgment
This is often the hardest step. Instead of trying to change, fix, or escape the feeling, simply let it be there. You don’t have to like the emotion, but you can accept its presence without fighting it.
Step 5: Get Curious About the Message
What might this emotion be telling you? What does it need? What situation or thought was an emotional trigger? Emotions are messengers. They carry important information about your needs, values, and circumstances.
Step 6: Respond with Self-Compassion
Treat yourself with the same kindness you’d offer a good friend experiencing something similar. Remember that feeling emotions – even difficult ones – is part of being human.
Learning how to feel your feelings is fundamentally different from trying to control your emotions. When you develop this skill, you gain access to valuable emotional wisdom that can guide your decisions and relationships in more authentic, satisfying ways.
The Courage to Feel
Developing the ability to feel your feelings can transform your relationship with your inner world.
Instead of being overwhelmed by emotions or constantly avoiding them, you learn to engage with them as valuable sources of information.
Understanding your personality type can provide insights into your emotional tendencies and help you find approaches that work specifically for you. Take our free personality test to learn more about how your unique personality influences your emotional experience.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why can’t I feel my feelings?
There are several reasons you might struggle to feel your emotions. You may have learned to avoid feelings because they seemed too overwhelming or painful. Some people grew up in families where emotions weren’t talked about or were seen as weakness. Others use distractions like staying busy, scrolling phones, or other habits to avoid sitting with difficult feelings. The good news is that the ability to feel emotions can be learned and practiced at any age.
How can I feel my own feelings?
To feel your feelings, start by slowing down and paying attention to your body. Notice if your shoulders are tense, your stomach feels tight, or your chest feels heavy. These physical sensations often signal emotions. Try naming what you might be feeling – sad, angry, worried, excited. Don’t judge the emotion or try to fix it right away. Just let it be there and get curious about what it might be telling you.
How do I activate my feelings?
You don’t need to “activate” feelings. They’re already there. The key is learning to notice and connect with them. Create quiet moments without distractions. Put down your phone, turn off the TV, and just sit with yourself. Pay attention to your body and any emotions that come up.