So many of us want to feel better. We want to stop feeling so sad, tired, anxious, and depressed. As a therapist, my North Star is that a large part of how we feel better is by actually being with our difficult emotions and experiences. By sitting with them and really feeling them in our bodies and sensations, we can actually process them. And by doing so, we gain a new, deeper connection with ourselves that feels really, really good.
But it’s hard for most of us to actually feel and process these emotions, because they are too overwhelming. Why is that?
When we are small children, we experience enormous emotions. This is a fact of development. Everything feels huge—joy, pain, anger, fear, excitement. Those of you who have children or have spent a lot of time around them know this well. Those emotions can feel so big that we don’t know what to do with them or with our bodies. That’s where safe, secure, loving adults come in. They help us regulate those enormous feelings. How?
By physically being there, and by being emotionally available and present. By sitting with us in those emotions, by showing us that they’re not overwhelmed by them or us, by having one foot grounded in their emotional experience, and one foot in ours. By treating those emotions with care, warmth, and attentiveness. And yes, also by helping us build a vocabulary for understanding what’s happening inside of us—by helping us name and categorize our feelings and experiences. So much of this, though, is about emotional availability, not just the words, because the words themselves are not enough. The adult has to actually be able to hold the child’s emotions without feeling bowled over by them.
By now, you may be thinking, “Well, that did not happen for me.” Your caregivers did their best with the resources they had—as all of us do—but perhaps they weren’t capable of giving you this kind of emotionally safe and supportive environment. Or maybe that did mostly happen for you–wonderful! (In this post, I’m not going to go into adult trauma and how that impacts our systems, but please know, there are reasons why, even if you did receive this kind of care, you feel unable to be connected to yourself now.)
When we don’t have people to help us make sense of these emotions as a child, our emotions and sensations get stuck. We don’t actually process them because they’re too overwhelming to process alone. And in addition, we learn that our feelings are overwhelming not only to us, but to our caregivers. And that is not safe. As children, we physically need adults to stay alive—we would actually die without their care. So, we immediately take note of anything that threatens the relationship between our caregivers and ourselves. And typically, some sort of protector activates in our system to say, “Okay, well, that wasn’t okay to feel—look how they reacted. Let’s try not to feel that again. That’s how we’ll stay safe.” None of that is typically conscious.
Any feeling that was not allowable in your home growing up is a feeling that you likely have a strained relationship with still now. This is the kid who was angry and was then yelled at, shamed, and sent to their room to be alone in their overwhelming sensations, and now, when asked about their relationship with anger, says “Anger? I don’t have any anger. I’m not an angry person.” Hmmm.
Although the full spectrum of our emotions can feel extremely difficult to tap into and be with at first, there is a point to trying to do so. Our darker emotions are not inherently bad–they can just feel painful. There’s a difference. These emotions can be linked to our deepest, oldest griefs. They can be linked to our empathy, our love. Imagine the way your heart aches when someone you care about is sad. They can be linked to our strongest values, our greatest needs. Imagine your anger when someone betrays you. Imagine your sadness when something happens in the world that is horrific. They can show us what we need.
The full spectrum of our emotions is what makes us human, makes us whole. Being with that darkness, when you get to a place where it’s not overwhelming, can actually feel, well, good. There is a richness and a depth to these places when we can feel them and still feel grounded. We feel alive, because we feel vulnerable and safe at the same time. And when someone witnesses these states with compassion and love, we feel seen and nurtured. Our darker emotions help us connect deeply and intimately with others.
This is one way that therapy can help you learn how to feel your full spectrum of emotions and become more deeply connected to yourself. Your therapist becomes that safe, supportive, compassionate adult presence you may have lacked as a child. They see you in your intensity, and they do not feel afraid of you or overwhelmed by you. They treasure those parts of you and the full range of your experience.
And in somatic and experiential therapy, especially, you can actually learn how to touch in on those overwhelming emotions, feel them in a way that is not overwhelming, and learn how to pull out. By doing this slowly over time, your nervous system and body learns that those emotions are not terrifying or dangerous, but simply emotions you need to feel to process. The more you do that, the freer you feel when a difficult emotion arises. And in time, you become that safe, supportive person for yourself.
When a child is upset, but has a safe, emotionally available caregiver helping them through it, the child feels the feeling, it’s intense, and then they move on! They’re back to feeling calm, happy, playful, curious. They get right back up and keep exploring. It is actually possible to feel closer to that natural state of allowance and flow as an adult. With time, support, patience, and compassion, you can shift your relationship to your emotions, and to yourself. And when you do all of that, you don’t just feel better–you feel more whole, more connected to yourself and others, and more alive.