The Key to Healing: Feeling your Feelings

These days many of us are in autopilot and rarely take time to actually feel our emotions. We have become accustomed to phone scrolling, over working and mindlessly going through our day. As we get older, we may come to realize that if we don’t allow ourselves to process our feelings we become disconnected with our true self and it takes a toll on our mental and physical health.

Our feelings are vital as they give us feedback on what’s occurring around us.

Three reasons to begin processing your feelings:

• It is only when we feel our feelings fully that we can move forward instead of getting stuck. Letting yourself feel them actually lets you move through them faster

• When you block less “desirable” feelings like sadness or fear you also decrease your ability to feel emotions like joy and and calm.

• Being in touch with our feelings helps us connect better with our intuition to know what we need and want and what we don’t want.

4 Quick Steps to Feel Your Feelings:

1. RECOGNIZE that you are feeling something- If we are used to being on autopilot and distracting ourselves we may not even know we are experiencing a feeling. This step is to slow down and begin to notice when feelings come up
2. IDENTIFY the feeling- Try and name what the feeling is- anger, sadness, anxious are some examples. Need more help? Check out a list of feelings to choose from here.
3. NOTICE in your body where the feeling is- Often before we are aware in our mind we are feeling something our body will let us know. Common places are the stomach, chest, shoulders.
4. BREATHE into the feeling- Research shows that most feelings only last 90 seconds. When we notice we are having an uncomfortable feeling the best thing we can do is sit with it and breathe. When we do this the intensity of the feeling decreases and we can move through it.

Allowing ourselves to fully experience our emotions can be hard at first so it’s important to be patient and gentle with yourself! For daily inspiration and support head over to my instagram.