Today’s blog is a more in depth look at Part 2: Permission to Feel of the 3 Part Journey to Healing. The second leg of the journey is most effective when followed by Part 1: An Emotionally Safe Relationship.
Have you ever heard someone say something like, “You don’t really feel that way, you’re just saying it because you are upset.” Or “You couldn’t be tired you slept for 8 hours.” Oftentimes people will start to share their feelings, when immediately they are told that their feelings are inaccurate and untrustworthy. The result is that they no longer want to share how they are doing because it is somehow wrong.
In an emotionally safe space, this is not the case. All of a sudden, you are being listened to with full attention, your feelings are being acknowledged with words and a caring attitude. The result is that you start to feel like your feelings, whatever they are, are coming from somewhere and they are worth exploring to learn more.
Having permission to feel and explore your emotions in an emotionally safe relationship is an effective way to learn more about what you need, make sense of your feelings, or create a new meaning. The following are 4 ways that your therapist can help you use your emotions as a tool to get unstuck in your journey to healing.
- Greater awareness of your emotions
If you close your eyes and listen to your senses, are they telling you anything that you were not aware of before stopping to listen? Did you even realize that you needed to go to the bathroom, have tightness in your neck, or were feeling anxious? When people are not aware of their emotions, they become split. They may feel sad or threatened and their body is moved in one direction, but their mind will race off in another direction leaving them misaligned sometimes neglecting their needs for hours or even years. Awareness of emotions while they are happening leads to health, while ignoring, suppressing, and being frightened by emotions leads to the confusing duality between the mind and body.
- Greater capacities to make sense of your emotions by symbolizing them in awareness and reflecting on them
People need help and coaching on how to not run from difficult feelings, to be distracted from them, or to try to talk themselves out of them. We are not taught to do this in school or anywhere for that matter. Feelings do not respond well to reason, and certain ones are impenetrable to reason. Just telling oneself that it is irrational to feel anxious or depressed is not very effective. Your therapist can sit with you in your emotion, and help you find a language to capture the complexities in symbols, images, or phrases that resonate within and feel the relief of being understood and validated.
- Improved emotion regulation and self-soothing skills
As you come to understand your negative and reactive emotions as your body’s clues as to where you are stuck or where some place in you is sensitive, your task becomes to give yourself permission to feel it. The only problem with this is that then you are subjected to feelings that make you a ball of fear and worry. This is where your caring therapist will help you learn emotion-regulation and self-soothing skills to manage the feelings more effectively in the moment. Ideally, you want to have a “back-pocket-tool” for any unpredictable situation that may arise.
- Greater empathy to their own and others’ feelings
When you are able to explore your emotions in a non-judgmental way, it can lead to a greater understanding of why you feel the way you do and why you reacted the way that you did. This invokes increased feelings of self-compassion and empathy (Which, ssshhhhh, is Part 3 of the Journey to Healing) when you recognize and normalize just how human you really are. You practice doing this with yourself and then you are able to practice seeing other people’s feelings with kindness as well.
I am amazed how often people come into my office feeling physical symptoms of stress, pain, and heartache, and after exploring and giving themselves permission to feel their feelings while receiving a new sense of self-understanding can relieve the most unpredictable of symptoms.
