How do you feel your emotions? How to get in touch with your emotions? Little kids express their emotions they way they are. They laugh when they are happy; cry when they are unhappy. As you grow up, you start to hide and bury your feelings because you were taught sadness, anger, frustration, and fear are “negative feelings“, therefore, you should not “burden other people” with negativity. The end result? Those “negative emotions” could accumulate to the point its intensity makes you want to explode. You could end up suffering from tremendous stress. In other words, suppressing emotions or turning them off does not make the emotions go away.
Some people tend to be better at recognizing their true feelings, but practice and attention can help you obtain the same superpower as a natural gift. Here are some of the strategies that you can apply to deal with your feelings instead of burying them.
1. Accept or Acknowledge Emotions without Judgment.
Emotions are inevitable and a normal part of our everyday life. They apparently exist for a good reason. In fact, emotions are powerful indicators of our needs, goals, longings, and desires. you feel your emotions on a daily basis. Apparently they are essential for your safety, better survival, effectiveness for day to day activities, motivation to change, and more skills to be stronger. Although you do not like to feel sad, sadness is a typical emotion when you have grief, loss, or rejected.
Let go of shame. It is hard to feel your emotions when you are afraid of them, confused by them, or ashamed of them. Remind yourself, being “emotional” is very natural, human, and healthy. Actually it is normal. In other words, tell yourself it is OK to have emotions, even intense ones.
2. Feel your Emotions
In order to truly feel your emotions, you may first practice saying how you feel out loud to yourself, “I feel sad,” “I feel angry,” or “I feel hurt.”
How to feel your emotions? Have a space for yourself where you feel safe, cozy, and comfortable when you experience your emotions. Have blankets and pillows around as well as images and symbols of being held, protected, loved. At times when you feel “I want to cry so bad”, or “I need to release anger,” maybe it is time you let your emotions out. If you prefer to feel your emotions privately, tell your family and loved ones that you need some alone time, or make sure your roommates are not home.
3. Practice self-compassion and self-care.
If we don’t learn to care for ourselves, we may encounter stress in our lives, resulting in a breakdown. Treat yourself like treating a good friend. Say to yourself, like telling your heart-broken friend, ‘it’s OK to cry,’ encouraging others to speak out when they have difficulty expressing emotions. In other words, be kind and compassionate to yourself. By doing so, we admit that we are facing a problem(s), and we can calm ourselves through reassuring words.
We sometimes take our pain as a sign that something is wrong with us or that other people are different. To err is human; thus, all human suffers, or to put it further, a part of the human experience is to fail and suffer. There is no pain that we have endures that others have not yet experienced; the same applies to various emotions.
4. Confront the cause of your emotions honestly.
Failure to do so may lead to self-pity or self-doubt, which wreak havoc on both your personal and romantic relationships in the long term. By concentrating your energy on reducing the real cause of your negative feelings, you are more likely to resolve the hidden worries, problems that you may not have known in the first place. A case in point would be when you can’t let go of a broken relationship and become anxious and emotional every once in a while. It becomes high time to ask yourself: am I terrified of ending the relationship, or am I worry about being alone for the rest of my life, or am I indeed having a difficult time in my career?
5. Journaling
Journaling and other forms of self-expression are useful in locating your genuine emotions. It is one of human’s basic needs to express ourselves – people demonstrate their strong desire to express themselves. Hence, various forms of self-expression, including writing, drawing, singing, or dancing have all been proved to be beneficial in recognizing your hidden feelings. Take journaling for example. Writing your feelings down and keeping a journal not only helps you connect with emotions at the moment, but also allows you to practice describing them to yourself before you share them with others. Be genuine to yourself to your emotions’ nuances when writing them down; for example, disappointment can easily be disguised as anger.
6. Mindfulness
Being mindful is being fully aware of the real feelings you are experiencing without avoidance or judgment. It is important that you acknowledge your negative feelings as part of your experience; you do not stick to or run away from them; in turn, you give yourself a reality check.
For instance, when you don’t get the dream job for which you applied. To practice mindfulness, you need first to find a quiet place, take a deep breath, and then pay attention to what you feel about the loss of opportunity. You may discern both disappointment and sadness, try not to push them away or attempt to remedy the emotions, just hear them out.
As you experience these seemingly negative emotions, you would tell yourself that it is difficult to feel both disappointed and sad simultaneously. Meanwhile, you can give yourself a comforting touch, for instance, holding your own hands. This way, you would not dwell on your thoughts about your performance in the interview or anything about the job.
7, Talk to people, make use of your social support system.
Suppressing emotional expressions often links to lower social support, lower intimacy level with others, and lower satisfaction with yourself. In contrast, resort to social support and the social network to feel your emotions and to survive the hard time, such as concern, empathy, and affection. To put it in a nutshell, we benefit from resorting to social support in coping with emotions. For example, when you experience sadness or grief, it could meet your needs for connection, comfort, and satisfaction by snuggling with animals and connecting with people.
8. Therapy.
Your therapist, without a doubt, plays a vital role in your support system. Especially when you have been buried your emotions for an extended period, feeling your emotions upfront can be painful and overwhelming. Sometimes before you learn to cope with how you genuinely feel, things can seem to get worse. Seek help from your therapist to truly embrace the healing power of being more in touch with your emotions.
The therapists in our team are here to help. Give us a free 15-minute phone call, we would love to work with you to feel your emotions again.
Special thanks to the contribution of our intern, Ms. Wenqi (Vinky) Qiu