But How Do You Feel?

“But how do you feel?” It’s a simple question with a complicated answer. A personal look at the process of actually figuring it out.

“How does that make you feel?”

After I completed this whole “poetic” response, my therapist said that’s great, but you just told me what you think, how do you feel?

I was stuck like a buffering video on a streaming service.

For as long as I could remember I expressed my feelings in this exact way. So what do you mean what I think isn’t how I feel?

That’s all my brain kept repeating as I sat pondering my therapist’s statement and the question that followed. I looked dead into the camera and said, I honestly don’t know because for me expressing what I think has been my way of expressing how I feel.

I started to feel myself spiraling because oh em gee, I couldn’t give my therapist the “right” answer. I had to sit with the awkward silence of an I don’t know. (If you are an eldest daughter/first born or the one your family considers the “golden child,” you understand why in this moment I wanted to fall into the floor.) It was also in this moment that I realized I have this habit of trying to intellectualize my feelings instead of feeling them.

Somewhere along the way my brain decided that if I could understand the why behind the hurt, it would hurt less. (I realize this is absolutely not how it works, but this is what my brain does.)

Truthfully what was happening was I was explaining away the feeling so I wouldn’t have to feel it, much less process it.

So now what?

My first response - Feelings Are Stupid. Which I actually semi yelled out to my therapist. I laughed, my therapist laughed, we laughed. My therapist looked at me and said, “you’ve got to re-train your brain to understand that you are safe express your feelings with yourself first. Somewhere along your life journey, your feelings were invalidated so much to the point that you stopped allowing yourself to not only express them, but actually feel them. Expressing them to other people is a journey unto itself, but first you’ve got to be able to be honest with you. “

So I left the session with homework to “feel the feels.”

You might be reading this right now and thinking to yourself, but you express your feelings in your writing all the time. I do, but by the time it reaches your screen I’ve worked through it or worked through it enough to feel like I have gained enough ground from which to stand on and speak. To share the feelings or experiences raw and unfiltered feels reckless, irresponsible and quite honestly an adventure way too far into a different level of vulnerability.

This realization did teach me, however, that I want to reach a new level of honesty in my writing. Not in the sense that I am just throwing out raw and unfiltered emotion, but in the sense that I am not over editing or curating to ensure that I am not misunderstood. I realize that people are going to think what they are going to think regardless to what I do, so at minimum judge me for who I really am, not who I’m pretending to be to gain your approval.

Back to my homework to “feel the feels.” I was to journal my feelings, raw and unfiltered as they surfaced. The first week all I did was cry. My journal stayed empty. And it wasn’t just a few tears here and there, it was the kind of crying that leaves you feeling depleted and dry with a headache equivalent to someone hammering inside your head. The second week the feelings started to eek onto the paper, but it was SO DIFFICULT. Writing my feelings felt like igniting a grenade in my chest that created the pressure, but never exploded. But I kept writing.

I wish I could say that it has gotten easier with time, but it hasn’t. I still feel physically exhausted and I cry a lot, but I also often get up feeling clear and empowered. Even though it hasn’t gotten easier, it has become a necessity. Writing my feelings has become my mode of processing them and for that I am grateful.

If you’re curious about the process, it’s simple. At the end of the day I sit with my journal. At the top of the page I write feel the feels. Sometimes I drink tea, more often than not I swap between water and red wine. I write until I’m empty. I don’t make it pretty. I don’t make it make sense. I don’t edit. I don’t correct spelling or grammar. I just write. Once that portion is complete I sit and re-read. Sometimes I realize I need to take action, sometimes I realize that no action is my best action. That’s it.

While I still am not a fan of feeling the feelings, I know that it is a needed process, so I show up for myself continuously and I encourage you to do the same. We will all be better for it.

All my love,

Britt