‘You Gotta Feel It To Heal It’
So sometime last week, I was having a weird day at work. Since starting EMDR therapy (an intensive form of trauma treatment) last April, I’ve begun to get more and more in touch with my body and how things physically feel. I think—and this is definitely how I was and I still struggle with it sometimes—our knee jerk reaction to any unpleasant feeling is to ‘think’ or way out of it. Sometimes, this can be helpful when it comes to reframing situations or finding silver linings. But more often than not, it’s a means to try and escape whatever we’re feeling instead of actually feeling it—I’ll come back to this.
Shortly after starting EMDR, I began to get into mindfulness. It started with reading The Power Of Now (I’ve seen mixed reviews but personally, I really liked the book and found it very helpful). Since then, I’ve gotten better at not believing everything I think and quieting my mind at will. Still a novice by all means, but getting there! But anyway, the combination of those two things has resulted in something really interesting: I’ll have these moments where certain feelings come on me and, because it (usually) doesn’t turn into a negative thought spiral anymore, I can’t really place what it is, why it’s there or what to do about it other than just sit with it.
This happened last week. The whole day, this weird, emotional ache persisted. I couldn’t focus, couldn’t name what I was feeling, just that it was highly uncomfortable. Flash forward to driving home from work and a song comes on that takes me back to high school. I feel the urge to cry and give into it (because who doesn’t love crying in the car?) Suddenly, I’m feeling grief for my teenage years (high school was a bit rough for me: struggled a lot with mental health and felt trapped in my living situation because I wasn’t an adult). This turns into full blown ugly-crying, like I’m sobbing and my nose is running and I’m probably getting weird looks from other drivers. But then something really beautiful happens…that gross, distressing feeling I’d felt in my body all day starts to lift and gives way to sympathy and love for my younger self—not something I was really able to feel for that version of me before. And on the way home—which, I cried the whole 40+ remainder of my commute—I start to feel little moments of joy thinking back to random positive memories, or just catching glimpses of the world passing by my car window. By the time I pulled into my driveway, I felt like that yucky feeling had made its way out of my system and I was left in a good mood!
The biggest piece of advice I give to all my friends (and family) now is to learn how to safely feel things in your body. Every emotion has a physical feeling, and it’s been my experience that once we ‘welcome’ that feeling and just let ourselves feel it, the quicker it passes, and the less likely it is to snowball into something else. It’s certainly uncomfortable at first, and kind of goes in direct conflict of what we’ve been taught over the years. And of course, there is something to be said about ‘taking your time’ with this sort of practice, as you don’t want to get flooded and dissociate. But over all, I absolutely recommend that approach—it’s made me feel like I’ve been able to put some of things I’ve been carrying down. Below, you’ll find a video exploring this theme. bit more. Hope that was helpful!
A.C. Brooke 
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