First things first

Let’s lay some foundations. The following is introductory info necessary for the process of emotional experiencing, metabolization & integration:

[Click here if you’d rather have me read this section to you]

1. Feeling vs. thinking about your feelings (i.e. feeling vs. intellectualizing)
   The truth is most of us are out here thinking about our feelings, rather than actually sloowwwwwing down and feeling them at a body level. Feelings live in the body, we experience them through what are called affect channels. But we’ve not been taught how to slow down with them without becoming overwhelmed, so instead, we stay in the mental land of thinking about our feelings. Sometimes even looping about them (ruminating, spiraling). The official term for this is Intellectualization; the process of analyzing and, by default, distancing ourselves from our feelings by turning them into intellectual puzzles. This is our mind's way of trying to logically understand the situation (and attempt to control the outcome), so it can better protect us from the messiness of our feelings and discomfort of being with them. If you zoom out and re-enter from a place of compassion, that's actually pretty freakin' tender and adaptive– that our minds are trying so hard to keep us safe. So, no more shame if you find yourself thinking your feelings a lot, k? It's just information.
   
   When we think our feelings, we become outside spectators to our emotional experience, rather than the player in our own game; analyzing the ups and downs without actually feeling the emotional and sensory information that is begging for our attention. It's a bit like watching a movie about your life instead of living it. In the long-term, bypassing feelings comes with a price. It costs us things like presence, peace, resilience, genuine connection (to ourselves, our people, our environment). It costs us the ability to feel the good things too, as when we avoid our hard feelings we also set ourselves up for a pattern of bypassing the nourishing and joyful feelings like has to offer. You’re probably chomping at the bit, wondering, “Okay, Holly, but how do we shift from intellectualizing to feeling?!” Stay with me.
   
   

2. What is a “felt sense”?
   You might hear me or other practitioners use the term “felt sense,” but this is often a little understood concept. Felt sense is not just a “gut feeling" or an initial emotion-led response. The term comes from the work of Eugene Gendlin, a psychologist and philosopher, and his “Inner Relational Focusing” framework (which I use in just about every client session). Gendlin defined felt sense as a physical awareness of a situation or person that's made up of many interwoven strands; an internal aura that encompasses everything you feel and know about a subject at a given time, communicating to you all at once rather than detail by detail. It’s thought that if we can get in touch with our felt sense, the process of change and healing can be moved through with more ease, trust, clarity and stability (vs. reactivity or “shoulds”).
   
   Whether we’re working through a present day (acute) stressor, or healing from older traumatic experiences (or, as is often the case, a combination of both), tapping into a felt sense experience is often a portal to healing. Connecting to this internal knowing grants us access to our needs and next right steps, allowing the fullness of our experience and emotion to move through us, be witnessed and metabolized, rather than being bypassed or staying stuck inside our bodies. When we feel “stuck” in life or in coping/trauma patterns, accessing felt sense serves as a path to finding and opening up to new possibilities– to gently breaking through that stuckness.

   Characteristics of felt sense 

   • It's not a mental experience, but a physical one

   • It's a bodily awareness of a situation or person or event

   • It often presents at first as a broader, unclear, unrecognizable discomfort or tension (psychological and/or physical)

   • It's how your body carries the whole problem

   • It's a combination of emotion, awareness, intuitiveness, stories, images, memories, and sensations
     
     

3. The body as a wise communicator and alchemical vessel
   Carl Jung viewed the body is an alchemical vessel– the container that holds the process of personal and spiritual transformation; where our unconscious drives for wholeness (and the not-so-ideal, automatic unconscious drives for short term safety through coping and trauma strategies) can be accessed, worked with and transformed. He also posited that our drives for wholeness (i.e. healing, change, growth) show up in the body as tension or uncomfy sensation. To build the capacity to hold that tension (to stay with it), is to allow for personal transformation and healing to occur. This “staying with” is often the bridge where our unconscious meets our conscious, and new possibilities for living and healing can unfold. Not dissimilar to Gendlin’s ideas from accessing the felt sense.
   
   So if we want to build the capacity for this sort of whole-being healing, processing & transformation, we have to learn the language of the body. The body doesn’t speak through words first. It speaks through sensations (and often tension or pain), symptoms, images, and energy. We must open to these other channels of experience and bodily communication if we want to heal from past wounding in a whole-being way. This means learning to feel for sensations, emotions, images, felt sense; building the capacity to stay with discomfort in the form of physical, emotional or psychological tension. But we can’t do that well if we’re turning towards our bodies mired with disdain, distrust, or judgement. This process asks us to view and treat the body as a wise and highly intelligent system. As a friend, container, companion, and source of wisdom, rather than a foe or something to be “fixed” or “optimized.”
   
   I understand this can feel really difficult when we’re experiencing pain (psychological or physical). Our desire to “fix” what feels painful is perhaps a symptom of how severe our pain actually is. But could we have compassion for that, while also remembering that treating ourselves as a problem to be solved hasn’t really worked well so far? Instead of making ourselves wrong, could we look for the purpose inside of our pain or pattern? Could we remember that discomfort is actually a very natural and important part of the human experience & the growth process? Could we not shame ourselves for being a human with a vast, wild, tidal inner landscape? Could we find even just a small sense of goodness and life inside of whatever pain you’re holding?
   
   

4. Basic functions of Freeze
   Freeze (a threat response function of the nervous system) is where we go when something in us perceives we can’t feasibly fight or flee our way to safety. It’s the default shut-down mechanism that occurs when it feels like there’s no other escape. There’s so much to say about Freeze, and I don’t want to get lost in the depths of that here. But what is important to know as it relates to feeling your feelings is this:
   
   Freeze is a symptom of trauma; the effects of a situation so threatening, unsafe and destabilizing that our system resorts to numbing, soothing and shutting down the intensity of the pain in order to feel safer in the present. The struggle is that if our traumatic wounds go untended, freeze can stay in our systems even after the ‘threat’ is gone. This means we’re feeling less pain, but we’re also feeling less joy and pleasure. We’re feeling less all around. If this feels true for you I want you to remember: your body is highly intelligent. Freeze is not a sign of your brokenness, rather, a wise and protective strategy that worked for a time. To melt freeze, we have to move so gently. Slowly and deliberately resourcing, soothing and orienting to safety so that our nervous system can feel safe and comfortable enough again in the present. Once enough felt safety is available, only then can we begin to process the pain of past experience, and move towards more joy, goodness and wholeness once again.
   
   If feeling your feelings feels down right hard, or you become easily overwhelmed or shut down when you try, then right now I want you to just focus on resourcing and establishing more safety and stability.

   
   

5. Speaking of safety & stability
   Resourcing into what is safe, stable and supportive is a NECESSITY for emotional metabolization. This is the part folks love to skip over because safety doesn’t feel sexy. But guess what? Safety, in a felt, embodied sense, IS SO FUCKING PRECIOUS. It’s the foundation for actually feeling awake and alive to our lives. Think of safety & stability as the soil that strong, solid roots can anchor into and drink from as we do the hard work of growing and transforming.
   
   Circling back to Jung’s perspective of the body as an alchemical container, we have to have a strong, solid, safe vessel (body and sense of Self or ego) that can hold all of the tension of change. So, we can’t talk about feeling our feelings without talking about having enough felt safety in order to really allow our feelings the space to emerge. Below, you’ll find a section called “PEMSER Resources,” in which I’ll break down what “resourcing” means, and share more ideas for ways to build in more support and felt safety for yourself.