Thinking Your Feelings versus Feeling Your Feelings
Years ago back when I worked at a residential treatment center, my dear clinical colleagues knew me for the saying “Feel Your Feelings!”. This was usually in response to someone (be they client or staff) trying to talk themselves out of whatever it was they were feeling. And I found as a result of those conversations, a lot of people don’t know when they are feelings their feeling or when they are thinking their feelings and how to know what they need and how to change if what they need is not what they are engaging in. Today, we’re getting into all of that. We’re going to cover what it means to think a feeling, what it means to feel a feeling, and what kind of signals you may receive that help you to know what you need.
I’m by no means a cognitive behavioral therapist AND it’s undeniable that our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors inform one another. With that in mind, what does it mean to think our feelings? Thinking your feelings is another way of describing intellectualizing your feelings. Thinking your feelings involves creating a bit of emotional distance from your emotions and sorting them out. It gives your space to identify and label them. Thinking your feelings is often relegated to the less important or less valuable way of processing your feelings. I prefer to think of it as one part of processing your emotions.
Alternatively, what does it mean to feel your feelings? Emotions create sensation. The new “how does that make you feel?” of the therapist world is “where do you feel that in your body?”. These sensations can be, yes, physical, they can also be mental. Feeling your feelings is letting yourself be awash in the sensation and let them exist. Feeling your feelings, especially negative feelings, involves sitting in the discomfort. Feeling your feelings, unlike thinking your feelings, happens up close.
Both thinking your feelings and feeling your feelings have benefits. Both are integral to actually processing your feelings. The intellectual and the sensual are ideally linked and allow the feelings to flow in and out as they will. Simply feelings your feelings or simply thinking your feelings only gets you halfway there and, in many cases, you serve to keep you stuck in the feelings.
So how can you tell what you need around a given feeling? This is definitely not a one size-fits-all situation and there are a couple of key indicators that you’re overly involved with one part of processing and could benefit from entering the other side. For example, if you find yourself feeling numb, where you may be able to describe how you feel (or how you think you should feel) that’s a very good indicator that you could benefit from looking inward and searching for the sensation of emotion. Where do I feel this in my body might be a good question to ask yourself. It might not be immediately apparent, and it might allow you to get in touch with what you’re actually experiencing versus what you think you’re supposed to experience. Paying attention to the sensation allows you to get a little bit closer to your emotional experience which, while potentially scary, is a necessary step to processing. Alternatively, if you’re flooded by sensation and find yourself lashing out or just behaving in go-mode, that’s a signal that you could use some distance from your emotion to think them through, identify and label them. We also have a saying in the therapy world that “if you can name it, you can tame it”. Thinking your feelings, identifying them, and labeling them also helps you to create a path to “taming them” and putting you back in the driver’s seat.
Thinking your feelings and feeling your feelings are two necessary parts of processing your feelings and not being controlled by them. It doesn’t matter what order you do them in and neither is morally superior than the other but consider them the steps in a two step process. You need both of them. Neither is to be feared. Both can be uncomfortable. If you struggle with feeling your feelings or thinking your feelings (or both!) working with a skilled therapist can help. If you’re in New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut, feel free to click the button below and let’s start a conversation.