Being able to feel instead of think is the holy grail of mental health! Thanks for this great post!
In IFS (Internal Family Systems) terms, we have parts of us who carry very painful feelings and beliefs, like “I’m not good enough,“ or “I’m not lovable” or “It’s my fault this bad thing happened” etc. Those parts & their erroneous beliefs are so painful to feel, that we exile them from consciousness – hence, they are called exiles.
In order to keep the exiles exiled from consciousness, we need parts to protect us from their bad feelings.
What’s the most effective way to be protected from feelings? Thinking.
Therefore, we have manager parts who think think think think think think think. Oh my God so much thinking! Most people grow up thinking so much, they think that the part of them who does the thinking is who they really are. That is not true, though — we are something larger than our thoughts. Our true Self is more spacious and contains more than just our thoughts.
In some of the first phases of IFS work, finding out that “I am not the thinker“ is really shocking! Finding out there is something beyond or outside of the part of me who thinks….what?!! That is not who I really am? It can be an identity crisis to find out that I am not the one who thinks all the time to protect me from my deeper feelings. And, that I can develop the skill to be with my feelings, so that I don’t always have to be in my head, so that I can actually have a more full experience of being a human on this planet!
It’s incredibly difficult to move from the head to the heart, from the mind to the body, from thinking to feeling. Maybe it’s a lifelong journey for all of us.
What I love about IFS is that it’s a technology that gives people granular details about how precisely to do this, by separating the manager “thinking” parts out from the Self, the exiles, and the other parts. We need thinking, but when it gets out of control, like it is for so many people in the modern world, it’s incredibly deadening to our larger humanity.
It’s such a beautiful vision to work towards liberating ourselves from our mind, and coming back into our body, our feelings and the larger flow of life. Thanks for this generous reminder of the importance of this re-training/re-orientation, Chris.
Yes, your comment here resonates. Also Just a note to say a belated thanks for the refererence for IFS videos. Did some of them and it’s been very helpful!
I was about to come on here and share something similar, so I’m delighted to see this beautiful explanation of IFS 💛, and how are thinking parts can keep us from feeling (protecting us in essence). Thanks for this lovely explanation.
There is a term for this for some cases: alexithymia. It is the abundant lack of feelings, or the inability to describe them or even acknowledge them at times. Even though I haven't been diagonsed (and never self-diagnose, kids), the way to treat it is what always intrigued me.
From Healthline: "One possible step towards emotional recognition is to start being mindful of your own physiological responses. Some research has suggested the importance of beginning with your heart rate."
In other words, being present and aware can help the thinking mind overcome the need to reason the thought away. You get more comfortable in it if you just acknowledge it and accept it.
Also (again, not a therapist, but I do deal with my own trauma): this can be a hallmark of traumatic events. The need to protect ourselves from emotion (either from somoene we once trusted or our own) is an amazing survival technique but rarely served once the trauma is over.
A lot of things to consider today. Thank you for posting!
Literally came here to say this. :) Interoception & proprioception are often wonky in neurospicy folks, which certainly doesn't help with the whole alexithymic thing.
Dealing with feelings is very tricky. I grew up with one of my parents denying feelings. We could tell she was angry but she would say either "nothing is the matter" or "I'm fine." We were also told "somebody is going to end up crying" if we got too silly and excited when playing. If we were upset we were told "you have nothing to cry about." Don't get me wrong, we were not abused. I knew I was loved and we had all we needed. But we were never taught how to handle our emotions. I was very sensitive and anxious growing up. I used alcohol to numb myself. I've been sober a number of years now and thankfully have tools to help me cope and thrive.
I have always been very intuitive. Even as a child I could sense and feel things. As I got older and started to work mainly restaurant work I realized that I could feel my way through things. Answers to problems rose without thought. I became much less dependent on thinking through things but more reliant on how something felt. Working in kitchens was the same. I knew when something was cooked properly through my sense of smell and the look and feel of it. I didn’t think at all.
Having said all this I don’t frequently stop and ask myself how do I feel. Thanks for the suggestions!!
What am I sensing is the question I try to answer too — it’s much easier for me to articulate than to try and pin down one specific feeling at any given time (I’m usually feeling a few different feelings at once!).
I was just writing in this exact topic this morning. My therapist had a saying: “Stop thinking so hard, or you’ll hurt yourself.”
I would tend to analyze a situation and I didn’t know I was doing it. Strategizing. Always. Isn’t that what you are supposed to do? He would just shake his head and smile. I would, plan, analyze and strategize so I didn’t have to feel. And ensure I had no surprises. Ask me how well that worked for me! 😂
I grew up with a parent who couldn’t cope with his own feelings, so the rest of us weren’t allow to express our own. I buried mine and became depressed for many years. One of my goals with my own kids was to help them feel and express their own emotions. I remember a preschool teacher telling me that my daughter was good at identifying her feelings and coping with them. I was so relieved!
Also a writer with no vocabulary for feelings--I believe it is a lack of connection with my self and a direct result of being other-focused all the time. My therapist has the feelings wheel printed on a pillow that she tosses at me when I am like uuuuhhh after being asked how I am feeling. It's genius.
Ahh. So I spent 55 years banished from the felt sense. It took losing the most precious thing to me to wake me up. I had to enter the deep darkness to wrestle back my life from my mind. To recover the felt sense. And then it opened up. Jung says in the second half of life we go inward and the inner world is larger than the outer! I can attest to that. We have been banished from out birthright. It is not hard to recover. Defeating our survival mind is a great task. It must be done I think. This is part of my next journey- going deeper and letting others know it is possible. It took me too long. I hope it takes you less time.
As a therapist this comes up a lot with clients (and in my own life!). One resource is Brené Brown's book Atlas of the Heart and the accompaniment 5 episode series on HBO. This book breaks down 187 feelings or human experiences and helps others bring more texture to their feelings and how to manage or explore them more fully. I use this book frequently with my clients. It's also a lovely book to thumb through.
I continue to have this conversation with my therapist. My first instinct is to go to what I need to do to solve an issue - not to sit and think about how I feel. I eventually realized the reason I’m so anxious is because I never give myself time to have feelings - I immediately go into action mode. So now I practice noticing when I’m doing that - and actively choosing if I want to act. In most cases, not acting or doing something to cover up my discomfort makes things way better for me. Now I’m working on taking 10 minutes to sketch or journal when I feel that discomfort. I’m sitting with my feelings and exploring them. I do want to say - this doesn’t necessarily make me HAPPIER. But it is opening up a range of feelings I haven’t had in decades. I’ve been operating between happy, sad, and extremely anxious for so long. My anxiety was just crushing my spirit. Now I’m discovering bored, introspective, content, curious, longing, confidence, playfulness, resentment, guilt, uncertainty, etc - and my anxiety is reducing so much by not constantly hiding away these parts of myself. I’m starting to feel more like a whole person. No longer trapped by some invisible box I’ve kept all these parts of myself in. It’s a long journey and I’m still struggling a lot, but I see this path to accepting myself and not living gripped by fear and I’m trying to put myself closer to it day by day.
That made me laugh at how your therapist got annoyed with you. :)
It must be boring for a therapist when we can't express our feelings. I am still learning also. In dysfunctional homes, we are programmed not to think, feel or want.
Thoughts produce feelings. This is what comes to mind.
That's a good question.. what's the difference between the two? Feelings produce physical reactions, so I suppose that's probably why your therapist gets you to focus on your body and the sensations. I have certain reactions that tell me when I'm off balance.. I know them now.. I feel irritable, anxious, stressed, frustrated, annoyed.. When these show up, I know I need to take time out to see what's going on with me. I think these can be different for others.
I struggle to know the difference between thought and feeling because even feelings are processed through my thinking. I am practicing, however, pausing and paying attention when I have sensations in my body that are different than normal.
It’s quite easy to get stuck in a thought or narrative loop, especially if you have a strong reaction to something. And if you determined, as I did when I was younger, that some emotions are bad, you will squash those so you don’t have to acknowledge them. But as Gabor Mate has said, we will suffer either way. Learning to identify and make space for all of it, even if it makes me uncomfortable, has been a game changer for me. It can feel scary sometimes — I’m still learning that I can handle allowing the feelings — but it is also freeing.
Being able to feel instead of think is the holy grail of mental health! Thanks for this great post!
In IFS (Internal Family Systems) terms, we have parts of us who carry very painful feelings and beliefs, like “I’m not good enough,“ or “I’m not lovable” or “It’s my fault this bad thing happened” etc. Those parts & their erroneous beliefs are so painful to feel, that we exile them from consciousness – hence, they are called exiles.
In order to keep the exiles exiled from consciousness, we need parts to protect us from their bad feelings.
What’s the most effective way to be protected from feelings? Thinking.
Therefore, we have manager parts who think think think think think think think. Oh my God so much thinking! Most people grow up thinking so much, they think that the part of them who does the thinking is who they really are. That is not true, though — we are something larger than our thoughts. Our true Self is more spacious and contains more than just our thoughts.
In some of the first phases of IFS work, finding out that “I am not the thinker“ is really shocking! Finding out there is something beyond or outside of the part of me who thinks….what?!! That is not who I really am? It can be an identity crisis to find out that I am not the one who thinks all the time to protect me from my deeper feelings. And, that I can develop the skill to be with my feelings, so that I don’t always have to be in my head, so that I can actually have a more full experience of being a human on this planet!
It’s incredibly difficult to move from the head to the heart, from the mind to the body, from thinking to feeling. Maybe it’s a lifelong journey for all of us.
What I love about IFS is that it’s a technology that gives people granular details about how precisely to do this, by separating the manager “thinking” parts out from the Self, the exiles, and the other parts. We need thinking, but when it gets out of control, like it is for so many people in the modern world, it’s incredibly deadening to our larger humanity.
It’s such a beautiful vision to work towards liberating ourselves from our mind, and coming back into our body, our feelings and the larger flow of life. Thanks for this generous reminder of the importance of this re-training/re-orientation, Chris.
Oh, I do adore IFS. I have used it to overcome a lot of the trauma I had and really did help me in the long run.
Yes, your comment here resonates. Also Just a note to say a belated thanks for the refererence for IFS videos. Did some of them and it’s been very helpful!
I was about to come on here and share something similar, so I’m delighted to see this beautiful explanation of IFS 💛, and how are thinking parts can keep us from feeling (protecting us in essence). Thanks for this lovely explanation.
There is a term for this for some cases: alexithymia. It is the abundant lack of feelings, or the inability to describe them or even acknowledge them at times. Even though I haven't been diagonsed (and never self-diagnose, kids), the way to treat it is what always intrigued me.
From Healthline: "One possible step towards emotional recognition is to start being mindful of your own physiological responses. Some research has suggested the importance of beginning with your heart rate."
In other words, being present and aware can help the thinking mind overcome the need to reason the thought away. You get more comfortable in it if you just acknowledge it and accept it.
Also (again, not a therapist, but I do deal with my own trauma): this can be a hallmark of traumatic events. The need to protect ourselves from emotion (either from somoene we once trusted or our own) is an amazing survival technique but rarely served once the trauma is over.
A lot of things to consider today. Thank you for posting!
Literally came here to say this. :) Interoception & proprioception are often wonky in neurospicy folks, which certainly doesn't help with the whole alexithymic thing.
Neurospicy is an amazing term! Using that for myself. :D
Dealing with feelings is very tricky. I grew up with one of my parents denying feelings. We could tell she was angry but she would say either "nothing is the matter" or "I'm fine." We were also told "somebody is going to end up crying" if we got too silly and excited when playing. If we were upset we were told "you have nothing to cry about." Don't get me wrong, we were not abused. I knew I was loved and we had all we needed. But we were never taught how to handle our emotions. I was very sensitive and anxious growing up. I used alcohol to numb myself. I've been sober a number of years now and thankfully have tools to help me cope and thrive.
So common pre-2000, I think. The unlearning is tricky!
I have always been very intuitive. Even as a child I could sense and feel things. As I got older and started to work mainly restaurant work I realized that I could feel my way through things. Answers to problems rose without thought. I became much less dependent on thinking through things but more reliant on how something felt. Working in kitchens was the same. I knew when something was cooked properly through my sense of smell and the look and feel of it. I didn’t think at all.
Having said all this I don’t frequently stop and ask myself how do I feel. Thanks for the suggestions!!
If it’s hard to know what you’re feeling, I have found it useful to shift the question slightly from ‘what am I feeling?’ into ‘what am I sensing?’.
I have been teaching movement and somatic practice for over 20 years and helped many people to remember how to connect with their felt sense.
Start small and simple with things you can see, touch and smell. Feel where and how your feet touch the floor/sit in your shoes.
Lean into a wall, compare how it feels to slump into your couch. What kind of qualities do you notice? Temperature, texture, etc.
From there, it’s a little easier to start to develop a vocabulary around feeling.
What am I sensing is the question I try to answer too — it’s much easier for me to articulate than to try and pin down one specific feeling at any given time (I’m usually feeling a few different feelings at once!).
Yikes!😳
I was just writing in this exact topic this morning. My therapist had a saying: “Stop thinking so hard, or you’ll hurt yourself.”
I would tend to analyze a situation and I didn’t know I was doing it. Strategizing. Always. Isn’t that what you are supposed to do? He would just shake his head and smile. I would, plan, analyze and strategize so I didn’t have to feel. And ensure I had no surprises. Ask me how well that worked for me! 😂
“Stop thinking so hard, or you’ll hurt yourself.” Good one!
I
SAME!! It's why my daily planners used to look absolutely psychotic!
I grew up with a parent who couldn’t cope with his own feelings, so the rest of us weren’t allow to express our own. I buried mine and became depressed for many years. One of my goals with my own kids was to help them feel and express their own emotions. I remember a preschool teacher telling me that my daughter was good at identifying her feelings and coping with them. I was so relieved!
Also a writer with no vocabulary for feelings--I believe it is a lack of connection with my self and a direct result of being other-focused all the time. My therapist has the feelings wheel printed on a pillow that she tosses at me when I am like uuuuhhh after being asked how I am feeling. It's genius.
Ahh. So I spent 55 years banished from the felt sense. It took losing the most precious thing to me to wake me up. I had to enter the deep darkness to wrestle back my life from my mind. To recover the felt sense. And then it opened up. Jung says in the second half of life we go inward and the inner world is larger than the outer! I can attest to that. We have been banished from out birthright. It is not hard to recover. Defeating our survival mind is a great task. It must be done I think. This is part of my next journey- going deeper and letting others know it is possible. It took me too long. I hope it takes you less time.
‘To wrestle back my life from my mind.’ Powerful.
Hard won! Kicked the man behind the curtain out of the driver seat! Grateful to him for his years of service, but I cannot live like that any longer.
As a therapist this comes up a lot with clients (and in my own life!). One resource is Brené Brown's book Atlas of the Heart and the accompaniment 5 episode series on HBO. This book breaks down 187 feelings or human experiences and helps others bring more texture to their feelings and how to manage or explore them more fully. I use this book frequently with my clients. It's also a lovely book to thumb through.
Ohhh I think I need this book. Like Chris, I'm at the stage of pretty simplistic good/bad feelings.
Key word “practice.” I love to see men doing the work.
I continue to have this conversation with my therapist. My first instinct is to go to what I need to do to solve an issue - not to sit and think about how I feel. I eventually realized the reason I’m so anxious is because I never give myself time to have feelings - I immediately go into action mode. So now I practice noticing when I’m doing that - and actively choosing if I want to act. In most cases, not acting or doing something to cover up my discomfort makes things way better for me. Now I’m working on taking 10 minutes to sketch or journal when I feel that discomfort. I’m sitting with my feelings and exploring them. I do want to say - this doesn’t necessarily make me HAPPIER. But it is opening up a range of feelings I haven’t had in decades. I’ve been operating between happy, sad, and extremely anxious for so long. My anxiety was just crushing my spirit. Now I’m discovering bored, introspective, content, curious, longing, confidence, playfulness, resentment, guilt, uncertainty, etc - and my anxiety is reducing so much by not constantly hiding away these parts of myself. I’m starting to feel more like a whole person. No longer trapped by some invisible box I’ve kept all these parts of myself in. It’s a long journey and I’m still struggling a lot, but I see this path to accepting myself and not living gripped by fear and I’m trying to put myself closer to it day by day.
That made me laugh at how your therapist got annoyed with you. :)
It must be boring for a therapist when we can't express our feelings. I am still learning also. In dysfunctional homes, we are programmed not to think, feel or want.
Thoughts produce feelings. This is what comes to mind.
That's a good question.. what's the difference between the two? Feelings produce physical reactions, so I suppose that's probably why your therapist gets you to focus on your body and the sensations. I have certain reactions that tell me when I'm off balance.. I know them now.. I feel irritable, anxious, stressed, frustrated, annoyed.. When these show up, I know I need to take time out to see what's going on with me. I think these can be different for others.
My thoughts can trigger my feelings aka panic attacks. So I still need help with that part. So it does not take over my life.
I struggle to know the difference between thought and feeling because even feelings are processed through my thinking. I am practicing, however, pausing and paying attention when I have sensations in my body that are different than normal.
It’s quite easy to get stuck in a thought or narrative loop, especially if you have a strong reaction to something. And if you determined, as I did when I was younger, that some emotions are bad, you will squash those so you don’t have to acknowledge them. But as Gabor Mate has said, we will suffer either way. Learning to identify and make space for all of it, even if it makes me uncomfortable, has been a game changer for me. It can feel scary sometimes — I’m still learning that I can handle allowing the feelings — but it is also freeing.