Why Do Therapists Go On and On About Feelings?

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Skimmer’s Box:

Therapists seem to be obsessed with feelings. Why is that? In this article, I discuss why feelings are so important, explore the connection between feelings and self-worth, clear up some common misconceptions about feelings, examine their role in healing, and explain what therapists actually mean when they tell you to “sit with your feelings.”

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Someone asked me the other day, “What’s the obsession clinicians have with making us clients acknowledge and sit with our feelings? Wouldn’t it be better to just offer strategies to get things done?” I was pensive for a minute, then I responded, “The short answer is…”

The level at which a person acknowledges their feelings is directly related to how they value themselves. The person looked at me with disbelief. I could see him mentally preparing his dissenting argument.

“Hold on, before you say anything. Picture this with me for a second. Imagine you are saying something to someone who is supposed to take your expertise or perspective into consideration, and then, every time you speak, they put their hand in your face right in the middle of your statement, like ‘stop,’ turn their head away, and shake their head no, that they don’t want to hear what you have to say.”

What is your reaction? (I almost asked, “How do you feel?” 😅)

Most people tell me they would feel dismissed, shut down, devalued, ignored, and disrespected.

Well, what if I told you that’s the same message you send yourself internally when you have a feeling and ignore or dismiss it because it’s inconvenient or not what you want to hear?

It’s really that simple. Feelings are part of you, and when you don’t acknowledge them, you implicitly abandon yourself as unworthy of even the most basic attention.

My friend begrudgingly nodded, indicating he could see the logic behind this simple truth.

“That’s deep, Nish. You should write about that.”

So here I am, writing about it.

It Starts With How You Treat Yourself

So let’s drill down into the topic a bit. I might get a little technical here, but of all the things I’ve written over the last year, this might be one of the most important: it’s pivotal to wellness and balance that a person learns to care about themselves if they expect to receive even a small measure of care from the world around them.

You can’t say, “I deserve consideration,” and still be the first person to deny yourself space internally. You give yourself consideration first, and then others follow, and in some ways it all begins with those pesky feelings.

So let’s start at the beginning.

Okay, So What Even Is a Feeling?

A feeling is the internal experience created when the body, brain, memory, perception, and meaning-making systems respond to life. Feelings are the mind and body’s way of signaling that something meaningful is happening internally or externally.

Feelings are fluid. Even very painful ones come and go. They may stay longer than we would like, but they move. Feelings don’t observe any arbitrary timelines.

We do not have to do anything with feelings, or because of feelings.

Feelings are not behaviors.

They are information.

Sounds simple. So what makes acknowledging and sitting with them so challenging?

The Misconceptions That Keep Us Stuck

First, not everyone knows how to “sit with their feelings.” Maybe your internal survival mechanisms required that you dismiss your feelings. Maybe you watched adults who didn’t know how to manage feelings, who sometimes got lost in them, unable to attend to the needs of life. Either way, when a feeling tries to surface, you may have a habit of seeing acknowledgment as a destructive and dangerous pursuit, contrary to survival.

So even when you’re in control of your life and, for all intents and purposes, “safe,” but you still work too much or shop too much or drug too much or feel hollow, it can feel confusing when a therapist points to “sitting with your feelings” as part of what will help. I mean, how does one even do that? Well, let’s start by naming some of the other misconceptions about sitting with your feelings.

Acknowledging Is Not Obeying

Second, one of the biggest misunderstandings people have about feelings is that if they acknowledge them, they will somehow become consumed by them or required to act on them immediately.

But acknowledging a feeling is not the same thing as obeying a feeling with a behavior.

You can feel angry and not crash out (I just like saying “crash out”).

You can feel exhausted and still go to work.

You can feel grief and still parent your children.

You can feel fear and still move forward.

You can feel disappointment and still honor your commitments.

Feelings and behavioral functioning can coexist.

Sometimes people avoid feelings because they are afraid of what the feeling means. If I admit this feeling about my spouse, does that mean I have to divorce them?!

Or it goes deeper. If I acknowledge that I have been lonely my whole life while my mom worked multiple jobs to put food on the table, does that mean I am ungrateful, or that my mom was a bad parent?

The short answer is no, you don’t have to divorce your spouse. No, you are not ungrateful, and your mom wasn’t a bad parent. In fact, you are not required to do anything in response to feeling a feeling. You may, for political, familial, and other reasons, continue to act in a way that is no different from how you acted before you acknowledged the feeling, because it is necessary. Because your life demands it. Because it is rational. The only difference is you mattered enough to be heard.

We’ve already established that feelings are not instructions; they are information. But there’s more to it: that information often points us toward “our truth,” the realities we may not want to face but that are at the root of healing and the information that helps a person bring their life into balance.

You Can’t Selectively Numb

Third, you can’t selectively numb.

People often think they can shut down painful feelings while still fully experiencing joy, connection, love, creativity, excitement, and aliveness. But human beings don’t really function in this way.

You cannot disconnect from grief without also disconnecting from parts of joy.

You cannot disconnect from vulnerability without also limiting intimacy.

You cannot disconnect from pain without also reducing your ability to fully inhabit life.

Avoidance Doesn’t Make Feelings Disappear

Fourth, there is a common assumption that feeling your feelings makes depression and anxiety worse. But from what I can see, it is the suppression and avoidance of feelings that actually contribute to an escalation in depression and anxiety-related symptoms. I have repeatedly found that once a person names what they are trying not to feel, whether they name it internally or externally in a space that is safe, they feel a release of tension that sometimes alleviates depressive and anxious symptoms. (And no, I am not saying feeling your feelings is a cure for depression and anxiety, because these are complex disorders that involve multiple contributing factors. But I am clearly saying it can have a positive impact on the battle to recover from these illnesses.)

It’s important to understand that if acknowledging a feeling brings something up that feels worse at first, that isn’t new pain, and it isn’t depression deepening. It’s pain that was already there. You were just expending energy trying to keep it out of sight. (Note: If it really feels bad, then I challenge you to consider how much energy it was taking to suppress it. Is it any wonder a depressed person feels chronic fatigue, or an anxious person struggles to concentrate?)

Now let me be clear: compartmentalization is real, and sometimes it is necessary. Many highly functional people survived difficult lives by learning how to place emotions to the side long enough to continue functioning. I understand that deeply. I am probably a master compartmentalizer myself.

And honestly, I’m not ashamed of that.

Compartmentalization can help people survive, lead, work, parent, and function under pressure. But the problem comes when the compartments become permanently sealed and people lose access to themselves in the process.

What Happens When You Finally Say It Out Loud

As a therapist, I have seen over and over again what happens when something that has been emotionally suppressed is finally named honestly in the room. Sometimes the body softens. Sometimes a person breathes differently. Sometimes the confusion begins to organize itself. Sometimes there is grief. Sometimes relief. Sometimes clarity. Sometimes hopefulness.

Not because the problem disappeared.

Not because the feeling disappeared.

But because the person stopped abandoning themselves internally.

So What Does Sitting With Feelings Actually Mean?

There are probably a ton of ways to sit with your feelings, but I’m gonna streamline it into three things I come back to over and over.

Noticing and Naming. Sitting with your feelings simply entails noticing and naming what is happening internally without immediately turning away from yourself.

Noticing and naming could entail tuning into the sensations in the body: tightness in the chest, heaviness in the stomach, tension in the jaw, butterflies in your stomach, exhaustion in the body.

Offer yourself patience and be curious. Inevitably, a feeling will show up that feels a bit confusing or murky, seeming to come from a place that isn’t immediately identifiable. May I politely suggest that you remain curious until clarity surfaces? Difficult feelings aren’t always a sign that something bad is happening. Sometimes these unfamiliar feelings just mean your nervous system hasn’t yet caught up to a change in your life or thinking, for example, feeling guilty about setting and defending a boundary. Give it time to get on board.

Grace. When you acknowledge and sit with your feelings, you have given yourself permission to emotionally exist without judging yourself for being human. This is a step toward wholeness and healing that we all have the ability to offer ourselves, on an ongoing basis, for free.

Just a quick note: once you allow yourself this basic acknowledgment, you may find that you have feelings about so many things. Like a chatty auntie, in the beginning your feelings don’t miss an opportunity to weigh in on almost everything. Just listen. There is more than a little wisdom coming from them. And if all of that feels like a lot at first, professional psychotherapists are always available to help you sort through what comes up.

Feel your feelings. It won’t kill you.

But not feeling them just might.