You have to FEEL those FEELINGS
After 15 years as a creative arts psychotherapist, I have learned that to be free of emotions that weigh you down, you have to allow yourself to FEEL them.
In our society, we are taught from an early age to stifle our feelings. Not just the negative feelings, but all feelings. If you are feeling full of joy and happiness, can you run and jump and shout with joy? Not if you are in school, at work, on public transportation, walking down the street or over a certain age.
What about sad feelings? Is it okay to cry, sit in a corner, and allow those feelings to wash over you? If someone is near to you, chances are they will ask you what’s wrong, try to cheer you up, or otherwise take your focus away from the emotion. Even on your own, you might talk yourself out of your mood or stifle the desire to cry, especially if you are part of certain cultural or gender groups that engrain in us feelings of shame or the belief in the private nature of emotional expression.
If something makes you really angry and you feel like yelling and expressing indignation, do you have the freedom to express that? What happens to those strong emotions that so desperately need to be expressed? What happens over the course of a lifetime of repressing, ignoring or just not dealing with these emotions that are part of every human’s experience?
Philosophers since Plato and Aristotle differed in their opinions over expression of emotions. Catharsis is defined as “the experience of expressing strong emotions that previously were blocked, especially through certain kinds of art, music or theater.” Over the past 20 years, the field of psychology has begun to integrate knowledge from various fields like neuroscience, somatic experiencing, trauma-informed psychotherapy and other mind-body or holistic approaches. Rather than follow the trend of increased specialization like in the physical sciences and medicine, the mental health fields are moving more toward integration in search of what can really help a person feel and function better.
Creative arts therapists have always known that finding a means of expression is part of taking care of your mental health. There is now research that measures levels of cortisol and other stress hormones, brain wave frequencies, vital signs like blood pressure, oxygen saturation rates and heart rate showing the efficacy of various techniques. Both mentally and physically, we heal through the expression of emotion.
Meditation or inward reflection followed by outward expression helps keep us stabilized and functioning at our best. Some clients have told me that in previous therapy experiences, they were not encouraged to feel their feelings. We tend to take a rational, intellectual approach to finding solutions. Rarely are we encouraged to get in touch with our feelings, or to express them even when they are painful, thereby releasing some of the tension we hold inside.
The good news is that healing from emotional wounds of the past is possible. The hard part is giving yourself permission to re-visit painful memories, and re-experience the emotions felt at the time, in order to release and resolve those feelings. The work of letting go is the important and crucial step toward moving forward in freedom from your past.