As the REM song reminds us, everybody hurts sometimes. To lead a human life – with all its sorrows, as well as its joys – is to be faced with painful feelings on a daily basis. On any given day, we might feel stress, anxiety, hurt, upset, loneliness, low confidence or self-esteem, disconnection, rejection, anger, frustration, depression and boredom. Nobody likes these feelings. No-one wants to feel them. But whether we like it or not, as members of the human species we must inevitably feel them.

As I often tell my clients, if you never feel painful emotions you’re either a robot or you’re dead. And neither option is very attractive!

Another way of thinking about this is that, to live a full, rich human life, we need to feel a rainbow of emotions. Everybody likes the light-coloured ones, like joy, love, excitement, pride, pleasure and satisfaction. And no-one likes the dark ones: fear, pain, anger, sadness or loneliness. But maintaining robust mental health and wellbeing involves experiencing the full range of emotions, from light to dark.

Do you avoid feelings altogether?

Something I often notice with my clients, especially when they have a trauma history, is that they struggle with painful feelings in a variety of ways. Some people don’t feel them at all – they experience so much internal detachment and dissociation that they feel totally numb, shutdown or empty inside. And in some ways, this works well as an emotional-management strategy, because they are able to function well enough day to day, without being buffeted by unpleasant thoughts and feelings 24/7.

But the downside is that they often feel so disconnected, from themselves and other people, that life is extremely lonely. These people feel isolated and alone, even in a roomful of people. They might also struggle to feel the pleasant emotions, like happiness and love, because this internal shutdown squashes all emotions, light and dark.

Or are you overwhelmed by them?

At the other extreme, many people I work with find their feelings completely overwhelming. In schema therapy terms, their Healthy Adult part gets swamped by the intense, overpowering emotions of their Vulnerable Child part – the young, emotional, hurt child we all carry inside.

Again, if there is trauma in your background, your nervous system might be highly sensitive and easily engulfed by threat-focused emotions like anger, fear or hurt. That is not your fault, it’s just how your brain, nervous system and body were shaped by painful experiences in your childhood.

The practice

The four Fs: Find it, feel it, let it flow, find comfort

Either way, whether you feel too much or too little, you need help in managing your painful feelings. Here’s a step-by-step practice I have developed over the years, which might help.

Find it. If you’re experiencing any overwhelming feeling right now, first locate it in your body. For example, if you feel anxious or panicky, you will probably feel that in your gut – perhaps butterflies, a knot in your stomach or deep, sinking feeling of dread in your lower torso. If you feel angry, you might notice your muscles tensing up – especially around your upper back, arms, fists, shoulders and jaw – and a surge of heat and energy in your chest, throat and face.
It also helps to name the emotion (research shows that just naming an emotion helps reduce its intensity) so, ‘I feel anxious/sad/upset/angry/stressed/irritable/frustrated/lonely/hurt.’
If you tend to detach and don’t know what you’re feeling, just focus on the physical sensations in your body, however faint they may be (butterflies in your stomach, a heavy/slumpy feeling in your shoulders and upper body, and so on).
Feel it. It’s counterintuitive, but one reason people get so overwhelmed with emotions is because they swing between detaching, distracting or soothing (with alcohol, cigarettes, comfort-eating, prescription/non-prescription drugs, gaming, gambling or a whole host of other substances and activities) and overwhelm.
If you just want to understand how we’re supposed to feel emotions, look at a toddler. They have no problem feeling their emotions! If they are angry, they shout, stomp their foot, scream, have a tantrum. If they are hurt or sad, they cry. If they’re scared, they run to mum for a hug. The emotions flow through them like water.
And once they have felt and released the emotions, it’s amazing how quickly they move into a different emotional state – happy, excited, chattering, chasing a butterfly… For toddlers, emotions don’t get stuck. They feel them intensely, release them and then are perfectly fine again. It’s miraculous to see.
Remember that feelings can’t hurt you – they are just feelings, which all humans feel and in fact let us know we are alive – so allow yourself to feel them, bit by bit.
Let the emotion Flow. Many of us, especially (though not exclusively) men, have trouble in expressing our emotions. We feel incredibly sad, but we don’t cry. We boil with anger, but say nothing, clamping our jaw shut, balling our fists, but carrying on as if we’re fine.
Emotions – especially big emotions like anger or intense sadness and hurt – are designed to be released. That’s why we cry when we’re sad, so we release a mixture of emotion and stress hormones. And when we have cried enough, we feel a sense of relief.
If you’re angry, find some safe, non-destructive methods for releasing anger and letting it Flow out of your body (here’s a recent post I wrote about that). Learn to communicate assertively. Write angry letters you never send. Find ways that work for you of healthily releasing your anger, so it flows out and doesn’t fester inside, because that’s not good for your physical or mental health.
Find Comfort. Think about that toddler again. When he was scared, he ran to mum for a big hug. If his sister fell over and banged her knee, she would run to mum, or dad, or a grandparent for a big hug, soothing/reassuring words and perhaps some milk and cookies. This is the Find Comfort part of the practice. Once you have allowed yourself to Find and Feel it, then let the emotion Flow, Find Comfort either from someone else or yourself.
Because unlike toddlers, adults can self-soothe – we can give ourselves a hug, by placing a hand over our heart and thinking kind, comforting, reassuring thoughts. This might be tough for you. But it’s a skill that needs to be learned, perhaps with the help of a mental-health professional. And you can learn it, so you then have the option of seeking comfort from a partner, family member, friend or therapist, or of giving it to yourself.

I very much hope you find that helpful – remember that, like all practices, it takes practice. That’s why it’s called a practice! Because you need to do it, repeatedly, for it to become more effective. And watch this space for more emotion-focused practices you can add to your mental-health toolkit in future.

Warm wishes,

Dan