Feelings and trauma and our relationship with ourselves.

The problem with numbing out our negative feelings and experiences is, we also tend to numb out our positive ones, too. 

Not always, but often. Very often. 

Often enough that, when we’ve spent years, decades numbing out our pain, we often can’t remember what it’s like to feel even sort of good. 

We often settle for feeling some facsimile of good— that, honestly, doesn’t feel all that good. 

Understand: almost nobody reading this made a “choice” to numb out their feelings. 

Almost everybody reading this was conditioned to do it, to some extent or another. 

Blaming ourselves for it is a dead end. 

Realistically regulating our feelings often begins with finding ways to feel our feelings— good, bad, and otherwise— in ways that aren’t overwhelming. 

You have probably gotten all sorts of messages about your feelings over the years. 

You’ve probably been told you’re “too much.” 

You’ve probably been told you’re “too sensitive.” 

You’ve probably been told your feelings are, to one extent or another, just…wrong. 

So— you, like me, probably got in the habit of not feelings things. 

Well…that kind of oversimplifies it, doesn’t it. 

Because, after all, we do feel the things, don’t we. 

Just not…consciously. 

But we feel them. 

In our bodies. In our dreams. In our fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and/or flop reactions. 

Yeah. There’s no bypassing feelings, not really. And to the extent we try to bypass our feelings, we hand them power over us— notably, the power to interrupt our day, interrupt our relationships, interrupt our goals. 

My point is, trauma recovery often involves reevaluating our relationship with our feelings— and our conditioned strategy of trying to opt out of feeling them. 

Again: it’s not our fault. 

But our feelings have been waiting for us to return to them, to acknowledge them, to care for them. 

Trauma recovery broadly is about repairing and nurturing our relationship with ourselves. 

For my money, every decision we make in recovery comes back to: does this build or chip away at my relationship with myself? With my parts? With my inner child? 

Usually, if we can think to ask that Recovery Supporting Question, we can figure out the answer. 

Don’t fear your feelings. 

Hold them. Sit with them. Be with them. 

Even—especially— the rough ones.