So what do we actually DO with these “feelings,” anyway?

So what do we do with all these feelings we’re experiencing with all this intensity? 

CPTSD does a real number on our emotional regulation— meaning if we feel anything at all, we feel it with, you know, the white hot intensity of a thousand suns. 

We get to the point where we’d really rather not feel anything. 

We get to hate and fear our emotions. After all, they don’t seem to do much of anything but f*ck us up. 

Then we get into trauma recovery, and we’re told that it’s not a solution to deny or disown or dissociate our emotions anymore— but that begs the question: what the hell are we supposed to DO with these “feeling” things, huh? 

Often, the very best thing we can do with those “feeling” things is to hang out with them. 

Sit with them. 

Let them exist. 

Most importantly: do not deny them, disown them, or demand that they not exist. 

CPTSD survivors have had our feelings invalidated, attacked, ignored, and disrespected for most of our lives. 

The key to CPTSD recovery is scrambling all those old patterns. 

That means we can’t treat our feelings like the people in our lives treated them— or us. 

Even if we don’t yet quite know how to regulate or understand our emotions, we can’t be in the business of abusing them. 

Abusing our emotions is abusing ourselves. 

Neglecting our emotions is neglecting ourselves. 

Sit with them. 

Be with them. 

Treat your emotions like the “parts” of yourself that they are— maybe difficult to understand, maybe difficult to contain, maybe difficult to cope with…but important. Valuable. 

In my experience, if we sit with our feelings long enough, without overreacting, without demanding anything of them, without insisting they not exist or go away, without judging them— our feelings will tell us what they’re all about. 

They’ll tell us what they need from us. 

But it all starts with the willingness to sit with them. To hang out with them. 

To validate them. 

What a concept, huh? 

Breathe; blink; focus.