Learning How to Feel

How I Read my way into Feelings, as a WAY to Get a Read on My Own

“Don’t cry.” “Don’t be scared.” “Don’t get mad.” “Look on the bright side.”

These are things many parents say to comfort their children when they’re upset. As we get older, those phrases often shift into “suck it up,” “be a man,” “get over it,” or “it’s not that big of a deal.” Even when these words come from a place of love — a desire to protect us or ease our pain — they often teach us to dismiss what we feel.

What I didn’t learn until my 30’s is that avoiding our feelings keeps us from healing.

And it happened by chance while reading Glennon Doyle’s incredible book, Untamed.

The Awakening: All Feelings Are for Feeling

Though already an established author, I had not yet heard of Glennon Doyle when I discovered Untamed. It was actually reading a quote from Adele stating that this book "will shake your brain and make your soul scream," that piqued my interest. 

Reading Untamed was joyful, maddening, and enlightening all at once. It was the first time I had ever read a book and laughed out loud while reading — finally someone who understood my frustrations with texting! But it offered so much, and it was on page 50 where I had my first of many life-changing revelations:

“I did not know before that woman told me, that all feelings were for feeling.

I did not know I was supposed to feel everything. I thought I was supposed to feel happy.

I thought that happy was for feeling and that pain was for fixing and numbing and deflecting and hiding and ignoring.

I thought that when life got hard, it was because I had gone wrong somewhere.

I thought pain was weakness and that I was supposed to suck it up.

But the thing was that the more I sucked it up, the more food and booze I had to suck down.” 

Excerpt from Untamed, by Glennon Doyle 

Like Doyle, I had no idea that all feelings were welcome — that I wasn’t supposed to shut out the bad ones and only allow the good ones. I didn’t even know what most of my feelings were since I had spent so much time dismissing them. When I read that quote I was flabbergasted, but reading something didn’t mean I was learning it or knew how to put it into practice, so I knew I wasn’t done just yet. 

Like many lessons in life, feeling my feelings would take awhile to learn, and since books are such a powerful tool — allowing us to escape into someone else’s world while learning from their perspective — it was no surprise to me that around the time I started looking inward, I also sought out stories from others who had done the same. Once I have an interest, I tend to hyper-fixate, so I spent the next year reading books about humans — our feelings, mindset, purpose, authenticity, and empowerment. Through that process I also discovered Brene Brown, research professor, author, and now widely celebrated motivational speaker who safely introduced me to one of the most painful feelings there is — shame.

Facing Shame and Finding Empathy

Learning about shame — just one of the many emotions we experience — was incredibly eye-opening. Since shame is so painful, we tend to run from it as fast as we can. In her book, I Thought it was Just Me (But it Isn’t), Brown shares the results of seven years of research on shame, specifically shame felt by women. 

While reading this book I participated in one of the exercises where the author helps you to recognize physically how shame feels to you. While I had surely experienced shame before, I had never explored it in this way. 

Here is an excerpt from I Thought it was Just Me (But it Isn’t), if you’d like to try out recognizing your physical reaction to shame:

• I physically feel shame in my _______________________.

• It feels like _____________________________________.

• I know I’m in shame when I feel_____________________.

• If I could taste shame, it would taste like ______________.

• If I could smell shame, it would smell like _____________.

• If I could touch shame, it would feel like ______________.

Excerpt exercise from I Thought it was Just Me (But it Isn’t), by Brene Brown 

Through this exercise, I learned that I feel shame primarily in my face and throat - and it feels hot, dry, and suffocating. So it makes sense that I would want to run away from that discomfort. 

But Brene Brown challenges you to face it, feel it, and eventually - move through it; she teaches that avoiding shame only makes it worse. It is through calling it out, admitting it to someone you trust, and ultimately being met with empathy that can truly help you release it. While shame can be extremely painful, releasing it can be euphoric. No one talks about that part.

It was surprising to find such a positive feeling in facing something inherently negative. This practice of facing uncomfortable feelings was entirely new to me. Even though I was in therapy, I was eager to continue the work on my own because I was beginning to see how helpful feeling my feelings actually was. 

Thankfully I had also been following Dr. Nicole LePera on Instagram for some time. When she released her book, How to Do the Work, I purchased it instantly. 

Tuning In: What the Body Can Teach Us

Dr. LePera is a well-known holistic psychologist, author and social media content creator. In How to Do the Work, she aims to empower her readers to heal themselves. There is so much incredible information in this book, but I’m only going to focus on what's in chapter 12 — Emotional Maturity — where Dr. LePera encourages readers to connect with their bodies daily. The purpose of this, she suggests, is to become familiar with how your body physically responds to your emotions. 

Similar to learning about how shame feels, in this book Dr. LePera teaches that becoming aware of the physical sensations all of our emotions create is what allows us to feel our feelings. Knowing how uncomfortable this can get sometimes, she also offers meditations and other practices to help soothe yourself when feeling your feelings is becoming too much to handle in any given moment on your own.

I had a lot of aha moments during and after reading each of these books. One of them  occurred on a day where I had spent the entire day trying to relax — I tried TV, food, and social media — but nothing was working. Later that night when I finally decided to give up and go to sleep, I finally surrendered to how I was feeling instead of fighting it, and that's when it dawned on me — I felt awful. 

Feeling: Where the Work Begins

When I say I felt awful, I truly mean that I was physically in pain — and yet I’d spent the day ignoring it. Growing up I was taught to dismiss my emotions and the physical sensations that came with them. Eventually that extended to my physical body as a whole. 

This moment of realization coincided with the menstruation phase of my menstrual cycle — so the pain I was feeling had a clear reason. And yet, I still believed not being able to relax was my fault, because long before that night, I learned I wasn’t supposed to feel bad. Ever. Admitting I felt bad meant I had done something wrong, which to me meant there was something wrong with me. 

After reading the above books — and going to therapy — I was finally becoming much more in tune with my body and with it, my emotions. I was starting to understand that I was allowed to feel bad — to feel exactly how I was feeling — and that by acknowledging my emotions, I could actually move through them – even the hardest ones. In fact, I could actually move through them faster and more gently than I ever could when I was trying to push them away.

Trust Your Way Forward

There are several other books I read along the way that taught me what it meant to look inward, to journey through self-exploration, heal from my past traumas, and to trust myself and my feelings (not my thoughts!).

So in addition to the three above, I’d love to recommend some more of my favorites:

• Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

• Wild by Cheryl Strayed

• No Bad Parts by Richard C. Schwartz

• Radical Awakening by Dr. Shefali

• Claim Your Power by Mastin Kipp

• The Journey Within by Radhanath Swami

• Mindset by Carol S. Dweck 

As always, I recommend taking what resonates with you and leaving the rest. While I’ve learned a lot from these authors, I don’t align with everything they say — and I don’t think we’re meant to. I’ve found it more valuable to stay curious and trust what feels true for me, and I encourage you to do the same.

Disclaimer: This blog is not meant as professional advice or counseling. If you are in emotional distress or experiencing thoughts of harm to yourself or others, help is available 24/7:

• If in crisis, call 988

• Text HELLO to 741741 to connect with a Crisis Text Line counselor

• Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline:

  • 1–800–273–8255 (TALK) Spanish & English

  • Deaf & Hard of Hearing TTY 800–799–4889

• Call 911

• If you need mental health treatment but cannot afford it, contact Rise Above The Disorder, a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to making mental health care accessible to everyone: YouAreRAD.org