Your feelings

Learning to Understand Your Feelings

Our cognitions influence how we feel. This means that the way we see and perceive everyone and everything around us, impacts how we feel. We tend to follow a very simple formula in the precise order of:

Thinking (our thinking influences how we feel)
Feeling (what and how we feel impacts our behaviors)
Behaving (we behave as a result of what we think and feel)
Be sure to pay close attention to how you interpret the events and other people around you. Sometimes a simple adjustment in how someone or something is perceived can set off a whole new chain of responses.

Emotions are not good or bad.
Feelings are not right or wrong. They just are. And they are real and legitimate.  Feelings need to be validated. This means that feelings need to be acknowledged as being real and being yours.

Accept your feelings, embrace them and allow yourself to experience them.
Sometimes you will understand their origin and sometimes you will have no clue as to where they came from. It doesn't matter. Validate all of them. Acknowledge them as yours and allow them to surface and be experienced in an acceptable way.

Your body can literally "physically feel" emotions.

You have heard of "butterflies in the stomach" right? Our bodies physically react to how we feel. These bodily manifestations are different for different people. For example, during times of stress or fear common reactions may include headaches, body aches, gastrointestinal upsets, trembling, increased heart rate, etc.

It is important to learn to understand your feelings. Doing so is the first step in learning to embrace and accept them as part of who you are.  Remember it's often unhelpful to label them as good or bad, or right or wrong. Accept them as being part of your experience. Then and only then can you begin to effectively share how you feel and create positive feelings and outcomes in your life.

Sharing Your Feelings
Put your feelings into words. Talking to a trusted friend, family member or mental health professional who is empathic and non-judgmental allows you to share everything you are carrying alone inside. Talking to the right person can leave you feeling validated, cared about and less alone.
Having a healthy and safe outlet to share your feelings with can lessen the load and reduce the power of uncomfortable feelings.

Learn how to acknowledge and effectively manage anger. Anger is referred to as a secondary emotion. This means that anger is most always preceded with feelings of fear, hurt and disappointment. Identify and talk about what scares, hurts or disappoints you, now and in your past.
Recognize your body's signals that respond to feelings of anger. Talk about your feelings before they turn into regrettable actions. There are many anger management classes available throughout communities that can teach you how to appropriately talk through your anger and redirect anger-based behaviors into something beneficial and effective. Manage your anger before it manages you.

Express yourself. Journaling and even artwork, can be an effective way of processing what's going on inside you – even if sharing them is with yourself and your journal. Writing down or drawing your what you feel takes them from deep inside you and puts them outside and onto paper. Storytelling, art work, and writing is a healthy outlet that helps process what has been festering for a long time inside us.
Learning to understand and share allows you to acknowledge and accept your innermost experiences. When you share your feelings, you build longer-lasting healthy relationships, improve communication and experience an overall healthier emotional and physical well-being.

Keeping your emotions bottled up inside or even denying their existence can create a life-time of negative outcomes. Let yourself feel and share your feelings, you will feel lighter, more authentic and more genuinely connected to others.