How To Feel Feelings
Fellings. They’re the worst, amirite? Always sneaking up on us. That sudden coolness on our skin when we are embarrassed. That heaviness in our shoulders that accompanies guilt. Or the tears of pride that sting our eyes when we or our children have accomplished something amazing. Why do our feelings always seem to catch us off guard? And why can that be such a dangerous habit?
According to the National Institute of Health and the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, an estimated 19% of the population is suffering from some sort of anxiety disorder (and that was before the COVID-19 pandemic). Over 40 million adults are affected every year and according to a 2017 Harvard Medical School Survey, “An estimated 31.1% of U.S. adults experience any anxiety disorder at some time in their lives”. But why are we more anxious than ever? Is it because we are more aware of the evils in the world? Is it because we feel responsible for righting the injustices of our forefathers? Or because we have advertisers, commentators, and influencers constantly vying our attention with eye-catching headlines and invitations to “click here for more info”?
Maybe, probably, I mean almost definitely. But what if it goes deeper than that? What if these external forces are not what is causing the anxiety but our inability as individuals to cope with these external forces?
Consider what happens to our bodies when we feel anxiety: increased sweat production, rapid heart rate, rapid breathing, muscle tension, feelings of panic and dread. These are the same things that happen when the sympathetic nervous system gears up our fight or flight response. But because there is no physical threat, our brain prepares to fight against the internal threat. The trouble is that the internal threat is not a physical entity that we can pounce upon with punches and kicks, but the involuntary emotion that we feel in our brain. The “threat” isn’t the outrageous tweet that is going viral, the threat becomes the very emotion that the tweet elicits inside ourselves.
What happens when our brain turns the fight or flight response upon itself?
Suddenly we are left alone with the adrenaline that was released to dilate our pupils to better see incoming threats, the increased oxygen and blood flow that makes our punches hit harder or our legs run faster, and the cortisol that released all that extra sugar to our bloodstream to power it all. We are left alone on our couch fiercely staring at a screen breathing heavily and shaking a sugar-filled candy bar in our cold clammy fists at an opponent that will never have any remote inkling about our outrage.
It is commonly understood that repeated, intense, unchecked activation of the fight or flight response results in a host of health issues including anxiety, weight gain, high blood pressure, insomnia, and depression. Individuals suffering from these health issues are more likely to rely on prescription medications or drugs and alcohol to treat the symptoms, often having to suffer from side effects that are even more detrimental to other aspects of their health.
How do we break this cycle?
How do we as a society stop digging ourselves further and further down this dark path? The first step is to acknowledge what we can and can not change. We can not stop our brains from feeling enraged at the latest political gaff. But we can choose how we respond to that rage. Will we use the rage as an incentive to run for political office? Will we use the rage as motivation to explore alternative political parties and increase the exposure of a less well-known politician that more accurately reflects our viewpoints? Will we use the rage as an opportunity to teach our children how to have respectful discourse and when to gracefully agree to disagree? Or will we teach them to continue to sit on the couch next to us and rail against a system that will never acknowledge their frustration?
The answer is not to devolve further into our divided camps, surrounding ourselves with sycophants that agree with our every thought or parrot our own viewpoints back to us. The only way forward is to acknowledge our feelings, let them wash over us, swim in them, and truly feel them without fear or threat. We must acknowledge the validity of every feeling before we can move past it. We must accept that every feeling is valid because if it wasn’t valid you wouldn’t be feeling it.
Every feeling is just an involuntary response and the sooner we accept our feelings for what they are the sooner we will be equipped to confidently explore our feelings. Once we are fully aware of our feelings we begin to truly realize the impact they have on our state of mind and how we show up in the world.
