How to Feel It to Heal It: Embracing Emotions for True Healing, Self-Love and Awareness.
- Penny Louise
- Dec 13, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: Jan 27
By Penny Louise
It's hard to communicate an emotion into a lesson and share as a tool for others to heal. I talk more about this here. But this is why we need to become better attuned to our emotions.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the same thing over and over again in the personal and spiritual growth space: ‘Love yourself’, ‘let go of what you can’t control’, ‘set boundaries’, ‘trust the process’, and ‘feel it to heal it’. But until we actually feel these lessons deeply in our body, as if they were born from our own experience, they remain just words. The real transformation happens when these ideas move from intellectual concepts to truths that we embody.
An example of when this happened for me (and it happens in every session with my clients too) was when I received a hypnotherapy session from one of my peers some time ago. I was interacting with my inner child in a deep theta state and I could feel young Penny's crippling feeling of abandonment. After some communication with my feelings and inner child I came to an overwhelming clarity: “as long as I never abandon myself, I will never feel abandoned by others.” This would not have come had I not gone into my emotions.
Now, I’d heard this before many times, but when I experienced it in my body during a session I was feeling each of those words for the first time. All of these answers exist inside of you, and practicing self awareness and being with your emotions is a way to start opening up to these powerful, life changing pearls of wisdom.
The practice—feeling your emotions fully—is one of the most profound ways to heal. Instead of numbing, avoiding, or suppressing your feelings, sitting with them allows you to process, understand, and ultimately release them. This post dives deep into why and how to feel your emotions, drawing on teachings from notable figures and offering actionable steps to integrate this transformative practice into your life.
Why Feeling Your Emotions Matters
Emotions are not your enemies; they are messengers. They carry information about your needs, boundaries, and past wounds. Ignoring them doesn’t make them disappear—it buries them, often leading to anxiety, depression, or physical ailments over time.
Triggers, unresolved trauma, or recurring patterns come from unprocessed and ignored emotions. Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle emphasises the necessity of staying present with emotions, referring to them as "energy fields" that need your awareness to dissolve.
Common Misconceptions About Emotions
Before diving into how to feel emotions, let’s address some common myths:
"Feeling emotions makes you weak."
Male or female-acknowledging and not hiding your feelings requires the immense courage to love yourself. Suppression often creates inner turmoil, while vulnerability fosters growth.
"If I start crying, I’ll never stop."
Emotional release may feel overwhelming at first, but emotions naturally flow, allowing yourself to feel them creates relief, not more chaos.
"Only negative emotions need to be processed."
While negative emotions often demand attention, fully experiencing positive emotions can enhance your capacity for joy and gratitude. The lighter the light, the darker the dark (not that I believe any emotion is dark, but you get my point). Brené Brown reminds us that numbing one emotion often leads to numbing all emotions, diminishing our capacity for joy and so the opposite is true. Expanding one emotions expands them all. The more you’re able to experience sadness, the more you’re able to experiencing joy, and observing them both equally is a game changer.
The Practice of Feeling Your Emotions
Feeling your emotions requires presence and self-awareness. You need to develop the ability to be honest with yourself which can be done by taking responsibility. The more you practice, the easier it becomes:
Pause and Acknowledge
When an emotion arises, take a breath into it the present moment in which it exists. Instead of reacting, name it: "I feel angry," "I feel joyful," or "I feel hurt." Not "I am angry", "I am hurt". Do not identify as becoming them, but name your emotion and create space for awareness
Focus on the Sensation
Don’t reject the emotion, or wish you weren’t experiencing it. Shift your attention from the mental narrative to the physical sensations. Where do you feel the emotion in your body? Is it a tightness in your chest? A heaviness in your stomach? Simply observe. Does it have a texture? A colour?
Expand the Feeling
Instead of contracting or resisting, allow the feeling to expand. Try and grow the emotion and feel it as much as you can by imagining yourself opening up to fully embrace the emotion. This can feel counterintuitive, but it’s key to processing.
Observe Compassion not Judgement
See if you can notice the emotion as an observer. Do not judge it, “I shouldn’t be feeling this way”. Every emotion is human and normal. Thich Nhat Hanh suggests acknowledging emotions as "guests," inviting them in, and treating them with compassion.
Listen to What Comes Up
Emotions carry insights. When you sit with them, memories, thoughts, or realisations may surface. You can journal if it's easier, but I prefer to stay in the moment if you can. Listen to the insights or simply hold space for them. What stories are coming up? When was the first time you felt this way? It doesn't have to be correct, but what comes up? Where can you react from a place of? Projection or a healed truth.
Practice with Positive Emotions Too
Don’t reserve this practice only for challenging emotions, it’s almost harder to remember to do this practice when you’re feeling good but doing so expands your self-awareness. When you feel joy, excitement, or love, savour it. Fully embody the positive feelings to strengthen your emotional resilience.
Common Challenges and How to Overcome Them
Resistance to Feeling
It’s natural to avoid discomfort, but resistance often prolongs suffering. Remind yourself that feeling emotions is temporary, while suppression can have long-term effects.
Judging Your Emotions
Avoid labelling emotions as "good" or "bad." All emotions are valid and serve a purpose. Judgment only creates shame and blocks processing. Often when I practice this during times of sadness I find that following these steps result in the sadness creating this feeling of real gratitude for life. If I can feel this way, I must be alive - and what a precious feeling it is to feel this temporary sadness.
Overthinking Instead of Feeling
When emotions arise, you might be tempted to analyse them endlessly. Shift from thinking to feeling by focusing on your body sensations. There is a balance to be found where you can draw information from them, but giving your self compassion to fully let them to be felt as well.
The Role of Self-Compassion
As you practice feeling your emotions, be kind to yourself. Healing is not linear, and it’s okay to struggle. If it were easy, we’d all have mastered it already.
Practical Tools to Support Emotional Processing
Journaling
Write freely about what you’re feeling. Journaling helps clarify emotions and uncovers patterns.
Breathwork
Deep, conscious breathing can ground you in the present moment and help release stored tension.
Meditation
Practices like body scans or mindfulness meditation encourage nonjudgmental awareness of emotions and a connection between the mind and body.
Somatic Movement
Gentle movements like yin-yoga or dancing can help release emotions stored in the body.
Hypnotherapy
Work with a therapist or hypnotherapy practitioner who is able to support you through these emotions. Hypnotherapy is a great tool to quieten the mind and allow the emotions to take centre stage.
The Benefits of Feeling Your Emotions
When you fully embrace your emotions, the rewards are profound:
Emotional Freedom: Suppressed emotions no longer control you.
Deeper Self-Awareness: Understanding your feelings fosters personal growth.
Improved Relationships: Emotional awareness enhances empathy and communication.
Enhanced Joy: Fully experiencing positive emotions expands your capacity for happiness.
Final Thoughts: Healing Through Feeling
As Eckhart Tolle says, "Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists." The next time an emotion arises, try these steps. Don’t judge it or push it away. Feel it to its extent. This is how we heal. This practice is a huge tool in practicing how to love yourself through self awareness and for ultimate sustained healing.
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