Do You Have the Courage to Feel Your Feelings?

We ask the people we love with OCD to do something very courageous. Through ERP, we ask them to experience their anxiety and lean into it without performing the compulsions that would bring the anxiety back down to baseline. But I've got a question for you. Are you courageous enough to feel your feelings whether or not you have OCD?

Today, I'd like to talk about 3 steps for more successfully feeling your feelings.

I had a friend of mine experience a loss. And she was telling me about all of the sort of crazy things that people said and did to her.

It's like they didn't want her to be sad. They didn't want her to grieve. They said, oh, it's for the best. But what she really wanted was somebody to join her in her grief. And my guess is that the reason that this is the case is that we're trained to not feel our feelings, at least most of us are.

We're taught from a very young age that certain feelings are not allowed. You know, big boys don't cry. I'll give you something to cry about. There's something very frightening about feelings, and many of us arrive in adulthood sort of living from the neck up. We think, but we don't feel.

In fact, we get very disconnected from our bodies, and this has a consequence. You see, if you can't experience the unpleasant feelings, you limit your ability to experience the pleasant feelings. If you don't feel comfortable feeling your feelings, chances are good that you're gonna spend time and energy trying to either numb or avoid those feelings. And feelings aren't there to make your life unpleasant. They're there to offer information that will guide action.

Step number 1 is shift your thinking about your feelings.

So feelings are nothing more than sensations that course through the body. They're nothing more than that.

They won't kill you even though sometimes it feels like they will. 2nd, the purpose of feelings is to offer information about the outside environment or the inside environment so that you take the appropriate action. 3rd, understand that feelings naturally come and go. It's sort of like the clouds in the sky. If you don't like a certain cloud, just wait a little bit and the cloud will be gone, another one will come.

So unpleasant feelings are not there to punish you. They are not dangerous. They're just information to help you act in ways that align with what's important to you.


Step number 2, become your life's narrator.

So oftentimes, when I watch a ball game, I'll listen to the sports commentator because they tell me things about the game that I didn't already know, or they help me see the action in a different way.

I love documentaries about nature, and I love listening to David Attenborough or James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman. It just brings a richness to my understanding. Well, what if sir David Attenborough were narrating what's going on in your body? So he says and she is doing a body scan, and here is what she's noticing. She notices a warm feeling that starts around her belly button and then radiates up and then down.

Or he notices that his skin is crawling and the hair on the back of his neck is standing up. Or she has an uncomfortable gripping feeling that starts in her gut and then stabs her. Alright. Those are just sensations in the body. And the next thing that a David Attenborough would probably do is name that sensation.

So when somebody feels this warm glowing sense radiating up and down, some may call that love. When somebody's skin is crawling and the hair is on the back of their neck, they're scared. They're alert to danger. When somebody feels like they're being stabbed in the gut, maybe that's guilt or shame. So the narrator would name the feeling.

I remember when I was helping my son understand his feelings, you know, we would talk about the 4 basic feelings, mad, glad, sad, and scared. So at a very simple level, when you feel these sensations in your body, what does that mean? And you can get very specific about describing the sensation. Does it feel warm or cold? Is it gripping or is it stabbing?

Where does it radiate to? Where do you feel it? Another thing that we can do is avoid saying I am angry, I am scared. What we can do instead is separate the I from the feeling. So I feel angry, I feel scared.

Anytime that we can put a space in between what we're feeling and our understanding, we're in a better position to respond appropriately to the feeling. Next, just allow the feeling to be there. Don't try to numb it or avoid it. If you try to do either of those things, the body just wants to communicate something to you, and it will increase the intensity of the message. The best thing to do is just be present to the feeling and let it be.


If you find yourself trying to numb the feeling with shopping or binge-watching TV or alcohol, then you can say, oh, how human of me. This is what I've done in the past. Today, though, I'm just gonna be present with my loneliness. I'm gonna be present with my anxiety about what the future will hold, and you will most likely find that these things just pass along.

Step number 3 is get curious.

So if a feeling is a communication about what's going on outside or inside, what is the message that this feeling is bringing? So there's no need to judge yourself or blame yourself. Just get curious. What is the information, and is there anything that I want to do to manage this a little more effectively? So, again, we're asking our children, the people we love with OCD, to lean into their anxiety that's caused by an obsession.

I think all of us can be more willing to feel our feelings and manage our feelings more effectively. This has been one of the true gifts of OCD to me.

So that's what I've got for you today. 

And if nobody has told you yet today, I admire your courage. Managing OCD is the most difficult thing that I have ever done. Here you are educating yourself about how to do it more effectively. You've got this.