About your feelings

Written by Vania Phitidis
Peaceful Eating Coach
Last updated on 21 October 2024

Were you taught not to feel your feelings? Perhaps you didn’t feel safe enough to feel anger. Perhaps you were not permitted to feel joy. Likely, if you have issues with food, you have learned to use it instead of feel whatever you’re feeling.

Feeling your feelings a really important skill to have – not just so you can become a peaceful eater, but so that you can fully experience your life!

It’s quite unusual to have an upbringing in which feelings are completely accepted, honoured and given space for expression. We’re told to ‘stop crying’; that ‘it’s no big deal,’ to ‘stop being a baby,’ to ‘pull yourself together,’ that you ‘shouldn’t feel that way towards your mother/brother’ or whoever – and so on. We’re taught that anger is bad, and that we shouldn’t feel sad. So on the one hand we don’t have the practical experience of our feelings being allowed. But on the other, we’ve been given the message that some feelings (especially the ‘negative’ ones) shouldn’t be felt.

What gets in the way of you feeling your feelings?

This probably isn’t the first time you’ve been told that feeling your feelings is an important aspect of resolving your issues with food. So how come it can seem so hard to do? Here are a few thoughts about what gets in the way of feeling your feelings:

Fear of the feeling. 

We are wired to avoid pain, and the brain does not distinguish between physical and emotional pain. Do you fear feeling the feeling because you think it’ll be too painful? The truth is, emotions can be painful to feel! But avoiding them doesn’t make them go away.

Emotional and physical pain are actually useful! They warn us that something is not ok. If you twist your ankle, the pain warns you not to step hard on it – and to rest it. And it’s the same with emotional pain – it’s there to let you know that something is not sitting well with you. Not feeling the feeling doesn’t change the fact that something isn’t ok within. It just means you don’t hear the message. You don’t get to find out what wants attention.

The truth about feelings is, they are always temporary. We can’t ever always be happy, or always sad. Feelings are transient. The word  e-motion – implies that they move through, if we just allow them the space to do that.

It’s a habit

When you’ve done something over and over again, it becomes a habit. So if you’ve used food to dampen your feelings time and time again, then it’s something familiar, something you’re used to doing. It can be uncomfortable changing habits, even if they’re unhelpful ones!

Thoughts and beliefs about it

What do you tell yourself about feeling your feelings? I used to think things like:

• They’re too big
• If I feel them, they’ll swallow me up
• If I feel them, it’ll mean I have to make drastic changes to my life – because something is terribly wrong
• Feelings are scary

Are any of these thoughts actually true? Feelings can’t actually swallow you up! And feeling even the most difficult feeling doesn’t compel you to change anything!

The truth is, emotions are just feelings that start as a thought, and have physical sensations associated with them, that are felt in the body.

That’s it.

Feelings just want to be felt

Carl Jung apparently said ‘what you resist, not only persists, but will grow.’ So resisting your feelings does not resolve them!

All they want, is to be felt.

And in Friday’s blog, I’ll tell you just how to do that!

But for now, please do share – what did you learn as a child about feeling your feelings? What do you think gets in your way? Share in the blog comments, on my Facebook Page, or anywhere you see this posted.

Much love to you xx

PS: A Guide to Peaceful Eating, my free mini ebook is still available – do you have your copy yet? Download it below… 😉