Before we can really process trauma, we gotta learn to feel our feelings (compassionately)
I *hate* crying. I hate it so much, I somehow robbed myself of my ability to cry. I get upset or hurt and I can feel the fuzzy feeling rising in the mask of my face — it’s kind of like the sound when you turn on a faucet that hasn’t been used in a while, hearing the water rushing to the spout — and then nothing happens. All of this pressure builds up in my face, in my body… but there is nowhere for it to go because my fear and shame around crying is so deep something inside of me shuts the crying down before it even begins. If I feel like I need a really good cry, I get on youtube and watch the last 5–10 minutes of Big Fish. That final scene gets me every time.
I know I am not alone in this. I know I am not the only one who, along the way, received messages that certain feelings are signs of weakness or are incompatible with being a “real” man or woman, or a “good” Christian, or a “good” person. So many of us have been taught (by our families or kids at school or church or society at large) that most of our feelings are wrong, bad, or shameful that a whole lot of us are walking time bombs of suppressed feelings. Every now and then our sorrow or rage or fear or shame comes out sideways at someone we love or a random stranger. Or everything we have bottled up begins to eat away at our insides and we end up with depression, anxiety, or any number of mental or physical illnesses that are caused or exacerbated by all the shit we are holding in.
About a year and a half (maybe two years) ago, I started to realize I was not okay. I was breaking. And the more I learned about trauma for my work the more I realized I needed to actually, really, deal with my own trauma. I had to go through it to come out the other side. Making that decision is scary as hell. Because, somewhere in me, I knew that this would mean I would have to learn to feel my feelings. And I was terrified. Having to learn to sit with feelings of abandonment, grief, rage, betrayal and where those feelings intersect with love, tenderness and desire can seem overwhelming — especially when you have lived your entire life pushing down or running away from any feeling that wasn’t on the happy/joy end of the spectrum.
Right now we are in the middle of a giant global traumatic event. This trauma is affecting everyone differently — how we experience trauma depends a lot on our emotional, communal, physical and material resources — but we are all experiencing it in one way or another. And I see a lot of interest in and talk about how we can resource ourselves and one another so that collectively, we can come out of this crisis and not be broken by it. Faith leaders and other community leaders want to know how to see the effects of trauma in themselves and what they can do to mitigate the effects of this collective trauma.
I love all of this interest in becoming trauma-aware and I hope it leads to more community leaders becoming trauma-informed and healing-centered. But before we take deep dives into trauma theory (or at least alongside it), we have got to figure out how to feel our own feelings and how to help others do the same.
The base element needed for processing trauma in ways that lead towards resilience and positive transformation is safety. A person who has experienced trauma needs to be physically safe, then emotionally safe. This part of the process can take years for some folk, and literally none of us have this right now consistently. We are all at least a tiny bit afraid that every time we leave the house or grab a package or come within 6 feet of another human or things another human has touched that we might get sick. We can feel safe in moments, but then we have to leave the house or we cough or get a tiny headache and the fear comes back. So we aren’t really going to be processing a ton right now.
But we can try to compassionately sit with our feelings and create space for others to sit with theirs.
What does this mean? I remember the first time my therapist told me to sit with my feelings and not in my feelings, I had no idea what he was talking about. But over the years I have begun to understand. Notice you are feeling a feeling. Be okay with having the feeling, do not shame yourself for the feeling. Treat yourself like you would a friend who is having a difficult feeling. Then try to just have the feeling.
For me, it looks something like this:
Oh, hey, that’s a feeling.
I do not like this feeling. I do not know what it is, but I do not like it. I feel scared/ashamed/icky about this feeling.
It is okay to be scared/ashamed of this feeling. Lots of people are scared of feelings. It’s totally normal. But this feeling is important and it would help me if I pay attention to it. Something in me needs to be heard.
So what is this feeling?
Oh. Huh. I’m really sad about not being able to do that thing I really wanted to do.
Do I have the time/space/safety to feel this feeling right now? (if no, I tell it I will come back to it and actually come back to it)
Where is this feeling located in my body? (Allow yourself to feel the physical sensations that come with the feeling)
I will sit and let this feeling be as long as I can manage it. It is okay to be sad. Lots of people are sad right now. I am not alone in feeling sad. God & the saints are with me in my sadness.
What do I need to do to care for myself and this feeling? What would I do for a friend who said they were feeling this way? (Then I do the thing)
This is kind of based on what I have learned from my own work, my therapists, from the work of lots of therapists and teachers like Dr. Kristen Neff, Tim Desmond, and Tara Brach. But basically you notice you are feeling something, take time to feel the feeling, then take care of yourself like you would someone else who is really upset.
We don’t always have the time or capacity to sit with our feelings. It takes energy and space. It can often mean trying to silence the voice of shame that lives in our head and tells us our feelings are wrong, or stupid, or weak. But if we want to come out of this experience a little more resilient, or at least more prepared to process what we have gone through, it’s an excellent thing to try. We can’t process trauma if we can’t feel our feelings.
Helpful resources:
Dr. Kristen Neff & Mindful Self Compassion: https://self-compassion.org/
Tim Desmond (The Self-Compassion Skills workbook) https://timdesmond.net/
Tara Brach & RAIN: https://www.tarabrach.com/
Dr. Mark Brackett (Emotional Intelligence) : https://www.marcbrackett.com/
https://brenebrown.com/podcast/dr-marc-brackett-and-brene-on-permission-to-feel/
