Sitting with your feelings is not the answer

In my own healing journey I have come across and practiced many philosophies and methods that required to sit with my emotions, noticing them mindfully, honouring them at all costs. After years and years of subscribing to this I didn’t experience results.

Only after discovering, practicing and eventually training in somatics that I realised why I wasn’t seeing any results by being self aware and honouring my feelings.

Sitting with your emotions when your nervous system is dysregulated will often cause your body to activate survival strategies, your protective patterns; even when you think you are ready and open to feel it all.

Anything that’s too intense, emotionally, will invariably remind your system of unresolved trauma. Then without the resources and the capacity, the system will reflexively (automatically) defend, disconnect or shutdown.

The key is to build resources and capacity for the nervous system to be able to self-regulate. That’s why it’s imperative to work with your nervous system first. It doesn’t have to be in a linear paradigm, one stage first and the other next. These stages often overlap. It’s a fine art.

I guide my clients during sessions, in a titrated manner (in small doses) to actually do both even when self-regulation is not well established. Healing the nervous system is a delicate and non-linear dance.

The bottom line is that, if your body is not feeling safe and it doesn’t have the resources and the ability to self regulate; we will continuously get stuck in a vicious cycle of honouring and feeling our emotions without resolution.

It’s possible to get to the bottom of this issue, to build capacity, resolving these ongoing patterns.