Feelings are Messengers! Here's How to Listen to Them:

(Disclaimer: this article is not intended as medical or mental health treatment or advice. Please see my disclaimer here.)

One Way to Relate to Feelings: As Messengers!

What are feelings for? Why do we feel sadness, or joy, or even numbness? What’s the point in feeling anything at all?

These are questions we’d be forgiven for asking, especially when we’re experiencing a lot of so-called “negative” feelings. I mean, why would our mind/body system do such a thing anyway? Why would it make us feel bad so much for apparently no good reason?!

Well, we’d also be forgiven for assuming feelings do have a reason, a function, a point. If they’ve developed out of millions of years of evolution, they’re likely serving a valuable function, but what might that function be?

Well, one possible function is that feelings serve as messengers. Feelings are trying to tell us something. But what?!

Well, before we figure that out, we need to learn how to listen to them more carefully.

Below we look at how to listen to our feelings more carefully, but first, it’s important to recognise that sometimes, for various reasons, listening to our feelings might not be easy…

Listening to Our Feelings Can Be Hard.

This is true. Listening to our feelings can be hard, for many reasons.

First, we might be used to ignoring our feelings, to pushing them away, and so we might have gotten used to living day to day with the volume of our feelings turned off. This means, even if we turn on the volume, even a little bit, our feelings will sound quite loud and overwhelming, because we’ve gotten so used to the emotional silence. We become super-sensitised.

Second, we might have beliefs about our feelings that make them appear threatening. For example, we might think feelings are a sign of weakness. We might think feelings will overwhelm us completely if we allow them any space. We might think others will attack us if we allow our feelings some airtime. Beliefs like these can make feeling feelings distressing, and so we resist listening to them.

Third, some feelings are, in fact, quite distressing, even if we’re used to them, and even if we have positive beliefs about them. Because of this, we might attempt to avoid the distressing feelings because, well, we don’t like feeling distressed. Unfortunately, feelings seem to be an all-or-nothing deal, where if you try to suppress the bad ones, the good ones seem to get suppressed also.

So, maybe we can try something different? If we suppose that feelings might have important messages for us, then maybe we can experiment listening, and test whether our beliefs about them are true or not. This experiment will also help us get used to turning up the volume, just a little bit, on our feelings, so that listening to feelings becomes more tolerable, more familiar, and not so over-whelming. We get used to their sounds again. That doesn’t mean you feel everything without any distress. Not at all. Distressing feelings are part of the deal, but feeling the hard feelings seems to mean we start feeling the nice feelings more also. You can read more on the importance of distress here.

How to Listen to Feelings…

In a previous post, I wrote about How to Scribble Your Feelings, which can be a great start to listening a bit better to our feelings, so I recommend that as a starting point to tune into how you feel, if you think it’s useful.

If you don’t want to use scribbling to check in on your feeling, simply allow yourself some space to feel whatever it is you are feeling. See if you can find where that feeling is happening in your body. What does the sensation of that feeling in your body feel like? Is it a light sensation? Is it a numb sensation? Is it a tense sensation? How is the sensation changing? Is it pulsing? Is it buzzing? Is it pulsing?

Once you’ve tuned into the feeling, imagine you could talk to it, and it could answer.

Then, greet the feeling, and ask it the questions below, and see what the feeling answers.

1. What do you want?

2. What do you need?

3. What are you trying to gift me?

Really open your imagination to the feeling, and let the feeling answer. Allow yourself to listen.

For example, after I tune into sadness, the conversation might go:

Me: “Hi, sadness.
Sadness: “Hi…”
Me: “Can I ask you, what do you want right now?”
Sadness: “I just want to hide away from everyone and the world, because it’s all a bit too much right now.”
Me: “I see. And what do you really need right now?”
Sadness: “I think I just need to rest. It’s been a hard few weeks, and I’ve lost some things that meant a lot to me.”
Me: “Anything else you need?”
Sadness: “Just some space, some gentle space. Some quietness, and kindness. A space where I can relax.”
Me: “OK, and what are you trying to give me. What’s your gift, sadness?”
Sadness: “I’m bringing you the chance to really recognise what you’ve lost. It’s important to do that, because you really valued those things, and now they’re gone. You honour them, by feeling sadness about their loss. I help you see what you really value.”
Me: “Wow, that is very true. Thank you, sadness. Thank you for helping me see what I really value. And I will help you get that quiet, restful time that you need.”
Sadness: “Thank you.”

Here, sadness really wanted to withdraw from the world, but more than this, sadness really needs some quiet, self-caring time to process some recent losses. And sadness was bringing me something really valuable to, which was an opportunity to recognise the things that were important to me that I’d lost.

Summary

So, feelings are messengers. And they are messengers about our immediate, reactive wants as well as our deeper emotional needs. They also brings us gifts. To open their messages we do a few main things.

1. We greet the feeling with openness and welcome, with kindness, and without judgement. We can use scribbling for this if we want.

2. With openness, we ask the feeling what it wants in the immediate sense, and acknowledge this without judgement.

3. We then ask the feeling what it really needs, deep down. We acknowledge this need with openness and without judgement.

4. We then ask the feeling what it’s trying to give us, what it’s gift is, and we thank the feeling for it’s gift, it’s offering.

5. We seek ways, if appropriate, to meet the feeling’s deeper needs.

Next Steps

Try it out if you think it might be useful for you. Feel free to comment below if you discovered anything - I’d love to hear your responses. Also, feel free to share this article if you think others might benefit. You can use the links below to do this.

Finally, of course, sometimes listening to our feelings can be difficult and confusing. Perhaps we’ve never done it before, so we struggle to change or learn that skill. Also, listening to our feelings can be overwhelming, especially if we’re new to doing this, and the practice can bring up some difficult things, like memories. If you find yourself struggling, please feel free to reach out. You can go to my crisis page if you need immediate help and are in the UK, or seek out your local services, or GP. Also, I offer online counselling and psychotherapy support, so please feel free to contact me by going to my contact me page.

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