Understanding Our Feelings (and Connecting to Our Interoceptive Sense)

Typically, I don’t watch violent movies, but my husband had a screening for a film he helped produce, so I decided to go. I sat through most of the movie, which had some violent parts, but then when the violence got to be too much, I had to leave the theater. 

The next day, I noticed my fear response was heightened. With my daughter in the car, we went to the car wash where I felt trapped in line. There was only one way out and it was to wait for the cars in front of me to clear. Then, once inside the car wash, I felt trapped again. My sleeping baby in the backseat. Making me even more fearful. 

But fortunately, because I’ve spent years uncovering, acknowledging and releasing my pain, I knew right away that this heightened sense of fear was because I had watched a violent movie the night before. And that made me think of how many people might not know that that’s what’s happening. 

They might not know that they are having a fear response at all. It might just be a feeling they can’t identify. Or are too distracted to realize they are having a feeling at all. It made me reflect on how my fear used to show up in my life before my repressed trauma surfaced. Mine showed up as anger. 

And it reiterated to me once again how important it is for us to have self-awareness. To be mindful of our feelings and where they come from. For it is only in acknowledging them that we can release them. And truly let them go. 

So make sure you are taking moments to yourself throughout your day to connect with how you’re feeling. Engage that interoceptive sense. The sense that tells us if we are hungry or if we are tired, but it also tells us how we are feeling. 

My favorite way to connect to my interoceptive sense is through writing. So if you’d like to join me, here’s a quick prompt:

Right now, I am feeling…

That’s it. It’s as simple and as hard as that. It may take some time, and for many of us years of therapy and the correct medical care, but I know each of us has the ability to connect with how we are truly feeling. To connect to our inner universe. 

May you understand what it is you’re feeling, why you’re feeling it and how you can let it go. Namaste. 

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Photo by Andrea Piacquadio