We must feel so that we can act.
the realness of feeling our feelings and what it costs us when we don't
There is no other way to begin this than by calling attention the horrors being carried out and continuing to be tolerated by those who control the systems and structures of domination. For the sake of my own ability to move through the world with the awareness of what and who are also here with me, I must be present to what is there at our backs: the profound familiarity of colonialism, imperialism, apartheid, war, and genocide. These are experiences that so many of our bodies know intimately. Inside of my own, I am feeling the rage and grief and despair of the now resonating with what is ancestral. The solidarity of feeling that moves through me from my back and reminds me that the people that I have come from know colonial and imperial oppression, know war, know genocide.
And I don’t know what to do with it all right now — other than to show up where I am called. I also do not know what to do when it feels like a fact that devastation like this will continue because there are other humans who believe that dominating and devastating the existence of other beings is acceptable, justifiable, inevitable, and perhaps even, desired. I do not know what to do with the recognition that there are other humans who cannot or will not imagine themselves outside of cyclical exchanges of oppression, domination, and death. What do we do with this vast and unacknowledged (and because it is unacknowledged, untouchable) trauma?
Before I get too much further please take this time to visit Gaza is Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace to take action to demand an immediate ceasefire. There are countless other activists and organizers working tirelessly to bend this arc towards justice – if you have other resources to share, please do so in the comments.
It has taken me two weeks to write this. I have been doing my best to be present and to stay tender and allow myself to be affected. I have been doing my best to feel. What I have managed is to tap into and out of the gravity of the unabating collective trauma we are all living through. I did not mean to come to the page to write about trauma (do we really need more?) but of course, here I am. Really though, I’m here to write about why we don’t touch our trauma, or even first, our feelings.
This isn’t a new reflection. I’ve spent a lot of time over the past year or so practicing into a more nuanced relationship with my own feelings, and my own trauma. This practice of new ways of feeling and acknowledging feeling has been an essential part of befriending the unmasked version of myself as a later-diagnosed neurodivergent person. It has wildly expanded how I understand the felt sense to include a broader landscape of emotions, sensations, moods, vibes. There is so much depth and complexity that is alive in the feelings I feel.
As I practice, I am also becoming a more keen observer of how we all, as beings, experience our felt sense in widely divergent ways. Really, the ways in which we experience and respond to our felt sense seems as unique as our fingerprints. So universally deep, complex, and unique and yet, I find that too often the guidance we receive from outside of ourselves about how to be with our felt sense is boiled down and reduced to grand generalizations. Or to categories and trite soundbites and memes (I do, though, love a good meme).
I am reflecting on how often I hear that I should be ”feeling my feelings” as opposed to thinking about them, or numbing and repressing them. And it is not that I disagree. I do agree. Wholeheartedly so. It’s the should part that incites me. From what I’ve noticed, the thing about a should is that it rarely, if ever, includes with it much of anything we will need to actualize it. So with that, tell me to “feel my feelings” and I may flip you the bird…it will depend on how I’m feeling.
I am certain that the intent of these invitations into feeling my feelings come from a generally pure and loving place; admonitions that are well-meaning and potentially very helpful. What irritates me is the absent or flimsy acknowledgement of what these invitations really mean and what they actually require.
How often are these shoulds accompanied by a truthful acknowledgement of the inhospitable environment within which we are supposed to be making our feeling selves vulnerable? Do we and are we ready to collectively acknowledge the ways in which the structures and systems that we live inside of do not just support but actively require of us the exact opposite? Can we and will we turn towards the experience that in order to survive in them, sometimes – and depending on our social location, oftentimes – we must comply? How many of us can really afford to feel?
For real, for real? Feeling our feelings and capitalist productivity: incompatible. Feeling our feelings and participating in the attention economies of news and social media: incompatible. Feeling our feelings and showing up consistently to meet the current cultural expectations of partnering, parenting, socialing: incompatible. If we are to really give our felt sense the time, space, attention that we so desperately need, something’s gotta give.
It has been my experience that truly feeling what needs to be felt can and will stop me in my tracks. Depending on what the feeling is, feeling the fullness of what is can be an overwhelming experience that renders us incapable of going about our daily lives in the “productive,” “scheduled,” and “responsible” ways that we have planned. In the swell that is the feeling of them, feelings can be enormous and for the time that they are present, may execute a (perhaps deeply necessary) coup d'etat on daily life.
Thank goodness then that feelings are time bound experiences. Thank goodness that they do not last forever. That they come and they go, wax and then wane. We can do something with that.
The truth of the matter is not that we should but that we must feel. We should not because the mind or someone else tells us we should but we must because this is what the body does. From the inside out, the body feels. At this moment I will even make the argument that through all the clutter, our feeling self is the closest thing we have to a true self – the self we came into this world as and the self we will be when we leave. A self that is not fully operational here on this material plane without the mind or thinking self but that is the essence of us nonetheless.
It is through our feeling selves that we may – individually and collectively – find our way through to new ways of being with ourselves and each other. We must feel so that we can act. As necessary as it is difficult, we must insist on being with feelings that are moving through our bodies if we are to honor our own psychobiological wisdom and capabilities, metabolize our trauma, and cultivate the radical compassion and empathy that just might save us. May we feel ourselves into right relationship and into new worlds.
And still, we can honor ourselves and each other when we become more honest about what this insistence actually requires. It is difficult, patient, and often lonely work to persist with ourselves and others as we learn how to be with our feelings and really feel them with a fullness of self-responsibility, self-care and self-compassion.
I find that questions are often my way into honesty. If I ask myself enough questions, at some point, I will get to the heart of the matter – the truth as I know it. Here are the ones I’ve been asking myself: When was the last time I sat and felt my feelings? What was it like? What did it cost me? What did it keep me from? What couldn’t I fully attend to when I was in them? What could I attend to fully when I allowed myself to stay in? What felt possible on the other side? What actions or non-actions did my feelings clarify?
More often than not, my answers reveal that there isn’t much (or maybe any) time or space built into life as I know it to consistently and sufficiently attend to the fullness of my feeling self. Still, I have been choosing to meet this challenge with both curiosity and creativity. Here are some of the ways I have been able to be with my feelings recently – I offer them to you here as invitations. I’m sure you have your own. If you’d be open to sharing, please do so in the comments below.
Invitations…
Body/Soma Scan + Journaling. We can scan our bodies and as we do, we can write down, voice note, or otherwise document what we’re noticing so that our experience can be witnessed, even if just by ourselves.
Acknowledge what you’re not tending to and why. Here we can take a moment to suspend judgment and acknowledge what is just below the surface of our felt sense even if we don’t or can’t dive in. Here, we can acknowledge the immense grief we feel while also acknowledging the reality of needing to meet a work deadline or parent attentively or show up for a loved one in crisis. In doing so, we can also recognize how deeply unsustainable it is not to tend and can prioritize my need for the time, space, and container I need to feel.
Block out time to pause and attend to what is present. Perhaps there is a specific feeling that needs its own time and space in your day (i.e the aforementioned grief). Maybe you would like to just pause and feel whatever it is you feel in the moment. Do your thing.
Start or join a community of practice. This can be as simple as texting a friend or inviting others to practice in-person with us spontaneously or more regularly. We can also look for and join existing communities that align with our practice(s).
I'm so grateful that we met. Your writing is so real, strong, and relatable. I definitely plan to dive into this more. Proud of you for sharing. Looking forward to more!