What If You Don’t Have to Feel It to Heal It?

“You have to feel it to heal it.”

If you’ve spent any amount of time learning about emotional healing, trauma, or recovery after emotional abuse, you’ve probably heard some version of this advice.

Feel your feelings.

Sit with the discomfort.

Notice where you feel the emotion in your body.

Let yourself cry.

Don’t suppress it.

And I want to start by saying something very clearly: I absolutely believe your feelings should be acknowledged.

Especially after emotional abuse.

You may have spent years being told that you were too sensitive, overreacting, dramatic, irrational, or making a big deal out of nothing. You may have learned to question your own emotional responses because someone else continually invalidated them.

Healing should not become another way of telling yourself, I shouldn’t feel this way.

If you’re angry, acknowledge the anger.

If you’re grieving, acknowledge the grief.

If you feel rejected, jealous, afraid, hurt, or betrayed, those feelings deserve your attention.

But I think we’re missing something important when we make feeling the emotion the destination of healing.

Because you can feel the same feeling hundreds of times without necessarily changing what keeps bringing you back to it.

Feeling an Emotion and Healing Its Source Aren’t Necessarily the Same Thing

Imagine you discover that your ex is taking his new partner on an elaborate vacation.

Immediately, you feel devastated.

You allow yourself to feel it.

You cry.

You journal.

You practice breathwork.

You talk about it in therapy.

Eventually, your nervous system settles and you feel better.

There is nothing wrong with any of that.

But three weeks later, you see another picture.

And you're devastated again.

So you feel it.

You regulate.

You process.

You eventually feel better.

Then something else happens.

And you repeat the process.

You can become very good at moving through an emotional reaction without ever discovering why that particular situation has so much emotional power over you.

That’s the piece I want more women to become curious about.

What Happens Between the Trigger and the Feeling?

We often experience emotional reactions as though there are only two steps:

Something happens → I feel something.

But there may be an important layer between those two things:

Event → meaning or belief → emotion → response

Your ex goes on vacation.

That’s the event.

But what did your mind make that mean?

Maybe:

He’s happier without me.

He’s giving her everything I wanted.

Why wasn’t I worth doing those things for?

Maybe I really was the problem.

And underneath all of that could be an even deeper belief:

I’m not enough.

Now we're somewhere very different.

The vacation may have activated the emotion, but the meaning attached to the vacation helps explain why it hurts the way it does.

The Same Event Can Create Completely Different Emotions

Imagine three women discover their ex is getting married.

The first woman is devastated.

Her thought might be:

He became the person I needed for someone else because I wasn't enough.

The second woman is furious.

Her thought might be:

After everything he did to me, he gets to walk away and live happily ever after. Where is the justice in that?

The third woman?

She feels relieved.

Thank God he's focused on somebody else.

Same event.

Three completely different emotional responses.

That tells us something important.

The event itself isn't the whole story.

The meaning we attach to it matters.

And those meanings can lead us toward deeper beliefs such as:

I’m not enough.

I’m unlovable.

I don’t matter.

People always leave me.

I’m not safe.

I can’t trust myself.

I have to defend myself.

Something is wrong with me.

Those are the things I want to find.

Are You Stuck in a Feel-and-Regulate Loop?

There’s another pattern I see frequently in healing:

Trigger → feel → regulate → relief.

Then another trigger happens.

Feel → regulate → relief.

And another.

Feel → regulate → relief.

Regulation is valuable. I’m not suggesting otherwise.

But if you have been doing this for months or years and wondering, Why am I still getting triggered by the same things?, there may be another question worth asking.

Instead of only:

How do I get through this feeling?

Try:

Why does this particular situation create this particular reaction in me?

I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life becoming exceptionally good at experiencing the same emotional wound.

Sometimes we need to find what is underneath it.

But What If You Can’t Feel Anything?

This is where this conversation gets even more interesting.

I once worked with a client who was completely numbed out.

During one of our calls, she told me:

“I can’t feel anything.”

Think about the problem that creates if your entire healing process depends upon accessing emotion.

Where do you feel that in your body?

She couldn't tell me.

What emotion comes up when you think about it?

She couldn't access one.

Sit with the feeling.

What feeling?

I could have tried to push her to access something that simply wasn’t available to her at that moment.

Instead, we took another route.

We looked at what she could access.

What happened?

What thoughts came up around it?

What did she believe it meant?

What was she afraid might happen?

What conclusions had she drawn about herself?

What did she believe about relationships or other people because of her experiences?

What patterns kept repeating?

And eventually, we found the underlying belief.

We reached the deeper layer without requiring her to first access the emotion.

It was almost like taking a back door into the subconscious.

Your Feelings May Be a Doorway—But Not the Only Doorway

Think about the belief you’re trying to uncover as something inside a house.

Emotion can be the front door.

Sometimes that door is wide open.

You feel something intensely, become curious about it, follow it backward, and discover what you are believing underneath it.

But sometimes the front door is locked.

Maybe you’re numb.

Maybe you genuinely don't know what you're feeling.

Maybe you’ve become disconnected from your emotions after years of surviving an unhealthy relationship.

That doesn't necessarily mean you have to stand outside the house waiting for the door to open.

There may be another way in.

Your thoughts can be a door.

Your automatic assumptions can be a door.

Your fears can be a door.

Your relationship patterns can be a door.

The stories you continually tell yourself can be a door.

Instead of working:

Feeling → meaning → belief

sometimes we can work backward through:

Thought → meaning → pattern → belief

The goal is finding what’s underneath.

This Does NOT Mean You Should Stop Feeling Your Feelings

This distinction matters.

I am not suggesting that you suppress your emotions.

I'm not telling you to intellectualize everything.

And I'm certainly not suggesting that you shame yourself for having an emotional reaction.

Quite the opposite.

If the feeling is there, acknowledge it.

Then become curious about it.

Instead of stopping at:

I'm angry.

Ask:

What am I angry about?

Then:

What does this situation mean to me?

And then:

What am I afraid this says about me?

One of my favorite questions is:

What would I have to believe for this reaction to make sense?

That question can take you somewhere very interesting.

Try This the Next Time You're Triggered

Think about something that recently caused an emotional reaction.

First, identify what actually happened without adding interpretation.

For example:

My ex posted a picture from vacation.

Then identify the emotion if you can.

Maybe you feel angry, rejected, jealous, sad, afraid, or betrayed.

If you can't identify the feeling, that's okay. Keep going.

Now ask:

What did I make this mean?

Maybe your answer is:

He's happier without me.

Then ask:

And if that's true, what does that mean about me?

Maybe:

He was miserable because of me.

Keep going.

And if that's true?

Maybe I was the problem.

And what does that mean?

Eventually you might arrive at:

I'm not enough.

Look at where we started.

A picture on social media.

And where we ended:

I'm not enough.

That's the deeper work.

What Else Is Possible?

Once you uncover a belief, the answer isn't necessarily to slap a positive affirmation over it.

If part of you deeply believes:

I'm not enough,

repeating:

I AM ENOUGH!

fifty times in the mirror may not suddenly convince your subconscious.

Instead, I like to start somewhere much more reasonable:

What else is possible?

What if your interpretation isn't the only explanation?

What if you're missing information?

What evidence exists that challenges what you've believed?

What if someone else's behavior was never an accurate measurement of your worth in the first place?

You don't have to immediately believe the complete opposite.

Sometimes healing begins by creating enough reasonable doubt that the old belief is no longer the only story your mind can accept.

Maybe You Don't Have to Feel It to Heal It

So do I believe you should feel your feelings?

Absolutely.

Acknowledge them.

Honor them.

Listen to them.

Let them give you information.

But don't assume that repeatedly experiencing an emotion is necessarily the same thing as changing what's underneath it.

And if you can't access the emotion at all, don't automatically assume you're incapable of doing deeper healing work.

Sometimes feelings lead us to the source.

Sometimes thoughts do.

Sometimes patterns do.

Sometimes fears do.

Sometimes we walk through the front door.

And sometimes we find the back door.

Maybe the phrase doesn't always have to be:

“You have to feel it to heal it.”

Maybe sometimes it's:

You have to find it to heal it.

Ready to Go Deeper? Join Me for Stop Coping. Start Healing.

If you've been reading this thinking, Okay, but how do I actually find these deeper beliefs?, that's exactly what I'm going to help you begin doing during my free live training:

Stop Coping. Start Healing.

Join me October 15 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern for a live training created for women who are ready to go beyond simply managing the symptoms of emotional abuse recovery and start exploring what may be underneath them.

We'll talk about subconscious beliefs, why old emotional patterns can continue long after a relationship ends, how to begin uncovering what's underneath rumination and triggers, and how I use the question “What else is possible?” to begin challenging beliefs without forcing yourself to believe something that doesn't feel true.

The training is free on October 15, and a replay will be available for registrants.

After October 15, Stop Coping. Start Healing. will become a $150 paid training.

If you've learned how to cope but you're ready to understand what may be keeping you stuck, I'd love to have you there.

You don't always have to feel it to heal it. But you do have to find it.