How to: Actually Feel Your Feelings (and How AEDP Can Help)

“Just feel your feelings.”

If you’ve ever been in therapy, read a self-help book, or listened to a well-meaning podcast, you’ve probably heard this phrase before. It sounds simple. Straightforward. Almost obvious.

And yet, if it were that easy, you’d already be doing it.

Instead, maybe you notice that when emotions start to rise, you quickly distract yourself. You scroll. You clean. You analyze. You rationalize. You get busy. Or maybe your emotions just disappear entirely on their own. Nowhere to be found.

So what does it actually mean to feel your feelings? And why does it seem so hard?

First: Understand That There’s Nothing Wrong With You

If feeling your feelings is foreign, overwhelming, or even scary, that didn’t happen by accident.

At some point in your life, it likely wasn’t safe, welcomed, or supported for you to fully experience your emotional world. Maybe your big feelings were minimized: “It’s not a big deal.” Maybe they were criticized: “You’re too sensitive.” Maybe they were ignored. Or maybe the adults around you were so overwhelmed by their own emotions that there wasn’t room for yours.

So your nervous system adapted.

You learned to intellectualize instead of feel. To take care of others instead of yourself. To numb out. To stay busy. To detach. These strategies were not flaws. They were brilliant survival strategies.

The problem is that what once protected you may now be keeping you disconnected from your body, your needs, your relationships, and your sense of aliveness.

So… What Does It Mean to “Feel” a Feeling?

It doesn’t mean spiraling. It doesn’t mean drowning. It doesn’t mean being consumed by emotion for hours.

Feeling a feeling is actually much more concrete and embodied than most of us realize.

It looks like:

• Pausing long enough to notice something is happening internally.

• Naming it: sadness, anger, disappointment, joy, fear.

• Locating it in your body: tight chest, lump in throat, heaviness in your stomach.

• Staying with it for a few breaths instead of immediately moving away from it.
  

Feelings, when allowed, tend to move. They rise, crest, and fall like waves. But if we clamp down on them, analyze them to death, or judge ourselves for having them, they tend to stick around longer.

Emotions are information. They tell us what matters. They tell us when a boundary has been crossed. They tell us when we’ve lost something important. They tell us when we long for connection.

When we don’t feel them, we don’t get the message.

Why It Feels So Overwhelming

For many people, the fear isn’t the feeling itself, it’s the belief that if they start feeling, they won’t be able to stop.

This is especially true if you grew up without co-regulation, without someone helping you navigate intense emotional states. If you were alone with big feelings as a child, your system may have learned that emotion equals danger.

And here’s the key: you don’t learn how to feel safely alone. You learn how to feel safely in relationship.

How AEDP Can Help

Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) is built on the idea that we heal in the presence of a safe, emotionally attuned other.

Instead of simply talking about your feelings, AEDP gently helps you experience them in manageable doses while staying connected to a therapist who is actively present, grounded, and supportive.

This matters because your nervous system needs new experiences to update old beliefs. If your system learned “When I feel, I’m alone” or “When I feel, I overwhelm people,” AEDP offers a different experience: “When I feel, someone stays, someone cares.”

In AEDP, we:

• Slow down and notice what’s happening in your body.

• Track subtle emotional shifts.

• Stay within your window of tolerance so you’re not flooded or shut down.

• Make space for emotions that were once too big to process.
  

  And something beautiful often happens.

Underneath anxiety, shame and guilt is fear, sadness, hurt, disgust, joy, excitement, longing.

When those core emotions are fully felt, emotions that convey important information, they move. And what emerges on the other side is often relief, clarity, self-compassion, even a sense of strength and freedom.

Start Small

You don’t have to feel everything all at once.

You can begin by asking:

• What am I feeling right now?

• Where do I notice it in my body?

• What might this feeling be needing?
  

And if that feels hard, that makes sense. This is a new skill that needs time, nurturing and practice to develop. We were never meant to navigate our emotional worlds alone.

Feeling your feelings is not about becoming more emotional. It’s about becoming more connected to yourself, your needs, your values, and the people you care about.

And with the right support, it’s not nearly as overwhelming as it sounds.