Learning to Love Our Emotions
Most of us were never taught how to truly feel our emotions.
We were taught how to explain them, manage them, suppress them, or move past them as quickly as possible. Emotions became things to control or eliminate rather than experiences to listen to. And for many people, emotional maturity came to mean staying calm, rational, and composed—no matter what was happening inside.
Over time, this way of relating to emotions often comes at a cost. When we consistently turn away from what we feel, we don’t just lose access to painful emotions—we lose access to ourselves. Many people begin to feel numb, detached, or disconnected from their authentic self, as though they’re living at a distance from their own inner life. They may function well on the outside while feeling flat, unreal, or quietly empty on the inside.
In fact, much of what we think of as “mental health” struggles—anxiety, depression, chronic shame, emotional reactivity, numbness, looping thoughts—aren’t caused by emotions themselves. They are often the result of emotions that were never allowed to be fully felt.
A visual metaphor for emotions as visitors—arriving, moving through, and leaving when they are allowed to be felt.
Emotions as Visitors, Not Problems
The Sufi poet Jalāl ad-Dīn Rumi famously described the human psyche as a kind of guest house—one where different emotional states arrive unexpectedly, stay for a while, and then move on.
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
The core idea is simple but radical: every emotional state arrives with a purpose. Even the painful ones. Even the ones we wish weren’t there.
Fear, grief, anger, shame, joy—none of these are mistakes. They carry information, energy, and movement. When they’re allowed to pass through us, they often leave us clearer, lighter, and more free than before.
The problem begins when certain emotions feel too much to welcome.
How Emotional Repression Is Learned
We don’t usually decide to repress our emotions consciously.
Instead, repression develops slowly and adaptively. A child experiences a feeling that overwhelms their nervous system—fear that isn’t soothed, grief that isn’t held, anger that isn’t safe to express. Or they sense that certain emotions lead to rejection, punishment, or emotional withdrawal from caregivers.
Over time, the system learns:
This feeling isn’t safe to have.
This emotion is too intense.
I’m better off not feeling this.
These strategies are not failures. They’re intelligent adaptations to environments that didn’t have enough safety, capacity, or attunement for emotional experience.
But emotions that are pushed down don’t disappear.
They continue to influence us from outside conscious awareness—knocking repeatedly, rattling the windows, or finding side entrances. Repressed emotions often show up as anxiety, depression, chronic tension, compulsive behaviors, emotional shutdown, or patterns we feel stuck repeating without understanding why.
In this way, many mental health symptoms aren’t signs that something is wrong with us. They’re signs that something inside us hasn’t yet been allowed to be felt.
Why We Can’t Think Our Way Out
Many people try to heal emotional pain through insight alone.
They analyze their patterns. They reframe thoughts. They understand why they feel the way they do. And while insight can be helpful, it has limits.
If we could think our way out of emotional suffering, most of us would have done it already.
Emotions are not primarily cognitive experiences. They live in the nervous system and the body—in sensation, impulse, posture, breath, and movement. When we try to resolve them purely through thinking, we often end up more stuck, more frustrated, and more disconnected from what’s actually happening inside.
Getting “out of our heads” isn’t about abandoning intelligence or reflection. It’s about reconnecting with our innate capacity to welcome in these emotional visitors and give them a seat at our table.
Somatic therapy focuses on sensing emotions in the body rather than analyzing them from the mind.
The Role of Somatic Therapy
Somatic therapy works directly with the body and nervous system as the gateway to emotional healing.
Instead of asking why an emotion exists, somatic work asks:
What am I noticing in my body right now?
What sensation is present beneath the story?
Can I stay with this just a little longer, safely?
Importantly, this isn’t about overwhelming ourselves with emotion. Healing doesn’t come from flooding or reliving intense experiences.
It comes from titration—allowing emotions to be felt in small, manageable amounts, within a sense of safety and choice. When an emotion is felt gradually and fully, it can complete its natural cycle. It no longer needs to drive behavior from the shadows.
This process is what allows emotions to be “metabolized” rather than suppressed.
No Bad Parts: Understanding the Protectors
A crucial piece of emotional healing is learning to respect the parts of us that learned to repress feelings in the first place.
In No Bad Parts, Richard Schwartz introduces a foundational idea from Internal Family Systems (IFS): there are no bad parts.
The parts of us that numb, intellectualize, distract, minimize, overwork, or shut emotions down are not broken. They are protectors. They developed to keep us safe when emotions felt overwhelming or dangerous.
From this perspective, repression isn’t pathology—it’s protection.
Problems arise when these protectors are still running the system long after the original threat has passed. When we try to force our way past them—pushing ourselves to feel before the system is ready—they often respond by tightening their grip, increasing anxiety, numbness, or shutdown.
This is why somatic and parts-informed therapy emphasizes consent and relationship rather than force.
Instead of asking, “How do I get rid of this block?” we ask:
What is this part protecting me from?
What does it need in order to feel safe enough to soften?
Can I appreciate how hard it’s been working for me?
When protector parts feel respected, they often relax naturally. And when they do, emotions can surface gradually, in a way that the nervous system can actually handle.
Freedom on the Other Side of Feeling
When emotions are welcomed rather than avoided, they stop controlling our lives from behind the scenes.
We become less reactive, less stuck in repeating patterns, less driven by unconscious fear or shame. We gain flexibility, choice, and a deeper sense of trust in ourselves.
Learning to love our emotions doesn’t mean enjoying all of them. It means recognizing that they are messengers, not enemies.
When emotions are allowed to arise, be felt safely, and move through us, they do what they were always meant to do: inform us, complete their cycle, and make space for something new.
Often, on the other side of what we were afraid to feel, there isn’t destruction—there’s relief.
An Invitation to Listen Inward
If you’ve spent years trying to manage your emotions—thinking your way through them, pushing them aside, or wondering why certain patterns keep repeating—it may not be because you’re doing something wrong. It may be because there’s something inside you that hasn’t yet been given the space to be felt.
Learning to relate to emotions as visitors rather than problems takes time, support, and a sense of safety. Somatic and parts-informed therapy offers a way to gently open the door—at your own pace—so emotions can be met, understood, and allowed to move through without overwhelm.
If you’re curious about exploring this work in a grounded, collaborative way, I invite you to reach out for a free consultation. Together, we can begin listening to what your inner world has been trying to say.
