In this article, I explore common ways we escape or try to manage our emotions when we haven’t learned to be with, acknowledge and validate what we feel. I also go into how you can start feeling your emotions again.
Repressing, denying, and running from our emotions
Repressing, denying, and running from our emotions are common ways of escaping them in the Western world. We don’t have time to feel that much in our busy societies. So, we are not encouraged to feel our emotions.
When we escape our emotions in these ways, we suppress, deny, and cover up what we feel. Sometimes, or often, we are not even aware of our feelings, and we are not mindful of the pain we are in, because we have gotten so used to living this way that we believe it’s normal not to feel good most of the time. So, we keep going, even if things don’t feel okay.
Many of us have also learned to suppress our authentic feelings and needs in favor of acceptance from our family, school system, and culture.
So, for example, we may have learned to be polite and not make too much noise – or to be loud and dominant, even though we may be sensitive and don’t want to be noisy at all.
And when we act in those expected ways even though we don’t feel good about it inside, we repress our real emotions to be loved or accepted.
Running away or trying to cope
Many people have not learned to feel their emotions, so when they feel something, they don’t know how to handle it. So, instead of feeling it, they try to fix things on the surface or numb their emotions. Or they escape them by doing something else.
So, the moment they feel uncomfortable or sad, they call a friend, go out to dinner, go shopping, or turn to food to feel more comfortable. Or at least to numb themselves from the painful reality they are in.
There are different levels of escaping this way. Some become busy at work or spend hours on social media, while others turn to addictions to numb themselves from feeling what they are feeling, or to try to cope with anxiety or a life that feels too overwhelming.
Many of us escape in various ways, and we do it because we didn’t get the tools to deal with, feel, and handle our emotions. So, instead, we have learned to cope with not feeling. And even if those ways of coping are causing us a lot of pain, too, it is all we know until we learn how to experience our emotions again.
Talking ourselves out of what we feel
Another way of denying our emotions is to talk ourselves out of what we feel. We do it by diminishing our feelings, for example, by telling ourselves why we shouldn’t feel what we feel or that other people have it worse.
So, we invalidate our emotions. For example, we may tell ourselves that we are too sensitive, that no one else feels the way we do, or that we are overreacting. Or we try to look at the bright side and focus on the positive in the situation, even though we are hurting inside.
We may also tell ourselves that we are too much, that we should be grateful (even though we want – and deserve – more), and that we should be able to put up with things that we don’t feel good about, because others do it. We may even come up with reasons why people who treat us poorly have the right to do so, or at least reasons why we should excuse their behaviors.
And it is not only our internal dialogue that keeps these old patterns of escape going. Sometimes, other people tell us those things too. So, for example, they may say that we are wrong and overreacting, that we are too sensitive, and so forth, and we may believe them and buy into that.
But remember that many people have not learned to acknowledge and trust their emotions, and if they haven’t learned it later in life and dealt with their own feelings, they are incapable of accepting and dealing with yours. So, they may not be the right people to turn to for emotional support or guidance.
Feeling too much and becoming stuck in our emotions
Now, let’s look at the other side of the coin.
There is another common way of escaping our emotions; to feel too much. This way of escaping our emotions is sometimes mistaken for acknowledging and caring for our feelings. But even though it may appear that way, this is also a way of not feeling what we feel.
When we escape by feeling too much, we cling to our emotions instead of experiencing them. We don’t allow them to be, and we don’t feel them directly as they are. Instead, we get stuck in them and take them for a ride inside us.
Some people do it by trying to hold onto and control their emotions when they arise instead of allowing them to be as they are. When they do that, they don’t feel the emotion and don’t let it arise and pass as it naturally would if they didn’t try to control it. So instead, they cling to what they feel.
Sometimes this happens in meditation or when we have begun to become mindful of our emotions. But as long as we hold onto or try to control our experience, we don’t trust the feelings enough (yet) to allow them to arise and be as they are. So, we cling on and try to control them instead.
Another common way of feeling too much is to tell ourselves a story about what we feel and why we feel that way. Here, we tell ourselves why our emotions are there, why we have the right to feel the way we do, or why something outside of ourselves is causing us to have those emotions.
We may also explain our feelings by remembering or discussing a challenging life event or entertaining an old victim role that we have taken on early on in life.
Sometimes we are right about the cause, but we still need to feel
We may be right about the deeper reasons we feel the way we do. For example, we may have had a difficult, even terrible, childhood. And we may be in difficult circumstances at the moment.
But we won’t become free of our old emotional pain by clinging onto our bodies’ emotions or by entertaining old stories about them in our minds.
We need to feel them without the stories, filters, or explanations of what they are or why they are there. Otherwise, they remain stuck inside us because we protect ourselves from the direct experience of our emotions by becoming stuck in them.
When feeling too much is part of an identity
In some people, the pattern of feeling too much is solid and can be a big part of their ego identity.
They may, for example, have gotten a lot of attention for being unhappy as children, and they may still get a lot of attention for it. So, the emotional suffering they experience is a way of receiving attention.
The pattern can be harder to break when that is the case, because emotional pain is not only pain to them. They often center their lives around their suffering to a certain extent and receive validation that way.
I haven’t had this pattern, so I have no direct experience with it in myself, but I have had people around me with that pattern. And sometimes, it takes a while to realize that, at the moment, they don’t want to be free. And that’s okay.
However, even if you or someone you know have that pattern, your (or their) true self still wants to be free. So, it is not the authentic self who is doing this. Instead, the conditioned self, the ego identity, is doing it.
But it can be harder to break this pattern of escaping your emotions if you are used to centering your life around your emotional pain.
To break our old emotional patterns, we need to awaken so that we can stand” outside” of them, so to speak, and become aware of them in ourselves. So, that is also the first step if you have this pattern.
Learning to act differently
So, we can escape our emotions by getting stuck in what we feel and feeling too much or repressing our feelings so that we don’t feel at all or not as much. Both sides of the coin mean suffering. Both are ways of coping with or escaping our real emotions. They are ways we protect ourselves from what we haven’t been willing or able to feel.
And how could we act differently when we don’t know how to do it? Impossible. But it is possible to break those old patterns of escape by learning how to feel our emotions, so that we can come back into our bodies again and be who we are and feel what we feel without escaping.
We must feel our emotions directly to free ourselves
To free ourselves, we need to experience our emotions directly – without running away or clinging to them.
Our old emotions stay inside us until we return and experience them. So, we need to feel them again.
And we need to feel them without any story about them, even if that story may be true. Because if we don’t, the story or our thoughts about what we feel still block the direct experience, and then the emotion remains inside us.
The direct experience also quiets the mind. It closes the gap between where we are in our thoughts and the reality here and now. So, we are in the present moment when we feel our emotions directly with no labels and no explanations or stories about what they are and why they are there.
When we experience our emotions directly, we can feel them fully and allow them to let go of the grip they have on us.
If there is something we need to look at and take action on in our lives, we have a chance to become aware of that when we allow ourselves to feel. The cause of what we are experiencing can surface when we allow ourselves to feel and quiet our minds so that we can listen to and sense what is happening inside us underneath all the surface noise.
Start with the little things
It takes practice to stay with and feel complex emotions without escaping. If you don’t have much experience feeling what you feel, you can start with the little things—for example, noticing how you feel in different circumstances throughout the day. Notice both the positive and negative emotions. You don’t have to do anything; notice and feel.
Meditation is also an excellent way to observe your inner life without becoming attached to what is arising. Practice allowing what is occurring inside you to appear without trying to change, explain or control it.
Practicing being in the present moment throughout your day when no difficult emotions are arising is also a good first step.
When you have practiced for a while and can stay in the present moment when there is not a lot of inner turbulence, you can gradually learn to be with the more difficult emotions.
I’m a spiritual teacher, writer, and visionary. My work helps you awaken to your true self. I have created my teachings based on the experiences, realizations, and insights from my own spiritual journey. Read my story.
