They are called feelings for a reason

Have you ever had a recurring thought or emotion that you just cannot seem to get rid of? They return to you time after time, after weeks, months, even years, usually in moments of peace and space that naturally provide the space for our suppressed past stories to emerge.

In the moment the feeling emerges, it automatically links to the story that contains the pain or the joy, and we are simultaneously distracted from the feeling itself and into the story that created it, where we lose ourselves and generate more of that feeling or emotion to be stored and suppressed back whence it came, ready for its next emergence.

Next time, though, it will be stronger, more powerful, and potentially more destructive as it catches us by surprise, dispelling our misguided belief that avoidance is deletion.

The feeling and the story become fused

I have witnessed with clients and in my own life, recurring feelings that will just not go away, no matter how hard we push.

Feelings, emotions and thoughts are just that, nothing more, nothing less. They offer us the chance for experience, an inner world experience, a change of state that asks for observation from us but that also invariably leads to a whole series of choices, behaviours, and actions. These become the effects.

If this series of effects attaches to a person, situation, or circumstance, then they become linked, and this becomes the story, and the more we replay this story, the stronger the link becomes to the originating sensation. This becomes the cause.

Now every time the sensation (feeling or emotion) arises, the story is triggered, the story amplifies the feeling, the feeling reinforces the story, and the loop becomes self-sustaining long after the original trigger has faded.

The story is what keeps the feeling stuck

Imagine your partner cheated on you, you felt deep hurt and grief, but instead of feeling the pain, because it was too confronting and painful to fully feel, the story became a distraction, a search for reason, meaning and blame, the who, the why, and the where provide the perfect place to stay, so that you can keep looping around searching for answers to infinite questions, anything to avoid sitting and fully feeling that pain.

Maybe you grew up with the fear of failure, installed unknowingly by a past generation, and that fear of failure is stronger than the desire for success. Every time something in your life doesn’t quite work out the way you wished, the big heavy hammer of failure comes down onto you, and instead of sitting with that feeling of disappointment, you strengthen your inner story that you failed once again and are utterly useless. This story usually strengthens the “I am not good enough” wound.

When we resist a feeling or try to think our way out of it, we are engaging with the story rather than the feeling itself. The feeling never gets to complete its natural cycle of change, movement and release.

As the intensity lowers and the feeling reduces, it settles back down for its next release, creating layers upon layers of unfelt feelings. They are called feelings for a reason.

Feelings that are fully felt move

When we loosen the connection between feeling and story, we break the cycle, the looping of energy that keeps them both running around in cycles of limbo.

If e-motion is "energy in motion" then it makes sense that this energy needs to be allowed to move, so that it can change, if we hang onto the feeling or emotion we prevent that from happening, and we prevent ourselves from moving on, maybe there is part of our subconscious mind that knows this deep down, and this is in fact how we can learn to let go more effectively.

If we allow ourselves to sit, give space and feel the feeling without attaching the story to it, we allow it to go through a natural arc of rising, peaking, falling and passing. Such are the laws of the universe, change is inevitable, this too shall pass.

This is not spiritual bypassing or positive thinking to avoid a situation; this is looking deep into the eyes of the pain and allowing the full inward experience of it, and in doing so, we allow the completion of a cycle that was previously interrupted.

Where hypnotherapy works on this

The subconscious mind is where the story is kept, ready and prepped, waiting to be triggered and set free for another loop around the circuit of doom. This is where Hypnotherapy comes in useful, as it works at this level to gently remove the link between feeling and story.

Therapeutic conversation brings the story and feelings to the surface, and the following hypnosis loosens the connection between the automatic internal narrative and your body’s somatic response.

Over time, the feeling can be allowed to arrive, welcomed in and felt, without the full story firing with it, giving the feeling space to be seen, heard and experienced on its own, rather than being poked and prodded continuously by the story, which will not allow it to rest.

This too shall pass

All parts of us want to be seen, heard, experienced, understood and felt, or just recognised at the very least. When this happens, we feel more at peace. The feeling is never the enemy; it is just another inner experience for a human being to observe, accept and sit with.

If you are having trouble moving on from a feeling or emotion that keeps recurring for you, then stop looking at the story for answers and instead, take a few moments out and put your arms around the feeling.

Allow it to be what it is, and to go where it is going.