Friday May 02, 2025

#184 What if we actually felt the feelings? An honest conversation about trauma, hoarding, and allowing yourself to feel

This week, I talk about what happens when I actually let myself feel the tough emotions instead of shutting them down - a pattern that's shaped my life and my struggles with hoarding, self-harm, and eating disorders. After a thought-provoking conversation with Anna Sale on Death, Sex & Money last year, I started questioning whether avoiding feelings has helped or hurt me in the long run and have been trying to process that ever since! I share what it’s like to sit with big emotions, experiment with messy ways to cope, and why feeling the feelings might just be a way forward.

  • Avoiding Feelings
  • Realisation that I tend to do anything rather than feel difficult emotions.
  • Recent personal reflection and processing feelings over the past few months.
  • Impact of mental health and a PTSD flare-up on my ability to manage feelings.
  • Connecting Coping Mechanisms to Avoidance
  • Experience with PTSD, self-harm, anorexia, and bulimia as different forms of not feeling or avoiding emotions.
  • Insights from an interview with Anna Sale on Death, Sex & Money that linked these coping together as forms of avoidance.
  • Acknowledgment that these strategies were more than just avoidance - also punitive, protective, and multifaceted.
  • The Cost and Pattern of Emotional Avoidance
  • Compartmentalising as a lifelong coping skill and its negative long-term consequences.
  • Difficulty breaking the habit of not feeling and the impact on my sense of identity.
  • Recognition that suppressing feelings can be as damaging as (or more damaging than) the feelings themselves.
  • Actively Facing and Processing Feelings
  • Engaging in therapy, journaling (both resentful and creative/collage style), and reading poetry to access emotions.
  • Talking more openly with friends as a supportive measure.
  • Forcing myself to do enjoyable activities (like getting outside), which helps counteract avoidance.
  • Community, Connection, and Support
  • Impact of Trauma and Suppression on Daily Life
  • How PTSD and unprocessed sadness began affecting sleep, revealing that suppressing feelings is no longer effective.
  • Discusses the challenge of letting oneself feel emotions, both by choice and when overcome involuntarily.
  • The risks of being overwhelmed and the delicate balance between feeling and avoidance.
  • Learning and Conversations About Emotional Acceptance
  • Revisiting lessons from previous podcast guests about the counterproductivity of suppressing or over-intellectualising feelings.
  • The concept that suppressed emotions may “come out sideways” through other behaviours, like self-harm or hoarding.
  • Nuanced view of coping mechanisms - not labeling them as purely negative since they served protective purposes.
  • Vulnerability, Shame, and Deepening Relationships
  • Gradual willingness to share deeper, more distressing moments with friends.
  • Examining the reasons behind the instinct to hide intense distress.
  • How vulnerability leads to stronger, more meaningful connections.
  • Positive Effects of Feeling the Hard Stuff
  • Discovering that feeling hard emotions increases the capacity to feel positive emotions more deeply.
  • Finding deeper love, joy, and beauty in everyday experiences.
  • Recognising the importance of support systems when exploring difficult emotions.
  • Reflection and Encouragement for Listeners
  • Encourages listeners to be curious about their own patterns of avoidance and coping.
  • Cautions that intentionally feeling emotions is difficult and requires support.
  • The hopeful observation that allowing feelings can be cathartic, gratifying, and healing—even if it’s uncomfortable.

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