The Anxiety Series: Feelings Not Truth

Feelings are always real and valid, however, they are not always fact or 'truth'. In this talk, I'll help you learn how to navigate your feelings from the observer perspective. Just because you feel something does not mean it's true about you, your life, or the world. Learning this can help with emotional regulation and lowering anxiety as a whole.

I invite you to listen to this along with my other tracks in The Anxiety Series, to build your awareness.

Transcript

Welcome back into this series on anxiety and today we're going to talk about how your emotions are not fact-based either. And if you don't know who I am, I'm Scala, I'm a qualified therapist and I teach people everything I know from the therapy room as well as my own experiences. So the last one in this series was about how your thoughts are not facts, How that monkey mind, The lights are going all sorts of directions, Can actually really tell us a lot of lies to be honest and if not anything else just are not always necessarily true. So today we're going also recognize that our feelings are not always facts too and this somewhat differs to the thoughts. I see the thoughts as chat, Chat, Chat, Chat, Chatting away, They go in all sorts of different directions, They can build on each other, They can snowball, They can take us here, They can take us there. I see the thought, The feelings rather, As a little bit more sort of spiral-like. I'm not sure how I feel with them. They can either spiral us down, They can spiral us up, They can spiral us around different, I guess, Frequencies and vibrations, They can make us feel different ways. But with this, What can often happen is that because we feel something and we're spiraling, Let's say down, We assume that again that must be true. So this is a difficult one because in my therapy practice so much of what I'm doing is I'm holding space for feelings and I'm there saying to my clients, You know, All of your feelings are valid, Let's explore your feelings, Let's let you express your feelings, Let's talk about your feelings. Of course, We know that to be healthy, Right, That we want to express our feelings, We want to give some time and space to them. Now that is, I believe, All true, At least that's how I practice. However, We also, Especially in moments where, You know, We're by ourselves, We're in the thick of something, I believe we also need to be really careful not to believe that something we're feeling then means it's factual about ourselves or our life. So, For example, If we're having a really, Really bad day, Perhaps we've had an argument with our partner, Perhaps there's a lot going on and we're feeling pretty rejected, We're maybe even spiraling downwards into this sort of feeling of I feel quite worthless or I feel really this or I feel really that, Whatever it might be. This is an example of how just because you're feeling worthless doesn't mean you are worthless. Just because you're feeling rejected doesn't mean you are being rejected. Now, Of course, Equally there could be occasions where we're feeling rejected and actually our partner is doing something that is quite rejecting. But again, It's how do we come back to not necessarily believing the monkey mind, Not necessarily believing every single thing that lights up in our body is fact and coming back into re-regulating, Self-soothing and coming back into the deeper connection with yourself. This is where I see way more truth lies and this is where we're going to be able to see things in way more of a balanced way. And yes, Let's say with that example, If our partner is doing something that's feeling quite rejected, Then we might come back out of our sort of internal world and go, OK, Once things are calmer, I think we need to address that. But a lot of the time what will happen is that we might go, Do you know what, I'm not sure they are. And maybe this is just me feeling a lot right now or it could be a mixture. But either way, I tend to find we don't get very far if we're just in that space of God, I'm feeling this now, I'm feeling this and then that must be true and that must be true. And everything becomes this big fact. This is when you're going to find yourself feeling really, Really bad and you're going to be feeling really powerless, To be honest, Because imagine we're feeling every one of those feelings are true, Then we're feeling really, Really rubbish about ourselves. So again, Much like when we're going through that fact check with our thoughts, This is when we need to be able to say to ourselves, OK, I'm feeling this feeling and that feeling is absolutely valid. You know, Maybe I'm feeling it because of the situation or maybe it's just bringing something up for me. Maybe it's bringing some wounds up from my past. And that is to an extent true and valid. Our feelings are always true. They're real. Right. But it doesn't mean that because I'm feeling worthless, I'm feeling rejected. That means I am worthless. I am this. I am that. That's when we get into the sticky situation. That's when we need to run the fact checker back through. So for you, How often do you do this? Can you relate to this sense of when I feel a feeling, I believe the feeling is true about myself or the world or my situation or my life? And what would it be like if you was able to re-center yourself again or just remain somewhat the observer of, OK, I'm feeling this feeling. I need to cry it out. I need to, You know, Scream into a pillow. I need to do all that very validating, Self-soothing stuff. But I also need to just hold somewhere that maybe this doesn't mean that I'm bad, My life is bad, This person's bad. Maybe my feelings are causing me to feel that and they're not necessarily fact based. It's a bit like if you're driving your car and something flashes up on the dashboard. That's what I see our emotions as. They're flashing up and they're saying, Hey, This is going on and this is going on. And maybe we need to check under the bonnet and maybe we need to fill up the petrol tank. But sometimes those lights just flash up and we don't exactly know why and we won't actually have an exact reason for that. And we definitely don't want to be jumping to conclusions and saying, Right, Well, That's it. The car's just rubbish and it's a complete write-off. You know, That's where we can go. Emotions, Right? I'm a complete write-off. My life's a write-off. Everything's a write-off. So it's just regrounding again amongst this. I know I said this with some humour because I know you can probably relate to that feeling of having those moments, Right? But I think the more you can integrate some of these practices of my thoughts aren't necessarily facts, My emotions aren't necessarily facts, This really might change your perspective on even let's just say for today or this week, How you start to navigate your thoughts and feelings this week. Again, I'll leave you with that and I'll see you in, Of course, Another Track Another Talk soon.