We are currently experiencing a rise in talk therapy engagement due to pop culture, this has been due to a pandemic, technology, and the privatization of services¹ (also known as lack of access to care from insurance coverage but that’s a conversation for later). We can now easily find podcasts from therapists’ and client’s perspectives, and engage with tiktoks and reels on being “delulu.” We may even follow multiple therapists for different types of content and specialties just in case we need a little self-diagnosis. While watching television, we are either watching shows with therapists as the main character (Shrinking), or the main character attending therapy (Ted Lasso). If reality TV is your thing, you may have seen the Kardashian-Jenners openly discuss the advice they receive in their own therapy sessions. You may even be like me and be angry while watching Netflix because you want them to have a therapist supporting the Love is Blind and The Ultimatum cast.

While I believe this cross-over between therapy and pop culture is fantastic for mental health awareness and education, I think it fails at helping understand mental health because in the process of discussing mental health issues, we intellectualize the feelings we should actually be feeling. Thus, further distancing those people already not interested in therapy and making it more challenging for those already interested in engaging, implementing, and/or maintaining their therapeutic changes. Of course that’s not to say there aren’t a million other reasons why people don’t engage in therapy and why they may not be able to implement or maintain their therapeutic changes. However, I want to shine a light on what feeling your feelings (as cliche as it sounds) can actually do for our mental health. Full disclaimer, this comes from an associate-level talk therapist who has intellectualized her feelings for the past 27 years and has only begun ~feeling~ them as an active EMDR (Eye-movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) patient for the past 4 months. 

Intellectualizing my Feelings

Intellectualizing your feelings can look like many forms. For me, it looks like finding a reason and explanation as to why I’m behaving or thinking in a specific way. This could be as straightforward as CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) where I analyze my thoughts, find my beliefs, and try to find a more true and more helpful thought if I need a little boost-me-up. Intellectualizing my feelings can also look like taking a deep look at racial, immigration, carceral, and poverty trauma to arrive at a reason for my depressive symptoms and help myself understand that I’m not “crazy” but the circumstances that Amerikkka² has provided me with have unfairly challenged me. It provides me with some self-compassion because it helps me understand that my response is completely valid in such horrid circumstances. There is not really a right or wrong way to intellectualize your feelings, and both of these examples have kept me alive for the past 27 years despite the multiple occasions of suicidal ideation³. Not only has intellectualizing my feelings helped me stay alive, but it has also helped me engage in beautiful topics  I’m passionate about, like radical wellness, access to care, decolonizing therapy, abolition and QTPOC liberation. It truly has made me who I am today and I’m so proud of that. 

Even though intellectualizing my feelings has been essential for my survival, I’m trying to break up with my cognitive/intellectualizing brain right now; or at least minimize its usage to make room for allowing my body to feel my feelings. Yet, something that sounds so simple, it’s actually so fucking hard…

Feeling my Feelings

Thanks to EMDR and my therapist who takes Medi-Cal even though she is in private practice, I have learned about the ugliest most uncomfortable parts of myself and most of the time they don’t include words, just my body and my ~feelings~.

Feeling my feelings is just about the hardest thing I’ve ever done because at some point in my very young traumatized life as an immigrant girl of color, I was socialized, or biologically pushed into survival mode that stopped me from feeling the pain and the hurt from the trauma I was enduring. For me, it has always been easier to numb than to feel. While numb, you can actually make it to work and through school. You can even sometimes use your thoughts and complete interesting talking points to explain why you behave the way you do. Unfortunately, you don’t feel; and the worst part was that I didn’t even know I wasn’t feeling.

During one of my first sessions of EMDR, I remember feeling a weird sensation in my shoulders that traveled up to my neck. It was similar to when you hit your funny bone, but it felt more internal and less painful. It suddenly became overwhelming and my eyes filled with tears yet my mouth wanted to laugh. My thoughts were laughing at the overwhelming sensation and desired to cry. So I shut it down. Immediately. That was too embarrassing, why would I cry in front of my therapist if nothing is being said, just feeling it. We tried to repeat the activity and I didn’t have control to be able to “turn the feelings back on.” I just felt numb, disengaged and disconnected. We ended the session and decided we would try again the following week. Before the next session, I prepped by encouraging myself to heal from my trauma. How could I, a therapist, encourage my clients to go through the trauma work if I myself couldn’t do it. And so the next session came, we started processing and I felt the sensation again. This time in my body, a vigorous violent hole in my stomach. It was as I had been punched, and need it to gasp for air. I immediately asked my therapist to stop and began to cry. “What the f*ck was that??” I had no idea, and so I instantly shut down.

That was the moment I realized I had stop feeling my feelings a long time ago. I couldn’t remember when was the last time I allowed my body to feel any of those sensations and feelings. And I mean, I could clearly see why, it felt unsafe, painful, and overwhelming to do so. Yet here we are, in EMDR therapy for 4 months and I will probably need a whole year of this (LOL). Some weeks are easier, some weeks I feel the healing happening; and some weeks I have cried non stop on the daily. I am trying to purge out the feelings I been numbing for 20+ years. Which is exactly why I’m here, to share my story, encourage and discuss what feeling the feelz is actually like when we are this traumatized. When the world has traumatized us, disadvantaged us, and we had to shut down in order to endure, and survive the circumstances. Once again in full disclosure, I don’t know what life while feeling your feelings all the time feels or looks like. However I envision the joy that as people of color we are capable and deserving to feel. That vision gives me the courage to share this story and what’s to come with you all. To share more of the collective pain and the trauma our sacred communities go through and work towards healing for our future generations. To see us thrive in all components of our lives. My dreams, visions, and hopes for this blog and our Black, brown and QTPOC communities is to encourage a full, whole and holistic balanced life where we feel all the feelz, heal from our generational trauma, and continue to support one another.

Join me, I’d love to have you take this journey with me. 

1. The privatization of mental health services has encouraged therapist to make a financially stable living wage and often requires a marketing strategy in social media that promotes engagement in services, thus creating awareness for mental health. ↩︎
2. According to wordnik.com this is a way to write “The United States of America” in a way that is used to depict the country as fascist
    or racist. A blend of America and the KKK ↩︎
3. Suicidal ideation describes suicidal thoughts, thoughts on not wanting to be alive. If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts please reach out to a professional health care provider. If you are in California APLA Health is a good place to start for folks on Medi-Cal.  ↩︎