We Need To Feel To Heal

 

By Lindsey Gallop, MA, LPCC, Denver Trauma Therapist

Image of blog title. Trauma Therapy Denver can help you heal.

“Brutiful: Life is brutal and life is beautiful. Brutiful I call it…

Life’s brutal and beautiful woven together so tightly they’re inseparable. We must embrace both or neither. If we reject the brutal, we reject the beautiful. Our problems stem from our refusal to surrender to the fact that life is truly more brutal and beautiful than we can imagine. We must let it be. Breathe deeply and know that if we let it come and feel it all, the brutal will make us kinder, softer and stronger and even more beautiful.” – Glennon Doyle

Why Your Therapist Asks You To Feel Through Your Emotions 

Many people come into therapy with preconceived notions about how to effectively handle emotions. Some enter expressing distaste for “negative emotions” and try their hardest to avoid, distract or numb out these feelings. Others come in and express fears that if they let themselves feel, they will be engulfed and consumed by it entirely.

But what most people do not know - because we were never taught this in school - is that fully feeling our emotions is the doorway to healing our anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and other mental health struggles. 

We can make sense of why this is the case and how to go about this work with the help of The Change Triangle (pictured below).

Picture of the change triangle for trauma therapy Denver.

Mapping Out The Change Triangle 

  • Protections/Defenses: Anything we do to keep ourselves safe from what’s too heavy to feel. This could look like:

    • Intellectualizing

    • Over thinking 

    • Disordered eating 

    • Avoidance/Numbing 

    • Obsessions and/or Compulsions 

    • Using humor to deflect

    • Etc. 

  • Inhibitory Emotions: What we feel alongside or in response to our protections

    • Anxiety, Shame, and Guilt

  • Core Emotions: Sadness, Fear, Anger, Joy, Excitement, Sexual Excitement, Grief

    • Deep emotional experiences, often tied to trauma or longstanding wounds, that can seem too overwhelming to feel through and process fully. 

    • These emotions are also the direct path to healing and connecting with ourselves and others. 

When we don’t fully feel our core emotions - or when we avoid feeling them entirely - we will typically find ourselves in a ‘ping-pong’ effect at the top of the triangle, in a state of protection and/or anxiety, shame, and guilt. This can keep us stuck in a state of disconnectedness and uncomfortable emotions and away from healing.

In sum, our work in trauma therapy is to help rewire your nervous system to be able to move past what’s at the top of your triangle and through what’s at the bottom.

Feeling To Heal Is Much Easier Said Than Done - How Trauma Therapy in Denver Can Help

As human beings, our nervous systems are hardwired to keep us safe and as far away as possible from anything that is too overwhelming for our bodies to fully process. This is especially true for those of us who have been through a lot of pain in our lives, particularly in childhood. 

So, instead of feeling our intense, sometimes too overwhelming feelings as a way to heal and feel better, we tend to develop protective strategies over time that help distract and move us away from whatever is too heavy to feel.

The body works in wonderful ways as it skillfully protects us and helps us survive the difficulties in our environment and traumatic experiences. The protections, while adaptive and often necessary, may also restrict us from feeling our core emotions, healing from pain and trauma, and moving into a place of connection with our most authentic selves and relationships. 

Once we’re able to move through our protections to access the underlying emotions, we can work to calm our anxiety, transform the shame and guilt, and access our core emotions that, until fully processed, are blocking our access to our most authentic, confident, core selves.

Ready To Feel To Heal? How To Move Forward And The Role Denver Trauma Therapy Plays

We often try to avoid hard or unwanted emotions like a plague, trying our best to duck out of the way. There are such understandable reasons to fear feeling our core emotions - What if the feeling never fades? What if it consumes me entirely? This might be the case if you try to go there without support, both internally (in your nervous system) and externally (with a therapist and close friends/family to confide in). Once those resources are in place, we can move through the heavy that’s keeping you stuck - our nervous systems are literally designed to do so. 

Reach out to our Denver Trauma Therapists at CZ Therapy Group to schedule a free consult call.

Meet the Writer: Lindsey Gallop (she/her), Denver Trauma Therapist

Lindsey Gallop (she/her) is a trauma therapist who specializes in working with adults and teens who have experienced both long-term and single incident traumas, including childhood abuse/neglect, medical trauma, and sexual trauma. Lindsey sits with her clients in a way that embraces the messiness of the human experience and creates a safe enough container to be able to access and process through even the deepest held pain and trauma. 

Picture of Lindsey Gallop, Denver Trauma Therapist

Reach out to Lindsey for a free consult if you’re curious about working with her!

 
Chadley Zobolas