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Learning to Feel and Integrate Your Feelings
LEARNING TO FEEL AND INTEGRATE OUR FEELINGS(Updated)
***Warning. This process is not to be used by folks with a history of mental illness, severe trauma, or panic without a counselor or therapist. You can only use this process if you agree to absolve the webmasters, the server, Emoclear.com, and Steve Mensing of any responsibility for the application or misapplication of this process. With any mental or emotional process there is always the possibility of experiencing discomfort so proceed with this warning. ***
LEARNING TO FEEL AND INTEGRATE OUR FEELINGS
Learning to feel and integrate our feelings is fully feeling our feelings and allowing them to be there with no intention of getting rid of them or keeping them. This approach puts us in full contact with ourselves and allows us to naturally integrate and process our feelings. This integration and processing leads to our clearly seeing ourselves, others, and the world. Feeling and integrating is the basis of sound mental health and aliveness.
Feeling and integrating our feelings stands at the middle way between avoiding our feelings and overidentifying with our feelings. Feeling and integrating is basically a relaxed opened focus and non-interfering approach to our feelings. This approach does not judge or evaluate our emotions and feelings. We simply experience our feelings in a state of allowing and greet them with acceptance, agape love, and a sense of that's the way it is.
In noting that feeling and integrating resides between ignoring and overidentification, we recognize that ignoring is when a feeling emerges and we attempt to avoid it, deny it, medicate it away, repress it, tense up, distract ourselves, talk about it, or get lost in daydreams. Overidentification is when feelings show up and we are caught up in them. Here we are so immersed in a feeling we can't see the separation between ourselves and the feeling. We almost become the feeling!
Allowing ourselves to feel feelings brings relief and greatly lessons symptoms, habits, compulsions, stuckness, panic, depression, anxiety, and chronic moodiness. Feeling and integrating operates on the common observation that when feelings are resisted they intensify and persist. Yet when feelings are fully experienced and accepted they integrate and dissolve. This is our nature. Resistance and overidentification create havoc in our lives. We don't get our feelings important messages. Emotions seem stuck.
TIPS ON FEELING OUR FEELINGS
*A semi-relaxed body can open us to our feelings. This semi-relaxation can be brought about by left nasal dominance breathing, Snap Back Breathing, and full body relaxation exercises.
* In left nasal dominance breathing we breathe moderately and deeply through our left nostril only. Our right nostril is gently pinched shut. Exhale is free and relaxed. A good relaxation exercise is to begin at the top of the scalp and goes all the way down the body to the toes. A cycle works wonders when combined with left nasal dominance breathing.
* You need not give your feelings traditional names like anxiety or happy or depression or anger. In some integrators we call them "Those sensations". This labeling can reduce some of our aversion to feeling which may come from negative and pathological labeling. Neutralized labeling can give us a clearer experience of feeling. Labeling can also give us an outside perspective.
* Welcome and experience appreciation toward your feelings. When you begin to tune into a feeling and really allow yourself to feel, say hello or hi to your feeling. This greeting both acknowledges your feeling and underscuts resistance to it. Recognizing what good service your feelings perform will also undercut resistance. Your feelings always perform the valuable task of giving you feedback about yourself, others, and your situation. Feelings let you know how you feel about something and what to do. Feelings also perform many other valuable services as well.
*Commune with feelings through intuition or asking your feelings what valuable and good things your feelings do. By giving heartfelt gratitude or thanks to your feelings, you further remove aversion to your feelings. In short greet your feelings, see what good things they do, and sincerely thank them for their services. Done with sincerity these three gestures will help you let go of aversion to your feelings.
* If you have hostile or fearful judgements or evaluations toward your feelings, feel these judgements and evaluations.
* Always allow your feelings to be there with no intention of getting rid of them or keeping them. Allow. Permit.
* Experience feelings in different ways:
(1) Intensify them or exagerate them.
(2) Tune into them and allow them to migrate to other areas of your body. Then allow them to return.
(3) Notice the opposite feelings of the feelings you're having. Shift back and forth between these polarities several times. What do you notice?
* Allow your intention to get rid of your feelings to be there. Pay full attention to it and recognize it attempted to be helpful in its own way.
* Allow yourself to have feelings and not to have feelings.
* Observe how talking about your feelings is not the same as fully feeling them. It abstracts them and can be a form of resistance to feeling. This may shock some folks. Feel a feeling, then talk about it. What do you notice about the difference between feeling a feeling and talking about a feeling?
* Sometimes during feeling your feelings you may experience chaos and uncertainty. Feel the chaos and uncertainty and permit them to be there. It's okay to feel confused, out of control, and uncertain. When you experience chaos and uncertainty fully, you will begin to notice that order naturally returns even though you didn't seek order.
* Notice the size and shape of a feeling. Notice its outline. Notice its location. Notice its surrounding space. What did you experience?
* Are there feelings beneath your feelings? Pay full attention to your feeling. Ask if there is a feeling beneath that feeling. Wait and see if something appears. Keep letting feelings appear if they suddenly pop up into awareness. Go until you hit a wall or no more feelings appear. Then wait for a felt sense to emerge and fully feel it. (The felt sense is the overall sense of a problem or feeling.)
* Allow yourself to fully feel your feelings. If some seem overwhelming and intense, that's okay. The longer you feel them with no intention of getting rid of them or keeping them, the less intense they will be. You can also get an outside perspective on them by simply labeling them "that feeling". Only if you feel completely overwhelmed do the Shrunken Head Exercise found on the Emoclear process page. This will quickly chill down the most intense and resisted feelings. The directions for them are on the process page at Emoclear.com. Even in the most intense and overwhelming panic symptoms, abreactions, trauma restims, and flashbacks, it's not the feeling that overwhelms us, it's our intense aversion or resistance to these feelings that get us to flee. It's our intolerance to feeling that fires us up. These are the beliefs like I can't stand it, it's too much, it's overwhelming etc. These evaluations are the bedrock of aversion. By standing our low frustration tolerance and fully feeling it, the low frustration tolerance dies down. Fear has never chased a paniced person anywhere. They leave the scene because they believe they can't stand their fear. Practice long and often with aversion beliefs like: I can't stand it, it's overwhelming me etc. Once fully felt and accepted these beliefs lose their trance like spell over us.
* Dissociation or a seeming lack of feeling, sometimes to the point you feel outside your body, is a strong reaction to feeling overwhelmed. Focus on your dissociation and allow it to return to your body where you can feel it again. If you are working with dissociation, have someone trusted nearby or better yet work with a therapist grounded in feeling and integration processes. Also placing your palm on your heartbeat region can assist with bringing feelings back into your body or really feeling them.
* Lack of feeling, numbness, dead feeling, or even no feelings are all feelings. Allow yourself to fully feel them with no intention of getting rid of them or keeping them.
* If you experience compulsions, addictions, and obsessive thoughts, then locate the feelings being blocked by compulsions, addictions, and obsessive thoughts. When the feelings that run compulsions, addictions, etc are fully experienced and accepted, the compulsions and addictions lose all power and vanish.
* A straight spine helps us feel. Keep up your breathing. Halted breathing makes feelings stick.
* If thoughts intrude--that's okay. Simply say: "thought" and bring your attention gently back to your feeling.
* Notice those feelings where you want or need something. Notice those feelings you attempt to push away or avoid.
* Placing your palm on your heartbeat region can assist in feeling.
* After you have a good handle on fully feeling feelings, you can also focus on physical sensations, pain, and ill feelings.
* Check out how you feel about some of the targets in Targets for Processes.
* When integration of feelings comes about, changes in belief and emotion take place. Muscle tension vanishes.
* Feelings may change into other aspects or even release memories. Pay full attention. The majority of feelings tend to cluster in the torso, yet they can be found in every part of the body and sometimes exterior to it.
* As you get more tuned into feeling a feeling you will notice the separation between yourself and the feeling. This separation is subtle. This energy blur is not quite you. Pay attention to this separation and feel it.
*Feelings have beginings, middles, and ends. Feelings arise and pass away.
*Be willing to forgive a feeling.
*We may have intuitive conversation with our feelings.
(a) You can employ your feelings to know what you want. You can ask your feelings directly: "Feeling old pal--what do you want?" Don't hurry an answer, just wait patiently.
(b) Feelings can provide answers in felt senses, pictures, sounds. Other questions might be: What brings you here? What good things are you doing for me?
(c) Overwhelming emotions always have something important to tell us. Ask what they want. You might even ask them how they might help to make you whole and complete. What can I learn from you that might bring serenity or even power?
(d) Ask your feelings what might be holding you back or blocking you. And what might you do? You are going strait to the heart of intuition by asking your feelings.
(e) Feelings provide an opportunity to listen non judgementally and really hear what our feelings have to say. Treat a feeling like a buddy.
(f) Ask your feelings if they require distance. If they answer back yes, then permit them distance. Experience them now as "Those feelings over there" "That feeling" "My feelings beside me" This slight distancing alters our relationship with them and allows them more accessibility.
(g) Feel a sensation, then ask what it is. Feelings and sensations are gateways to intuition. However if your answers come back with "I think" or "I believe" they are not coming from an intuitive place.
(h) Ask your feeling to let you know what it would be like to experience wholeness, serenity, power, or love again.
(i) Avoid questioning feelings with "why" questions. Why questions will take you quickly out of the feeling mode.
* If you're feeling doubtful about your feelings, then return to them and experience them.
*Notice any sense of impatience or pushing. Allow yourself to relax and focus, paying full attention with a sense of permission.
* Be willing to feel even good feelings.
*Active Feeling can be employed for experiences like compulsion, grief, obsession, and panic.
* Many times when you become experienced with Active Feeling, you will experience spontanious integrations.
*If you have been condemning a feeling--see how you might accept it.
* Sometimes we may experience two or more feelings at the same time. Feel both at once or naturally let yourself gravitate to the one you find most interesting. You'll experience a pull.
* Keep somewhat warm during integration sessions. This helps feeling.
* You can always return to a feeling you felt previously.
* A common block to Active Feeling is simple performance anxiety. Here we wonder if we're doing it right. Or do we have a feeling? This is okay. Whatever is there for you in your body is a sense or a feeling. They work.
* If you've decided to work on a particular feeling and your body had another feeling in mind, guess who wins? Your body. You can ask your body if it's okay to proceed with this other feeling, but if it says otherwise, pay attention and work with what it provides.
*Never rush or push feelings. Allow. Permit. Relax.
* If a feeling abruptly vanishes, this might hint you have intentions to hurry up and make it go away.
* Sometimes you might feel good and miss it because you expect to feel really bad.
EMO EXPOSURE-INTEGRATOR.
***Warning: Folks with a history of mental illness, trauma, or panic are urged not to use this process without a therapist. If you decide to do this process you will agree to absolve the webmaster, his server, Steve Mensing, or Emoclear.com of any responsibility for the application or misapplication of this process. Within any mental or emotional process there is always the possibility that someone could experience some discomfort. So proceed with this warning.***
(c) Steve Mensing
The Emo Exposure-Integrator is a feelings integrator-desensitizer for both newbies and advanced folks too. The Emo Exposure-Integrator focuses on feeling an emotion, feeling, or physical sensation and feeling it to full integration-desensitization. It uses breathing into the emotional target to supress resistance and develop disidentification. The Emo Exposure-Integrator utilizes both lower forehead/eyebrow palming, heartbeat palming, and tongue relaxation to achieve comfort, suppress emotional resistance, and advance integration-desensitization.
(c) Steve Mensing
EMO EXPOSURE INTEGRATOR
Here are the steps to the Emo Exposure-Integrator:
(1) LAY A PALM OVER YOUR LOWER FOREHEAD/EYEBROWS & LAY YOUR OTHER PALM OVER YOUR HEARTBEAT REGION. FULLY RELAX YOUR TONGUE AND ALLOW IT TO FLATTEN ON THE BOTTOM OF YOUR MOUTH: Gently lay your palm and fingers across your lower forehead and eyebrows, with the karate base of your hand touching the bridge of your nose. Your fingers will point toward your ears. Lay your other palm gently on your heartbeat region. Fully relax your tongue and allow it to flatten against the base of your mouth (This quiets resistance and develops comfort.)
(2) BRING ALL YOUR ATTENTION TO AN EMOTION/FEELING/PHYSICAL SENSATION AND COMPLETELY FEEL IT: Bring all your attention to an emotion/feeling/physical sensation and completely feel it. Let it intensify. Fully feel that emotion, feeling, or physical sensation, and allow it to be there without trying to get rid of it or keep it. Notice it's sensations. [If you want to intensify the feeling, briefly recall events where it appeared. See those events. Hear those events. Feel those events. Smell and taste those events.] Anytime you think of something instead of feeling your feeling, simply bring your attention back to the feeling. The feeling will grow in intensity as you allow it to be there with a sense of openness and welcome. No need to question whether the process is being done correctly. Just feeling it is good enough. No forcing a feeling or demanding it to be there. (This may demonstrate the intention of getting rid of a feeling which creates resistance). Just allow the feeling to be there and fully feel it. Let the feeling permeate all your attention. Continue until the feeling is as intense as it can get. Go to step (3)
**ATTENTION: Your feeling (Emotion/sensation) may integrate spontaneously during any of the steps. This isn't a problem. You'll notice your feeling (Emotion/sensation) no longer has any emotional charge (Loses it's intensity). As you gain practice you'll likely experience this spontanaous integration taking place as a subtle felt shift in your body.**
(3) BREATHE INTO THE EMOTION AND NOTICE IT'S EDGES. EXPLORE THE EMOTION AND FEEL IT INTO ACCEPTANCE: Breathe into the emotion and notice it's outermost edges. Explore the emotion with your awareness and feel it throughly to its edges. Notice where it's most intense and where the intensity dies out at the edges. Continue to breathe into emotion/feeling/physical sensation and experience it while a sense of tranquil detachment begins to grow. Some of us may experience a subtle separation from their emotion/feeling/physical sensation as they observe it and it's edges (Where the emotion/feeling/physical sensation begins to fade out). You may feel as if you are outside the emotion/feeling/physical sensation and are observing it. If you don't experience the subtle separation, no problem. Your emotion/feeling/physical sensation will integrate-desensitize with steady experiencing. Take as long as you need and keep breathing into or toward the emotional target area. No rush. The object is to allow the emotion/feeling/physical sensation to be there. It will naturally lose intensity with steady experiencing and allowing it to be there. When it's integrated-desensitized it will no longer draw your attention. The emotional target will be acceptable or okay. The intensity will have drained from it. You're more comfortable with having this feeling.
During this final step you may get an intuitive sense about any issues connected with your emotion/feeling/physical sensation. You may get a sense of "what to do" or some other emotional insight.
************************** BASIC STEPS OF THE EMO EXPOSURE-INTEGRATOR:
(1) LAY A PALM OVER YOUR LOWER FOREHEAD/EYEBROWS & LAY YOUR OTHER PALM OVER YOUR HEARTBEAT REGION. FULLY RELAX YOUR TONGUE AND ALLOW IT TO FLATTEN ON THE BOTTOM OF YOUR MOUTH.
(2) BRING ALL YOUR ATTENTION TO AN EMOTION/FEELING/PHYSICAL SENSATION AND COMPLETELY FEEL IT.
(3) BREATHE INTO THE EMOTION AND NOTICE IT'S EDGES. EXPLORE THE EMOTION AND FEEL IT INTO ACCEPTANCE.
**************************
TIPS ON THE EMO EXPOSURE-INTEGRATOR.
*Make sure you're well hydrated and alert prior to using this process.
*Prior to using the Emo Exposure-Integrator scan your body for any emotions/feelings/physical sensations that need of your attention. You might ask: "Are there any emotions/feelings/physical sensations that require my attention?" The one vying most for your attention will be your first target.
*Some folks like to welcome their emotional target with a "Hi" or "Hello". This may lead to less emotional resistance at the start of processing.
*Know that exposure-desensitization is a research validated approach to dehabituating intense and enduring emotions. There is much research in support of exposure methods.
*Relax your tongue every so often during the processing.
Relax your tongue as you would relax your body. You may notice which side of your tongue is more relaxed or you may make it tense, then relax it. You can also submerge your tongue in warm saliva and allow it to relax.
*As you grow more experienced with the Emo Exposure-Integrator you may want to notice your heartbeat and the emotion/feeling/physical sensation in the same field of awareness. This can reduce emotional resistance and create more comfort during processing.
*Be patient with the process--don't rush. Steady observation integrates-desensitizes emotional stuckness. With practice the process speeds up. Practice each step of the process separately before you put them together.
As you progress in your experience with the Emo Exposure-Integrator you may wish to ask your heartbeat the following questions to access your emotional intuition:
*What can you tell me about me, others, the world around me?
*What do I need to do here?
*What do you want for me?
*Is there anything else I better know?
Just await the murky knowing. If you translate this murky knowing into sentences, you can jot them down on paper. But just getting the murkey knowing is enough. That your unconscious knows is enough. This knowing is like driving a car and knowing when to brake or step on the gas. You know--you don't think about it. It's second nature. You get that intuitive knowing in your body and you brake or step on the gas. Whatever the situation requires.
In integrating-desensitizing feelings several key items occur:
*Making full contact with a feeling. This means really feeling it without thinking. Full feeling means just that. No competing thoughts. No being distracted by other sensations, feelings, random thoughts, and doubts. We're talking about our attention being fully absorbed in the feeling.
*The No Intention Intention. This means we fully feel our feelings with no intention of getting rid of them or keeping them. This leads to acceptance. Keep in mind that most feelings are biological messages that do us good service even though they may bring discomfort at times in their attempts to get our attention. They all are valuable. Learning to appreciate their value assists greatly in our natural process of integration. It also develops long-term comfort with a full range of our feelings. The No Intention Intention naturally installs itself though working with Emoclear Integrators.
*Calling feelings "unwanted feelings" is resistance. If we're intending to get rid of feelings or we're negatively putting them down, that will create resistance and block natural integration. Calling our feelings "unwanted" points back to our intentions here. So having that intention of allowing feelings and not trying to keep feelings will greatly assist your natural ability to feel and integrate
*Deeper acceptance is not a thought. It is a sense of what ever is going on is acceptable or okay. Notice how acceptance arrives. It is a natural sense of things. This acceptance leaves us with a sense there's an okayness in what we're feeling. So acceptance is part of the unsticking process. It flows best when we really allow ourselves to feel something with no intention of getting rid of it or keeping it.
So if you're fully feeling a feeling, have no intentions of getting rid of it or keeping it, taking that "just back" or dis-identified position, getting those sensations knowing, allowing acceptance to flow--you can count on your feelings, emotions, and physical sensations to integrate-desensitize.
*Develop your appreciation for feelings by starting to notice all the good things they do. For starters they provide valuable information and sometimes lessons.
*Placing a palm over your heartbeat region during the process amplifies feelings and connects you with the heart's 10,000 neuron subcortical center. It helps keep people from dissociating with very strong feelings. It increases intuition and suppresses resistance.
*Breathing into a feeling suppresses resistance and has comforting effects. Breathing into feelings can help us dis-identify with them which helps in lowering resistance and raising comfort.
*Between cycles of doing the Emo Exposure-Integrator ask your heartbeat a future orientation in time question: "A year from now when I look back and my feeling, emotion, or physical sensation and the feeling is either accepted, what will I notice first? How will I feel? What will I know to do? What will I see and hear? Who will be the first to notice, besides me how I accepted this feeling?"
*Placing your palm over your lower forehead and eyebrows appears to alter blood flow in the frontal brain and leads to less resistance and cooler thoughts and feelings.
*Learn each step of the Emo Exposure-Integrator separately before you put all 3 steps together.
*The Little Pocket Intensifier can be added to the process to intensify feelings after you are well versed in the Emo Exposure-Integrator.
*To scale the level of resistance/acceptance of a target use the Acceptance/resistance scale which is basically a rating scale of resistance/acceptance, ranging from overwhelming hate/can't stand your feelings to loving and fully appreciating them.(This scale could also be used instead of the SUD Scale for measuring progress in emotional processing and integration work). Here goes:
RESISTANCE/ACCEPTANCE SCALE
(10) Overwhelmingly hate/Overwhelmingly can't stand my feelings.
(9) Strongly hate/ Strongly can't stand my feelings.
(8) Hate my feelings/can't stand my feelings.
(7) Mildly hate.
(6) Very much dislike my feelings.
(5) Dislike my feelings.
(4) Experiencing some negativity toward my feelings.
(3) Putting up with and not quite accepting my feelings.
(2) Accept/have some appreciation for my feelings.
(1) Love/have strong appreciation for my feelings.
Have fun, Steve