“Feeling is a subtler, passive process than emoting. It is best illustrated by contrasting the concepts of emoting and feeling. Emoting is when we cry, anger out, or verbally ventilate the energy of an inner emotional experience.
Feeling, on the other hand, is the inactive process of staying present to the internal emotional experience without reacting. In recovery then, feeling is surrendering to our internal experiences of pain without judging or resisting them, and without emoting them out.
Feeling is a kinesthetic rather than a cognitive experience.
It is the process of shifting the focus of your awareness off of thinking and onto your affects, energy states and sensations. It is the proverbial “getting out of your head” and “getting into your body”.
As a grieving process, feeling involves consciously reversing the learned survival mechanism of clamping down on pain to banish it from awareness.
Feeling “occurs” when we direct our attention to an emotionally or physically painful state, and surrender to this experience without resistance. When we relax acceptingly into our pain, we can learn to gently absorb it into our experience. Feeling then functions as if our awareness is a solvent that dissolves and metabolizes the affect, energy and sensation of our emotions.”
— Pete Walker, “Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving”
Aloha
Leigh