Somatic Healing for Wellness-Focused Women

(#95) Your Feelings Are Feedback: Nervous System Practices to Feel Without Becoming & Understand Emotional Reasoning

• Rae The Somatic Coach • Episode 95

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Do your emotions ever feel like the absolute truth? In this episode, we're breaking down one of the most common (and sneaky) mental traps: emotional reasoning—the idea that “if I feel it, it must be real.”

💭 “I feel anxious, so something must be wrong.”
 💭 “I feel guilty, so I must’ve done something bad.”
 💭 “I feel overwhelmed, so I probably can’t handle this.”

Sound familiar? You're not alone. This pattern can spiral fast and it’s deeply tied to nervous system dysregulation and unprocessed emotional experiences.

In today’s episode, I’m sharing:
🌿 Why your brain & body often confuse past fear with present danger
🌿 How to identify when you’re being the emotion vs feeling it
🌿 5 somatic practices to bring regulation, clarity, and grounded safety back into your body
🌿 How to stop letting feelings override your self-trust and intuition
🌿 What it really means to relate to your emotions instead of resist them

Whether you identify as a big feeler, a highly sensitive soul, or just someone who’s been riding an anxious wave lately, this episode is for you. Tune in for honest reflections, somatic tools, and mindset shifts that help you reclaim your power without bypassing your emotions.

🧘‍♀️ Grab your free somatic resource library (Breathe Easy) inside the Somatic Healing Newsletter !

💌 Want to share what came up for you? Send me a voice note → speakpipe.com/somatichealingpodcast

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Disclaimer: Please remember that the information shared on this podcast is intended to inspire, educate, and support you on your personal journey. It does not substitute for professional mental health advice. I am not a psychologist or medical professional. If you are experiencing distress, mental health challenges, or medical conditions, please seek help from a qualified professional.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to the podcast.

Speaker 1:

If you are new here, I'm Rae, I'm a somatic coach and breathwork facilitator, and if you aren't new here, welcome back. I'm so glad that you're tuning in for today's episode. So for today's episode, I wanted to build off of one of the tools that I mentioned in last week's episode called observation versus identification. Called observation versus identification and I think this is something that is so common when we are navigating any kind of challenge with anxiety or sadness or grief or shame is that we end up identifying with the emotion and making it feel like we are that thing. And so I wanted to use this episode to really dive deeper into that concept and just share a bit more about it. And I can share, even for myself, that I am a super emotional person, which is, you know, why I got into this work because I was really interested in learning about all of this for myself as well, and I, you know, I definitely will not say that I'm perfect, but I will say that it's taken me so much time and learning to really not let my emotions drive me, but I will say that now I do have, you know, a lot of different tools and awareness around the parts of me that are, you know, anxious or sad, or feel shame or grief. And so now I'm able to differentiate between different emotions and I can differentiate between when I'm getting like an intuitive hit and an intuitive knowing, rather than like an anxious worry, or when I have some kind of need that maybe is coming up, maybe I'm not expressing myself as much as I need to, or something like that. I'm able to differentiate between all of those things because I'm able to have a bit of space between my emotions, which I think is, you know, a great place to be in. And it comes with, you know, more responsibility of owning how we're feeling and owning our emotions and understanding how to work with them on a different level. And there's this funny thing that can happen sometimes with different feelings and emotions, especially if you're an intuitive person and you're a big feeler. And it kind of goes something like well, if I feel this thing, it must be true. Well, if I feel this thing, it must be true. But in fact feelings are not facts and feelings are really feedback, they're information, they're more insight, more knowledge for us to kind of understand different things that might be coming up for us, and they're not necessarily fact, as in they're not necessarily true. So if you've ever felt, you know I'm feeling super anxious, so something must be wrong. That is a form of, like emotional reasoning, and it's when we interpret the feeling of anxiety and the emotion to mean that it's real and it's true and something is, you know, definitely wrong. And yes, sometimes yes, of course that's true Our anxiety can be like an accurate protector, and other times it doesn't necessarily mean that something is wrong.

Speaker 1:

It might mean that you're feeling a feeling, and so another example might be I feel guilty, so I must have done something wrong, or I feel super scared, so this must be dangerous, or I feel super overwhelmed, so I definitely can't handle this Like I'm overwhelmed. And what ends up happening is that you begin to rely on your emotions as evidence that appears to be real and proof and fact, when in fact it's information. Our feelings and emotions are feedback, information and insight. Why does this happen? Right, so, like, if this is something that happens and it's not always true, like, well, why? Why are we wired this way as humans?

Speaker 1:

And I think what ends up happening is the brain and the body interpret emotions, especially fear and anxiety, as fact, so that when emotions and anxiety carry all this information, it's really information that might not have been processed, might have not been metabolized or understood yet, and so we keep. We find ourselves in these anxious loops and these fear based loops because the brain and the body are interpreting the emotion of fear as being something that's true, and then we start making meaning about things that aren't necessarily true, when really it's like a feeling that we had that wasn't processed or fully understood yet. And to elaborate a little bit more on like why this happens, is because the mind and the body don't really have an idea of how to distinguish between something that is a threat from the past or something that is actually happening right now, unless we teach it how to do that, it how to do that. So an example might be we're feeling anxious and our heart begins to race really fast, and it means that something's wrong and you must be in danger. Or tension means that something really bad is going to happen, or, you know, foggy thinking means that you cannot trust yourself. And in actuality, none of that is really true. It's the brain and the body and the mind trying to make sense of a feeling that's felt in the body and it's creating a story and adding meaning to it, and we are humans, so we are like meaning making machines. This is what we do, and the body and the mind are connected and that's what happens.

Speaker 1:

So we start making meanings of different feelings that are really a felt sensation in the body, and I think this is a great place to introduce the somatic work and really working with the body and working with those sensations in the body rather than identifying with them. And you can use some somatic practices here to pause, to regulate, understand, see and witness your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions. And there's a few different ways that you can do this. The first is noticing the feeling, so noticing that when you feel some tension in your chest, that this is a feeling of anxiety, it's not necessarily a sign that you know you're in immediate danger. It is a feeling in the body that has feedback for you. It has some insight, some information that it wants to share with you. Feedback for you. It has some insight, some information that it wants to share with you. So it's like working with understanding and feeling and noticing that sensation in the body and noticing and seeing it for what it is.

Speaker 1:

The second is breathing and placing a hand on your body. You can even place your hand on the sensation, like on the area that's feeling anxious or unsafe or sad, and you can breathe and as you breathe, notice the center of your palm on that feeling and send it some of that breath and you can say, like this is a feeling, I'm safe to feel this, I don't need to become this feeling, it does not define me, but it's here, I'm here, I'm a feeling, I'm safe to feel this feeling and really sit with it in that way. The third somatic practice that you could do is bring yourself back into the present moment. So, especially with anxious spirals and emotional spirals, we can find ourselves either like super far in the past or super far in the future and we're like not in the present. So, allowing yourself to pause, get back into the moment that you're in, look around, see where you are, notice what's around you if you need to ground ground, notice your feet on the ground, really be with yourself and do what you can to bring yourself back into the present moment.

Speaker 1:

And then the fourth practice it kind of builds off of the first and the second is noticing where in your body you feel this. So you can do that through a body scan. You can kind of close your eyes, sit with it and see where the sensation is coming up in the body. And is there a place also in your body that feels safe? Is there a place that feels a bit more safe that you can kind of titrate between the two sensations?

Speaker 1:

And then the fifth practice, the last one that I'll share with you, is moving the body, some kind of movement that will help you to either create some space with the feeling, like sometimes you need that where you need to like shake it out, you need to kind of like clear, like let go of it, or maybe you need a movement that is more gentle. Or maybe you need a movement that is more gentle. Maybe it's like a butterfly hug or like holding yourself in a way that feels really supportive for you. Maybe it's laying down and on your back and like feeling the ground underneath you, feeling it be really supportive and like really holding you. So the fifth, in general, is just some sort of movement that would really help you to work with the sensation of the feeling and the emotion in a way that would feel really supportive for you. Their information, they're not bad or wrong, but they are alerting you that, yeah, maybe something is happening on the inside not always necessarily on the outside of our experience. It's like an inner experience and I wonder, like if there might be a story that you are telling yourself when it comes to feeling anxiety, and what that story might be, and how can we work with that story, understand it, understand the sensation, see what information might be there for us and use that information to move forward and metabolize and process the feeling. And so that is what we have for today's episode.

Speaker 1:

I hope that you enjoyed learning more about observing our emotions, not always identifying with them, slowing down, understanding that feelings, thoughts, emotions they are feedback and information and insight and they are here for us to learn and grow and help us to move forward and understand ourselves on a deeper level. So I hope that you enjoyed it. I love hearing from you. You can send me a DM, you can send me a voice note, an email. Let me know what your favorite takeaway was. And if you want access to the Somatic Healing newsletter and the free resource library of about 20 different breathwork meditation practices, check out the show notes to sign up for that. And, yeah, I hope that you have an incredible rest of your day. I hope you have an incredible rest of your week and I will talk to you soon.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for being here and tuning in to Somatic Healing for Wellness-Focused Women podcast. If you were moved or inspired by today's episode, please take a moment to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. It truly helps the podcast grow and helps more people find me on their healing journey. Make sure to check out the show notes to sign up for the monthly newsletter, links to more resources, opportunities to work with me and ways that we can stay connected. If we aren't already connected on social media, head over to Instagram to follow me at raythesomaticcoach. Send me a DM. I'd love to connect with you and I answer each note that comes in. I am so happy you're here and I cannot wait to talk with you on our next episode of the podcast.