Story vs Feeling

One paradigm shift I have found in Somatic work over ‘talk-therapy’ is giving more value to my sensations and feelings rather than just the “stories” I tell myself.

Every issue I have in life exists on (at least) two levels, the level of thought and the level of feelings/sensations. For instance, if I’m troubled by dynamics at work, I have the “story” in my head: “I’m annoying everyone, I don’t belong here, people hate me, I’ll never master this, everyone is against me, I should just keep my head down and get through.” While the level of feelings in my body might be: fear, anxiety, tension in shoulders, coldness in my belly, despair etc.

Even though the thoughts are stemming from the feelings, there is a basic unreality, black/white distortion to the stories, while the feelings have a somatic reality to them and want to be felt and processed.

The stories and beliefs I have about my relationships, career and status in the world, seem very true and fixed but are actually transmuted from feelings of sadness, grief and fear that have remained unprocessed in my body. A feedback loop ensues. The more I tell myself the story, the more I both avoid and justify the feelings, which then further confirms the story. A vicious cycle.   

Ultimately, the feelings are/were too uncomfortable so I retreat to my head and build a model of the world to keep myself safe and make sense of the feelings. I become a prisoner of my own walled fortress. The story becomes a habitual defence against feeling, enforcing an old paradigm while the feelings remain trapped and unprocessed in my body. My world doesn’t change because I’m constantly reenforcing my story.

A fundamental challenge for me in my own work is keeping my attention on my feelings and sensations as opposed to going into my story and getting reactive. There is a fundamental kind of self abandonment that comes when I leave what I’m feeling to solve or fixate on a story.

My stories and ideas about life are not reality, not Truth. My feelings however are real and need attending to, not to solve or fix, but just to be felt. The more I can resist the urge to assign meaning to my feelings about who I am, who’s done me wrong and what life is all about, the more I’m able to make new choices and new possibilities emerge.

Feeling the reality of my feelings, however uncomfortable and painful, can be a path to resolution.

Love to you all,

Dov