How to Stop Minimizing Your Feelings

Why do we minimize how we are feeling and then convince ourselves that we either shouldn’t feel that way or the way we are feeling isn’t significant? NEWS FLASH! YOU are human and humans feel! However when we ignore our feelings that is when life can get chaotic. Learning how to stop minimizing your feelings may just be the biggest key to changing your mindset and start creating a life you love.

The truth is we all minimize our feelings one way or another. Either we compare our personal experiences with what others are going through or we convince ourselves that feeling was “silly” and doesn’t need any attention.

Nothing you feel is insignificant to you. Nothing.

Every little emotion, good or bad, helps you learn and grow as a person. It is how you learn from those feelings that helps you create a life you love.

So, when your internal dialogue shuts down a feeling by saying, “I shouldn’t feel this way” or “I don’t have time to deal with this right now.”, that’s when alarms should be going off in your head. This abusive behavior is reaffirming your subconscious that you don’t deserve to feel that way. That’s right, it is self-abusive.

Would you want someone telling you that you can’t feel a certain way? That you have no right to feel that way? That you have bigger issues to deal with than to take the time to feel anything right now? I hope not!

So why do we do that to ourselves?

How to Stop Minimizing Your Feelings

An article in Psychology Today talks about comparing ourselves to others and how this minimizes our own feelings. Stuffing those feelings because we “don’t have time” isn’t healthy either. Both of these situations just lead to an inevitable imbalance in your life.

Why you might ask?

When we stuff our feelings down and ignore them, or push them aside because we “don’t deserve to feel that way” we are creating situations where other events that normally would be small, won’t be. There will be a build-up of feelings that will create a mess within ourselves and overwhelm starts to creep in.

You may not notice it at first, and maybe you will sluff it off as being “stress at work”, “chaos at home”, or just “need a vacation”. The truth is when we dig into why we are feeling this way and try to go back to when it started, when did it truly start?

It started when you minimized your feelings.

So instead of pushing aside those feelings, good or bad, I want you to enjoy the freedom of being human. I want you to feel each feeling, with no judgment and no comparison. Name that feeling, learn from it, and carry on with your day.

*WARNING*

There are few keyphrases to the statement above: “no judgment”, “no comparison”, “name that feeling”, “learn from it”, and “carry on”.

We are our worst critics most of the time. However, if we are judging our own feelings and comparing how or why we are feeling that way then we are not allowing ourselves to grow from that experience.

Being able to feel anything and acknowledge those feelings without judgment is where this healthy habit begins.

When you are doing this, I want you to name that feeling. If you need to write it down in a journal, do it. Don’t be shy about what it is, just call it out as it is. When you are able to name the feeling you can get the attention of your subconscious.

Once you’ve named that feeling you can start to ask why this event made you feel that way. Was it a memory of something in your past? What happened during that time? How can you learn from this?

As you start to learn from your feelings, what triggers them and how certain situations make you feel, you can prepare yourself and start to learn how to control how you react. You can essentially say, “Okay, now I know that about myself, let’s move forward.”

As time goes on this process will become easier and faster to do. This is one of the tools you can use that practice does make perfect. However, it is a tool that you will need your entire life because growing and learning about yourself is a life journey.

Learn from my Mistake

I recently learned this lesson, yet again. Weeks ago, I minimized how I was feeling about a situation and pushed it aside. Then little things continue to happen and those feelings kept coming up. Instead of dealing with it, I pushed my own feelings down and convinced myself that ignoring them was better for everyone.

It wasn’t. By minimizing my feelings about that one situation, I focused my attention on other things that I felt were more important. I obsessed over the little things that were going wrong but were really the least of my worries. My team was miserable, my family was walking on eggshells around me and I was stressed.

As I continued to ignore my feelings, I convinced myself that a vacation was what I needed. This would solve my problem for sure!

Nope! When I got back into the normal routine, all of those feelings came back but stronger this time. I was overwhelmed with everything and had a full meltdown that week. It was a slap in the face.

So, I finally named the feelings I was feeling and started digging into why I was feeling that way. When I got to the root of the issue, I remembered when it all started and what my actions were.

Can you guess what started the overwhelm? It was minimizing how that single event made me feel and not dealing with those feelings at that moment. That one action turned into a whirlwind of work-life imbalance over the next few weeks. You aren’t alone in this journey. I still struggle occasionally, especially when it seems easier to ignore than to deal with those feelings. In the long run, when I can stop minimizing my feelings, life is more balanced and happier.

Your’s can be that way too, try it!