From what our culture, families, and eating disorders teach us about feelings, you’d think that they’re irrelevant or incidental to our well-being at best, that they have no valid function, and are merely annoying distractions. However, feelings actually do have a function—a crucial one—for everyone on the planet. Hard-wired into us, they are an essential part of being human.
If we all have the capacity to feel, then feelings are neither accidental nor incidental and must have a purpose. The function of emotions is to tell us about or internal world, just as senses provide guidance in the external world. Think about how grateful we are for our senses, how much we value the ability to see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. We don’t get angry at our senses or try to ignore them. Instead, we accept them because we’ve figured out their purpose: to help us navigate the external world.
When it comes to feelings, though, we’re ready to close up shop. Emotions scare, puzzle, and confuse us. They drive us to eat, shop, drink, starve, work, and exercise in order not to feel them. Can you imagine engaging in these behaviors to avoid your senses?
Well, it’s just as silly to avoid your emotions, because their purpose is the exactly the same as that of your senses: to keep you safe and out of harm’s way, to steer you toward what’s healthy and life-affirming, and deter you from what’s dangerous and life-threatening. Feelings point us towards what’s pleasurable and what’s painful so we can make appropriate choices.
You cannot live a happy, meaningful, satisfying life without experiencing the full range of feelings—good, bad, or indifferent. If you shut them off, you’re asking for trouble because they’re the built-in radar system you need to interact effectively with the world. If you want to lead a rich and fulfilling life, accept that your emotions have a vital purpose and there’s no such thing as a “bad” feeling. By labeling a feeling negatively, what you mean is that it causes you to feel badly or that experiencing it makes you feel as if you’re a bad person. Feelings are feelings, just as colors are colors and food is food. If you believe you’re always supposed to feel good, then feeling bad is sure to upset you. You’re not supposed to feel good all the time; it’s simply not possible. We all have a range of emotions that come and go and that’s the way life is supposed to work. Feelings we consider “bad” do eventually go away. Of course, the problem is that they’ll come back again in another circumstance because that’s the way the emotional ball bounces. We only brush away our feelings if we don’t understand their function and value their purpose—if we forget that they exist, for the most part, to instruct us and live a fulfilling life.
Understanding and experiencing your full range of emotions will change your life. You’ll no longer have to search in restaurants, supermarkets, the refrigerator, exercise equipment, or your kitchen cabinets for emotional sustenance and nourishment. Happiness will no longer come in a box, bag, container, carton, jar, bike, or can. It won’t arise from a magical number on the scale, the high from excessive exercise, or the false pride of rejecting food.
By knowing what you feel, you’ll know what you need—calm and quiet, risk and excitement, a warm body, a hug, a challenge, a space of your own, community, work, a good cry, a sense of accomplishment, a vacation, a puppy, to grieve your losses, to paint, to dive head first into your future. Think of substituting a new feeling focus for your old obsession with food and your body size and you’ll be getting more out of life!
A Whole Recovery Treatment Team Under One Roof
Eating Disorders affect both the body and mind and require wrap around holistic care. We’re here to make that easier to manage. We can coordinate care for you, and provide a comprehensive treatment plan, with all the team members under one roof.