"I don't do feelings"

I’ve worked with many people over the years who describe themselves this way; who begrudgingly came to some form of therapy but didn’t want to get all feely-wheely with it.

For these people, it’s been helpful to think of emotions like this:

Core emotions (love, anger, etc) express universal biological rules handed down through evolution, because they have proved useful across the ages of human experience. Each emotion offers us a unique impulse to act. Each one points us in a direction that has worked to handle the universal challenges across human life. These responses have stood the test of natural selection, and Nature is really tough when it comes to keeping things around within a species.

Additionally, a function of emotion is the amplification of what’s important. It contains valuable information. Following feelings down to their core gives us usable insight into what’s meaningful and true.

What makes modern emotional life complicated is that we are often disconnected from the experience of deep, core emotions. Instead, what often makes up most of our emotional experience is more superficial secondary feelings and our defensive structures (the things we feel instead of the scarier other thing);and those emotional states don’t inspire the same type of action, clarity, and aliveness of core emotional experiences.

Even when the feelings are painful and frightening, we experience increased vitality and meaning when we meet them sincerely and without defensiveness (this takes skill).Visceral, intentional experiences of core emotions tend to bring access to new personal resources, new energy, and new (often better) sets of behaviors in response to the feeling.

So if you’re someone who’s been dismissing emotional experience because it just feels like an inconvenient block to your productivity and development,maybe consider getting with somebody who can help you reconnect to the core of what you feel and allow the gifts of both information and nature to become more known to you.