Although we often think of our emotions and feelings as being purely psychological – the mind and body are very closely connected. Feelings are our body’s way of communicating to us how we are experiencing the external and internal world. Often, in childhood, we are taught that our feelings are ‘wrong’ in some way and we learn to ignore or deny them. But our body can literally feel emotions. For example in times of stress or fear we may get headaches, gastro-intestinal upsets etc.
Feelings are guides. Feelings are not necessarily fact but can give us useful information about what is going on for us.
Identifying how we are feeling by tuning into what our body is telling us is an important step in learning to understand our patterns and thus learning to self-regulate.