It sounds like such a basic question.
What is a feeling?
Maybe you’ve said things like:
· “I don’t really know how I feel.”
· “I can explain what happened, but I don’t feel much about it.”
· “Other people seem more emotional than I am.”
· “I feel something, but I’m unsure how to describe it.”
If this seems familiar, there’s nothing odd about you. Let us attempt to understand this.
So… What Is a Feeling?
Fundamentally, a feeling is not a thought.
It’s not the story you tell yourself about what happened.
It’s not the logical explanation.
A feeling is something, of course, felt. You experience it in your body and mind at the same time.
It usually includes:
· A physical sensation (tight chest, warmth, heaviness, restlessness)
· An emotional tone (sadness, anger, fear, joy)
And, often but not always:
· A sense of meaning (“I’m hurt,” “I’m safe,” “I matter,” “I’m overwhelmed”)
To the last point, sometimes we feel many emotions all at once, and so do not automatically know what to do with them… With complex feelings, we are confronted with reflecting upon them – and often it is too much for the mind of one person to do alone.
For instance, for us as young kids, when someone notices and names what we’re feeling — “You’re sad,” “That scared you,” “You’re frustrated” — our inner world starts to make sense. Feelings become something we can identify, tolerate, and do something with.
When that kind of emotional resonance with a caregiver is missing or inconsistent, feelings can stay fuzzy. Or far away. If you’re curious about how early emotional experiences shape our ability to feel and understand ourselves later in life, you might also find it helpful to explore Why Early Relationships Matter and How Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Can Help.
When You Don’t Know What You Feel
There are some people who struggle with emotions… It’s not that they do not have them, but they find it difficult to identify them in the first place.
There’s a term for this: alexithymia. It simply means the difficulty in recognizing and describing your emotions.
It doesn’t mean you’re cold.
It doesn’t mean you lack depth.
Often, it means you adapted.
If your early emotional environment felt overwhelming, unpredictable, dismissive, or unsafe, you may have learned to move toward instant cognitive thought, immediate intellectual activity, instead of the embodied process of feeling.
You might be very articulate. Insightful. Analytical.
But when someone asks, “How do you feel?” your mind goes blank.
That’s not a defect. It’s a strategy that once helped you cope.
If this speaks to you, you’re welcome to book a free 20-minute consultation with Curtis here:
https://anelegantmindcounselling.janeapp.com/#/staff_member/39/treatment/201
“I Feel Numb” — Is That a Feeling?
Yes.
Numbness is often a protective state.
When emotions once felt like too much — too big, too messy, too painful — the nervous system sometimes turns the volume down.
Instead of waves of sadness or anger, you get flatness. Distance. Disconnection.
Usually, numbness isn’t the absence of feeling. It’s often a result of stifling feelings that haven’t felt safe enough to surface.
Psychoanalytic thinking often helps us understand how the mind metabolizes emotional experience and why some feelings remain difficult to access. If you’d like to explore this idea further, you might appreciate Understanding Bion’s Theory of Thinking: How Psychoanalysis Shapes Emotions.
Feelings and the Body
Feelings live in the body.
If you’re disconnected from what you feel, you might notice:
· Tightness or tension without knowing why
· Trouble sensing hunger, fatigue, or stress
· Emotional reactions that show up hours later
· Going “blank” when someone asks about your inner experience
This doesn’t mean you’re faulty. It’s the total reverse: you adapted well. During your early years when there was little opportunity for your emotional life, you did the best you could to manage.
Yet now, there’s potential for these things to change.
How Therapy Helps
Therapy isn’t about forcing emotions or pushing you to “open up.”
It’s about slowly, safely building awareness.
Together, we might start to notice:
· How it might’ve been difficult to trust feeling when you were younger
· Small shifts in your body in a session
· The different qualities of emerging emotion throughout your life
Over time, feelings become less mysterious and less overwhelming. That’s something we can begin to explore — at your pace, together.
How to Start
I’m Curtis, a psychodynamic psychotherapist whose practice focuses on feeling and understanding the nuances of our emotional lives. Together, we’ll understand what feelings feel like, and the important messages they’re trying to tell us.
I offer in-person psychodynamic psychotherapy in Vancouver, Yaletown, and online across BC.
You’re welcome to book a free 20-minute consultation so we can get to know each other and explore what working together might look like:
https://anelegantmindcounselling.janeapp.com/#/staff_member/39/treatment/201
Your emotions are the source of life. And I believe that it’s possible for anyone to rekindle our affectual life again. Through trusting our emotions, and trusting the work we do together, you’ll gradually feel more alive and more contented with the life you’re living.
I’ll be glad to meet with you, sometime soon.