You Can Feel it...But You Can't Explain It
You know those days when you feel unsettled but can’t articulate it?
Most of us know what cognitive dissonance is: it’s when you have conflicting beliefs so that your actions go against your values. There’s also something called emotional dissonance, where what you’re feeling doesn’t match what your expressing on the outside.
And that’s where we often get stuck, looping over and over again with the same thoughts, the same feelings and the same sense of what-do-I-do-with-this?
Let’s talk heart to heart here. When we’re feeling this kind of inner conflict, it creates a background level of stress: we have to act like everything’s okay when we face the world but inside, we’re exhausted.
And I know you know what I’m talking about. You do what’s expected of you: answer emails, make small talk (or even big talk depending on who you’re talking to). You’re doing your best to hold it all together - at least on the outside.
But cracks are beginning to appear - whether anyone on the outside sees it or not. And those cracks happen when your feelings don’t translate easily into words, so they’re kept hidden, unshared, and unresolved.
Even when you do have someone to talk to—a therapist, a coach, a trusted friend—it can be near impossible to find the right words.
So it stays with you. Except for periodic outbursts. Or eating to stuff down your feelings. Or not being able to sleep.
Unfortunately, this is where we try to use our logical brains to sort everything out. The way we’d solve a more practical problem. Feelings aren’t easy to sort out. Trying to have better thinking doesn’t often work, even when you your thinking points you in a different direction.
We’ve all experienced when thinking doesn’t untangle our feelings. Trying to come from logic rarely works because our minds can have difficulty making sense of what’s in our hearts (and what we feel in our bodies). We end up feeling more unresolved rather than less.
Finding the right words that open the door can be difficult.
An approach that I’ve found invaluable is to pay attention to what your body already knows.
My own background in energy medicine and exposure to the field of somatics has shown me there’s another way to recognize how our bodies hold and express our emotions.
Let’s say you have tightness in your chest. Shallow breathing. Sweaty palms. Tight muscles in your neck and shoulders. This is your body’s intelligence trying to get your attention.
This is where your body’s natural intelligence can be expressed through your hands.
Your hands don’t need to interpret anything. Take a pen, a piece of paper, a brush—even just the act of tracing lines or doodling—and something starts to shift. It’s not that you’re searching for meaning, but that you’re giving form to something that hasn’t had one.
Sometimes you see it when a line curves where a sentence drops off. Or a shape somehow expresses the feelings you can’t really describe. Repeating a mark on paper can reveal something you’ve been struggling to resolve. And whatever’s been stuck begins to loosen.
By making simple shapes and marks that express something inside you, relief and understanding can begin. And when that happens, words do come. They’re help frame what you’re feeling.
Relying on language as a way to understand our inner world. absolutely has its place. At the same time, we all have certain feelings or memories that are harder to express verbally. They benefit from allowing what’s beneath the surface to be seen rather than interpreted.
So when you find yourself carrying feelings and thoughts that won’t settle through habitual channels, please know there’s nothing wrong with you, and nothing missing in your ability to process it.
They may simply be waiting for a different form in which to be expressed.
Most of us know what cognitive dissonance is: it’s when you have conflicting beliefs so that your actions go against your values. There’s also something called emotional dissonance, where what you’re feeling doesn’t match what your expressing on the outside.
And that’s where we often get stuck, looping over and over again with the same thoughts, the same feelings and the same sense of what-do-I-do-with-this?
Let’s talk heart to heart here. When we’re feeling this kind of inner conflict, it creates a background level of stress: we have to act like everything’s okay when we face the world but inside, we’re exhausted.
And I know you know what I’m talking about. You do what’s expected of you: answer emails, make small talk (or even big talk depending on who you’re talking to). You’re doing your best to hold it all together - at least on the outside.
But cracks are beginning to appear - whether anyone on the outside sees it or not. And those cracks happen when your feelings don’t translate easily into words, so they’re kept hidden, unshared, and unresolved.
Even when you do have someone to talk to—a therapist, a coach, a trusted friend—it can be near impossible to find the right words.
So it stays with you. Except for periodic outbursts. Or eating to stuff down your feelings. Or not being able to sleep.
Unfortunately, this is where we try to use our logical brains to sort everything out. The way we’d solve a more practical problem. Feelings aren’t easy to sort out. Trying to have better thinking doesn’t often work, even when you your thinking points you in a different direction.
We’ve all experienced when thinking doesn’t untangle our feelings. Trying to come from logic rarely works because our minds can have difficulty making sense of what’s in our hearts (and what we feel in our bodies). We end up feeling more unresolved rather than less.
Finding the right words that open the door can be difficult.
An approach that I’ve found invaluable is to pay attention to what your body already knows.
My own background in energy medicine and exposure to the field of somatics has shown me there’s another way to recognize how our bodies hold and express our emotions.
Let’s say you have tightness in your chest. Shallow breathing. Sweaty palms. Tight muscles in your neck and shoulders. This is your body’s intelligence trying to get your attention.
This is where your body’s natural intelligence can be expressed through your hands.
Your hands don’t need to interpret anything. Take a pen, a piece of paper, a brush—even just the act of tracing lines or doodling—and something starts to shift. It’s not that you’re searching for meaning, but that you’re giving form to something that hasn’t had one.
Sometimes you see it when a line curves where a sentence drops off. Or a shape somehow expresses the feelings you can’t really describe. Repeating a mark on paper can reveal something you’ve been struggling to resolve. And whatever’s been stuck begins to loosen.
By making simple shapes and marks that express something inside you, relief and understanding can begin. And when that happens, words do come. They’re help frame what you’re feeling.
Relying on language as a way to understand our inner world. absolutely has its place. At the same time, we all have certain feelings or memories that are harder to express verbally. They benefit from allowing what’s beneath the surface to be seen rather than interpreted.
So when you find yourself carrying feelings and thoughts that won’t settle through habitual channels, please know there’s nothing wrong with you, and nothing missing in your ability to process it.
They may simply be waiting for a different form in which to be expressed.