The Inconvenience of Feelings
I made two major mistakes in the long program at my final national championships.
After facing my fate in the kiss and cry, I walked back to a quiet locker room and forcibly chucked my skating bag and chair across the room. It was a moment of release. I let the anger and sadness take control and then quietly—and quickly—tucked those feelings away with a silent promise I wouldn’t let them out again.
I redid my makeup, brushed my bangs and walked out to the medal ceremony.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that this moment — the instinctive tucking away of my feelings — was something so many athletes learn to do.
There wasn’t an exact moment as an athlete when I adopted the belief that feelings were “bad,” but the implicit message that feelings were inconvenient and unnecessary was constant throughout my career. As an athlete you strive to be robot-like, to seamlessly deliver under pressure that which you have worked to perfect every day in practice. You can start to believe there’s no place for feeling in perfection, no place for needs. Physical and emotional pain are often viewed as a barrier, a potential enemy attempting to seize control of a career you are so carefully crafting.
As an athlete in a subjective sport any external display of emotion is often expertly curated, with an athlete’s image and others’ perceptions holding great importance. Feeling feelings and understanding the needs behind a feeling is not a priority; instead, athletes are often praised for their ability to “tough it out,” deny reality and push through physical and emotional pain—with a smile on their face. When a skater falls short of the podium or misses a major element in their program, you rarely see a full display of emotion in the kiss and cry. Disappointment hides behind wan waves to the camera; anger at unjust scoring is masked by perfunctory head nods and curt smiles. On the outside, everything looks so calm, so controlled, but on the inside feelings are urging to be felt.
And when those feelings aren’t felt, and athletes aren’t educated on how to feel, issues can arise.
Feelings tell us our needs, and they are neutral. They are sensations experienced in the body that originate through internal or external stimuli. For example, if another driver changes lanes and just barely misses crashing into your car, your nervous system will likely shift into a sympathetic state, and the fight or flight response will be activated. You’ll likely feel a mixture of fear and anger. This is due to an external stimulus (The other driver’s car.) eliciting those feelings. The need behind these feelings is likely a need for safety, for a sense of security. To meet this need, you may start to pay closer attention to your driving, to other drivers’ driving and find ways to keep your vehicle safe.
You will likely also have thoughts about the situation that just occurred, which creates a mental story about the event. You may start to think, “That person is an idiot; they could have killed me! Was it intentional? What’s wrong with people?!” These thoughts perpetuate the feelings of anger and fear.
The goal isn’t to avoid feeling—that would be impossible—but rather to learn to identify, validate and experience our feelings. With this, we want to adopt curiosity about what our feelings may be telling us about our needs and then choose behaviors that help us meet our needs.
What often happens, though, is we quickly react to our feelings without taking the time to pause and respond to our feelings. This is why so many of us avoid our feelings: we connect our beliefs about feelings to the behaviors we’ve engaged in or viewed other engage in due to a reaction to a feeling. Going back to my experience at nationals, because I hadn’t yet learned to identify and respond to my feelings, I reacted to the anger: I threw my skating bag and chair. This reaction validated my belief that feelings were “bad” and “destructive.” But the issue was, my feelings weren’t “bad” or “destructive”; instead, my reaction to my feelings was maladaptive.
So how do we start to get comfortable feeling our feelings after years of intentional—or unintentional—avoidance?
We need to earn trust in our ability to feel by facing the fear that if we start feeling, we might be overwhelmed by our emotions. Like opening a soda bottle that’s been shaken up, we want to gradually let the pressure out over time. That means starting by checking in with ourselves in a more neutral moment to identify what we may be feeling and asking what we may need.
If we’re struggling to name a feeling, the feelings wheel is a great tool to help us identify and name what we are experiencing. Sometimes it can also be helpful to externalize the feeling by quickly drawing it, giving it a texture, asking what color it might be. The goal is to cultivate curiosity about our feelings and to sit with the sensation of the feeling—consistently and deliberately. This is a skill we’re teaching ourselves, so just like learning anything new, we want to be patient with ourselves and consistent in our efforts.
Feeling feelings is not a threat to success—whether that’s success in athletics or any other area of our lives. Rather, the better we get at feeling, the more successful and confident we become. By letting ourselves experience our feelings and consistently meeting our needs, we are showing ourselves we matter. And, just like keeping promises to ourselves, identifying our feelings and understanding our needs are vital components of self-confidence and self-trust.
Putting this Into Action:
Access the feelings wheel and keep a photo of it on your phone to help increase your feelings vocabulary.
Starting to keep a check in log/journal in the morning, midday and evening, in which you answer some or all of the following:
What am I feeling?
Is the sensation of this feeling comfortable or uncomfortable?
Where am I feeling this in my body?
What have I been thinking about that might contribute to this feeling? (The mental story.)
What might this feeling be telling me about what I need?
Is there anything this feeling might need? I.e. anger often may need to be expressed by sharing our boundaries with someone, or sometimes it needs comfort from us. Sadness may need comfort or levity. Anxiety may indicate a need for a sense of control in a situation. Get curious about what the feeling might need.
How can I meet this need?
And for bigger feelings, grounding techniques are incredibly helpful:
5-4-3-2-1 grounding.
Using temperature to regulate i.e. taking a cold shower, holding an ice cube for a few seconds, sitting in a warm bath.
Box breathing.
The content on this blog is intended for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy. The content does not replace a therapeutic relationship with a licensed mental health professional.