Self-Neglect
“The Subtle Damage of Ignoring Our Feelings and Why Feelings Matter”
In a world that values productivity and mental resilience, the simple act of feeling our emotions often goes undervalued. Today’s fast-paced culture encourages us to prioritise practicality, logic and efficiency to keep up with daily demands.
However, sidelining or ignoring our emotions can create subtle but profound damage, eroding our connection to ourselves and leading to chronic stress, numbness or a pervasive sense of emptiness.
Often, we unintentionally build a disconnect within ourselves, a divide that separates us from our emotions, our bodies and ultimately, from the full experience of who we are. This disconnect often emerges as a coping strategy, with thinking and rationalising becoming our primary tools to navigate life’s pressures.
Yet, by over-relying on ‘thinking’ and ‘doing,’ we gradually lose touch with ‘being’, with experiencing and honouring our true, authentic emotional selves. Emotions are inner signals that guide us towards what truly matters, offering insight into our needs, fears and aspirations. Allowing ourselves to feel, even the uncomfortable emotions, can nurtures a fuller, more authentic experience of life.
The focus of this article is to explore and understand how emotional disconnection can result in an underlying feeling of emptiness and a sense that something is missing despite everything appearing well on the surface.
The Unintentional Disconnect
For many of us, the habits we develop to cope with stress, meet responsibilities and stay focussed are also what can create a disconnection from our emotional selves. Society often places high value on productivity, problem-solving and rational thinking; in striving to meet these ideals, emotions can easily be pushed aside or overlooked as impractical distractions. However, this divide between mind and emotion comes at a cost. It can manifest as a chronic sense of emptiness, dissatisfaction or numbness, a feeling of something missing.
This emptiness may stem from unprocessed emotions that have unintentionally been buried, as the ignored parts of ourselves begin to affect our overall sense of wellbeing. Living in a state of disconnection can make it challenging to experience a true sense of fulfilment, even when external circumstances appear fine. When emotions are suppressed, we lose touch with the messages and insights they offer, which over time can leave us feeling empty or incomplete. Embracing our emotions not only deepens our self-awareness but reconnects us to a more fulfilling experience of ourselves and our lives.
Why Thinking Without Feeling is Problematic
Relying solely on rational thinking can help us navigate tasks and responsibilities, but it becomes problematic when it is our primary way of dealing with inner challenges. Emotions, unlike practical problems, are not issues to be solved; they are signals from our internal world that need acknowledgment. When we dismiss these signals, rationalising our way around them, we undermine our own emotional truth. Ignoring or suppressing emotions does not make them go away; rather, it pushes them below the surface, where they wait and intensify or become distorted.
This approach of intellectualising emotions, such as telling oneself, “I should not feel this way” or “I need to think more positively”, is not just an attempt to avoid discomfort. It also dismisses the information these emotions are providing. Emotions like sadness, anger or anxiety are often responses to unmet needs, fears or unresolved issues. By ignoring these signals, we cut ourselves off from the opportunity to address what we truly need.
When we try to think our way out of emotions, we often create a cycle of emotional suppression that, rather than easing our distress, tends to deepen it. These feelings, though ignored, remain in the body and may resurface as chronic stress, anxiety or a sense of emptiness and numbness. While relying on intellectual responses might provide temporary relief, this approach is ultimately unsatisfying. By disconnecting from our emotions, we compromise our sense of authenticity and limit our ability to fully engage with life.
What We Mean by “Feeling Our Feelings”
To feel our feelings is to allow ourselves to experience emotions without judgment or the need to rationalise them away. This does not mean wallowing in sadness or anger, but instead permitting emotions to come up, recognise them as part of the human experience and pausing to understand what they might be communicating to us. Feeling an emotion means fully acknowledging it, understanding it without automatically trying to fix it; allowing it to be present within us and for it then move through us.
Moving through a feeling means allowing ourselves to experience it fully rather than pushing it away or quickly seeking solutions to make it disappear. It starts with acknowledging the emotion honestly, accepting it as valid, and resisting the urge to judge, suppress, or “solve” it. This approach involves giving the feeling space to exist, without immediately intellectualising it or turning to distraction.
To do this, we can start by naming the emotion, whether it is sadness, anger, fear, joy or frustration. By simply identifying and labelling the feeling, we bring awareness to it, which helps us better understand its origins and what it is communicating.
After recognising it, the next step is to tune into how this feeling manifests physically. Where do we feel it in the body? It could show up as tightness in the chest, a lump in the throat, or a sensation of warmth. Allowing ourselves to sit with these physical sensations for a moment encourages the emotion to move through the body naturally. Rather than acting on it impulsively or brushing it off, we can practice deep breathing, focussing on each breath and the sensation of the emotion ebbing and flowing within us.
For example, feeling sadness might involve recognising the physical sensations associated with it, such as heaviness or a lump in the throat and connecting with the thoughts and memories tied to this sadness. This approach enables emotions to be processed rather than buried. By feeling our feelings, we open ourselves up to understanding them and, in turn, discovering what they reveal about our needs, desires or boundaries.
Through this process, we learn that emotions are like waves, they build, peak and recede if we let them flow. Moving through a feeling means we let the emotion take its course, knowing it will pass. By welcoming the emotion in this way, we cultivate resilience, understanding and a fuller connection to our inner selves.
The Challenge of Balancing Thinking and Feeling
Finding a balance between thinking and feeling is no easy task. Our lives are filled with responsibilities, goals and deadlines and it is easy to prioritise thinking as the most efficient way to stay on track. Emotions, however, are not bound to a schedule or to-do list. They surface when triggered, often at inconvenient times and ask for our attention in ways that may conflict with our logical, goal-oriented mindset.
This balancing act is difficult because we have been conditioned to believe that emotions can interfere with productivity, that they slow us down or make us “irrational.” But emotions and thoughts serve different purposes and both are essential. While thinking allows us to analyse, plan and solve problems, feeling connects us to our inner world, guiding us towards what matters most. It is by integrating both thinking and feeling that we can approach life with a fuller sense of clarity and authenticity.
The Consequence of Emotional Avoidance: Emptiness and Inauthenticity
When we ignore or sideline our emotions, we are essentially living inauthentically. This disconnection creates a sense of hollowness, as if we are only going through the motions without true engagement or purpose. In our drive to stay on top of everything, we end up separated from the very feelings that would allow us to connect with life more fully. The feeling of emptiness that often arises is a symptom of this disconnection, a sign that we are out of touch with ourselves.
Living inauthentically also makes it difficult to build meaningful relationships. Relationships require emotional honesty and presence and when we are not in tune with our own emotions, it is challenging to connect with others on a genuine level. By avoiding our feelings, we create a barrier that prevents us from fully expressing ourselves, which in turn, limits our capacity for closeness and understanding.
Bridging the Divide: How to Reconnect with Our Emotions
To live authentically and with a sense of completeness, we need to bridge the gap between thinking and feeling. Here are some ways to begin reconnecting with emotions while still honouring the practicalities of life:
1. Pause and Check In: Throughout the day, take a moment to pause and notice what you are feeling. Start by observing physical sensations in your body, which can be a gateway to recognising emotions. Acknowledge whatever arises without judgment.
2. Allow Space for Emotions: When emotions arise, give yourself permission to feel them fully. Remind yourself that emotions are not problems to be solved but experiences to be processed. By accepting what you feel without immediately trying to fix it, you allow the emotion to move through you rather than become suppressed.
3. Reflect on Emotional Patterns: Take time to notice any recurring patterns where you tend to avoid certain emotions. For instance, do you frequently rationalise feelings of sadness or brush off anger as unimportant? By identifying these patterns, you can start to understand how you might be avoiding your emotional truth.
4. Engage in Mind-Body Practices: Mindfulness, yoga, pilates, focussed breathing and other body-centered practices can help bridge the gap between mind and emotion by reconnecting you to physical sensations. These practices encourage a sense of presence and awareness, allowing emotions to be acknowledged and processed in a grounded way.
5. Balance Thinking and Feeling in Problem-Solving: When faced with a challenge, take time to acknowledge how it makes you feel before jumping to a solution. This way, you can honour both the emotional and rational parts of yourself. Integrating emotion into your decision-making can help ensure that you are considering all aspects of the situation.
Conclusion: Reclaiming a Sense of Wholeness
The disconnection many of us experience from our emotions is not intentional but can be a product of a society that prioritises thinking over feeling. To live fully and authentically, we must bridge the divide between our minds and our emotions, allowing both aspects of ourselves to inform our experiences. By reconnecting with our emotions, we reclaim a sense of wholeness, honouring the completeness of who we are; thinking and feeling beings. This journey may feel uncomfortable at first, but it is, I believe, a true and grounded pathway to living a life that is not only practical but also deeply fulfilling and true to our inner selves.