On my blog entry entitled Shame: What it Feels Like and How to Get Rid of it, a reader posted the following comment:
Can you talk more about the connection between emotions and body? i, too am learning to name emotions. i feel them in my body so strongly, but am struggling with naming and then making that connection. can you keep talking about this part of your healing? ~ Aggiemonday
Michael posted a good response to that comment that I recommend you read. Remember that you need to find what works for you and that it may differ from what works for me. The big picture is the same, though – we are all doing what we need to do along our journey toward a destination of self-love and acceptance.
I wish I was farther along in my progress in this area so I could be more helpful. Shame is the only emotion that I definitely know I am feeling based upon what my body feels. When I get that sunburn feeling in my skin, especially along my arms, I know that I am feel shame, and I know what works for me to process it. I choose not to feed it and, instead, do a visual to pour it out of my body. Other readers responded that they deal with shame differently, so be sure to check out other strategies if mine does not work for you.
The only other emotion I am pretty good at identifying is fear. Ironically, I frequently fail to notice one of the classic bodily responses to fear – an increased heart rate. I lived so much of my life with my heart pounding that I truly do not notice it unless I think to look for it. As an example, I will spend 30 minutes unable to fall asleep before I notice that my heart is racing.
The bodily feeling I notice to identify fear is a sensation in my thighs that I cannot quite describe. My muscles tense up, and I “feel fear” in my thighs. While fear can affect other parts of my body, such as a clenched stomach, the bodily signal I first notice is always in my thighs. When I feel fear, I do deep breathing to slow my heart rate and calm myself back down.
I wish I could be more helpful, but I am still too out-of-tune with the rest of my emotions to describe their physical manifestations. This is something that I am working on. I first learned that our bodies have a physical response to whatever emotion we are experiencing in Geneen Roth’s book, Women Food and God. (“God” represents spirituality in this book – it is not religious in nature.) Perhaps her book will be helpful to you in working through this aspect of healing. I need to read through those chapters again as well.
Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt
Blooming Lotus 
Interesting subject. I think sometimes people’s bodies get into the habit of storing a certain emotion in a particular way, and that way varies from individual to individual. I posted some months ago about how most of my negative emotions sit in my stomach area, and how a big sign that I’m feeling bad is that I can’t stand up straight. What works for me is to lace myself into a corset that forces me upright, and whatever emotion it is comes flooding out. I avoid doing that as often as I should though, because the flood frightens me.
Anyway, my tip would be to try to notice how you sit, when you’re trying to sit neutrally on a chair or similar. Any quirks of body language may give you clues. For example, I realised the importance of my abdominal area because I always want to sit with my knees drawn up to my chest, preferably on the floor, and if I can’t I instinctively put my hands in front of my stomach in a protective gesture (I can’t take credit for noticing that; that was pointed out to me by someone else on a therapist training course I was on). I think noticing what’s going on in your body is a good first step, since many of us are forced into the habit of ignoring it, as Faith says. Once you see/feel it consciously it may be easier to identify the emotion.
I’m one of those people who always thinks of appropriate responses to being put on the spot or being in the middle of some kind of crazy scene AFTER the fact, and during I just freeze up.
I think part of understanding what we are feeling is learning to relax in the moment and sit with the feeling. Sounds easy right? ha! It’s so not. First off there is remembering to do it, then there is dealing with the discomfort, and staying with it long enough to calm down and feel your way to the source.
I have been doing this for years now off and on and it does help me. It is mostly what you described Faith that I do to relax, deep breathing. Sometimes, I drop my eyes to half mast. That is a technique I learned from a medicine woman to cut down on stimulation from outside sources.
Good luck everyone.
m
PS Faith, I was thinking about your leg response to fear. It could be some kind of primal fight or flight response as your aggressors were too large to fight, so your body was likely always ready to run, even if you were unable to….? It’s a thought.
I now only use words for what is going on with my body if I need to communicate with someone else. It was hard at first as it really speeds things up and more information is available. I learned to limit information and slow things down by using words. A skill I still have.
My body now can feel emotions that were not possible before. It is and error to think they were there and I was unaware. I did not have the emotions before it was not that I was unaware of the ones I was having.
I stay away from people telling me about this PTSD body, what it is feeling, what it did feel and what if will feel. What is known is just to limiting at best and for my body most often wrong. I will pick tension in my shoulders. It has been remarked on often. It is strength in my shoulders and is why I can hit a golf ball so far.
Last night I felt my heart beat for the first time. It startled me. I thought I felt my heart pounding before. I did not. It is pretty cool actually.
There are weird ones with my body. I sometimes feel the prick of the needles that were used when I avoided hypnotism. I call it a backwards pain. It feels like the needle is pricking my in reverse. I can feel my brain changing and relaxing. It is most weird. I do not limit myself to what little is known about the brain, Some things are obvious. I can feel my corpus callosum relax and it is painful kinda like waling when your leg is asleep. I feel lines and shapes on my forehead that are from the frontal lobe. I kinda think of what is known like those planes on a sign on the way to the airport. I know where I am going it is just nice to see a sigh every now and again.
As a multiple the body is not always the same. What one of us feels will mean something different than another one feels. Some times contradictory often when dong something physical as about to cerebral. I do not want the same feeling in my body when about to drive a golf ball as make a marble.
I in now way swim the same way I did a year ago nor do I swim the same each day. For me it all needs to be what my body needs in the now with one eye open to what it needs is what I am not doing. This is especially true with stretches.
It is all much more complicated to write about than do. Words are not really applicable.
It is much like the concept of fight and flight mentioned. There are many many more responses. One on them is to go to group mode where the whole group is ready for danger. It has been proposed that this is why yawns are communal.
Experts say a lot of things.
I have never been good at identifying emotions. I can tell what sensations my body feels and where I feel it, but not what the actual feeling is. I have also been good at numbing pain to the point where I really don’t feel anything, or where it doesn’t really hurt. That just about got me last week. I hadn’t been feeling really well and was in some pretty bad pain. As normal, I numbed it. One of my parts actually called the doctor, and to make a long story short, my gallbladder was ready to burst and I was told I wouldn’t have made it thru the weekend. I guess it’s time I start learning, which is scary, but at the same time it is scary to think of what would have happened If another part hadn’t taken care of me.
LFL
I thank you that I found this website. It has really helped my brother(literally) and it is helping us to unravel the cult training of us being enemies, for we truly are not.He is a greatly gifted person in so many ways and by keeping the unraveling , we are discovering new talents. Like music,poetry,dance,writing, etc… I try and slow down my body and my feelings. Sometimes I live in my head. That way no pain to process, just staying in the ritual abuse revolving door. My brother said something so cool once, a small child beat the entire cult by surviving, and thriving!!
Thanks for posting, I’ve been struggling with seperating emotions, I think I’ll have to get that book x
Identifying emotions in my body is really hard for me, because so often the body sensations are there without an other clues as to what the feelings are. I *think* I hold a fear of abandonment in my chest area, although I’m not sure. I get all sorts of body sensations – especially in my chest and stomach – and I wish I knew what they were related to!