Listening To The Wisdom Of The Body Over The Chatter Of The Mind

Dear Friend,

In June 1997, I died. 

(Not literally, of course.)

Yet a part of me passed away, buried alive into my unconscious for the next 26 years. 

From that moment, I developed a persona that only allowed me to live from my head. 

I rarely, if ever, dared to return to living from my heart. And when I did?

Heartache, disappointment, suffering would follow. 

But ever since awakening to this realization, I’ve been trying to better understand and communicate my feelings. 

I’m aiming to live from the heart.

Today, I’ll be sharing my story with you and help you see how you can begin living more from your heart (if you aren’t already). So that you can go forth and live the most compassionate and kind life possible.

Emotions: first expressed, then suppressed

I was a happy little kid.

Probably a goofy one, too, if we’re being honest. 

I always had a very active imagination. My earliest memories involve me grabbing the nearest VHS box or hockey player cards and acting out a new movie scene or hockey game.

When I first started doing this, I’d play out the entire scene aloud. I’d introduce the starting lineup for the imaginary hockey game, just like I’d heard my local minor league hockey team’s announcer do. I’d do the characters and voices of the movie scene unfolding in front of me.

My parents and aunt that cared for me during the day were very curious about what I was up to. I’m sure they thought what I was doing was cute, but somewhere, I must have internalized that this happiness and joy I was expressing wasn’t a good thing.

Soon enough, I was playing pretend and using my imagination in silence. I felt like I had to hide this joy or “goofiness” that I felt inside. 

As I grew older, I’d find a different outlet for using my imagination by writing. 

I’d make up scripts for television shows I watched. Including possibly the least entertaining show a 10-year-old could watch—M.A.S.H. 

(Gotta blame my dad for that one.)

Since I felt like I couldn’t express my joyful emotions out loud anymore, I tried to feel that sense of joy and excitement through writing. 

But, ultimately, I suppressed more than joy as a kid.

I think the real reason I suppressed my emotions is because I felt abandoned, which gets back to the death I experienced in June 1997.

That was the month and year my parents divorced.

Looking back, getting divorced was the right decision for my parents. Before and after the divorce, my parents have always been loving and supportive in their own way. 

But at that moment, my entire world was torn apart. 

Everything I’d ever known about love and family evaporated forever. It was the death of my meaning of love and family.

Only, I didn’t feel that way then.

I don’t remember feeling any sort of emotions at all when my mom told me that my parents were getting divorced. I must have thought it was a normal thing.

My dad slowly began moving out of the house and into an apartment of his own. When he picked us up for our visits with him in his new Jeep Grand Cherokee, I realized how different things would be.

The divorce was much harder on my younger brother. I remember him crying non-stop and even puking from how devastated he was at the breakup of our family. 

All he wanted was for our dad to come back home.

Any emotions I wanted to feel at the time didn’t seem important when considering my brother’s crying. 

I must have sensed the hurt my brother and parents were feeling, and decided the right thing to do was to suppress these emotions. 

I didn’t want them to experience any more pain or tears.

I pushed my feelings into my unconscious mind. Looking back, this is likely where I became a “thinking” type as opposed to the “feeler” I sensed myself to be in my early childhood.

It would take another 26 years before I finally let those feelings out (more on that later).

Thinking and feeling functions

If you’ve ever taken a Myers-Briggs personality test, you’re probably familiar with the terms thinking (“T”) and feeling (“F”). When I took the Myers-Briggs in college, I scored highest in the “thinking” type (I’m an ISTJ). 

Carl Jung (who I referenced a few issues ago when discussing 3 aspects of our psyche) came up with the thinking and feeling types in response to how we behave when interacting with the world. 

We use either the thinking or feeling function to make decisions, and the secondary functions of sensation or intuition for taking in information. 

Possibly because of the childhood experiences I just shared, I quickly developed into a thinking type.

Much like the West in general, I learned to value thought over feeling.

I associated thinking with being smart. Because I feared being abandoned after my parents’ divorce, I made damn sure to study hard at school and get good grades. 

Even though I always felt I was a sentimental person, suppressing my imagination and the feelings surrounding my parents divorce made me pretty good at leaving emotions out of the decisions I’d make. 

When I realized I was attracted to other guys in middle school, my thinking function quickly made me see it wouldn’t be a good idea to express this. I already was using my over-analyzing tendencies to think through the negative consequences of suggesting I was in any way gay. 

I would go to hell; I wouldn’t be loved if I was gay; I’d be living forever in a life of sin; people at school would make fun of me, etc.

Rationally, it made sense for me to keep my feelings to myself, where they would eat away at me for almost 20 years before I came out. I felt I could love a life detached from the excitement I felt when I saw another man and still be happy with women. 

But had I learned to live from my heart earlier, I would’ve listened to how my body felt and made more decisions based on the messages it shared with me.

Learning to integrate feelings

To awaken to the richest possible life, we need to learn to integrate the feeling functions with our thinking functions. 

If we are thinkers, we’ll only access all the mystery and hidden aspects of ourselves in the unconscious by developing our feeling function. While we may never fully develop our feeling function like we have our thinking function, we need to trust the feelings our body gives us more.

I first understood the true importance of these feelings through an Internal Family Systems (IFS) session with my therapist last November. 

I found the process incredibly profound, and the impact on my life instantaneous.

I’d entered the therapy session coming to terms with the fact that I was a people-pleaser. I’d rediscovered this people-pleasing part of me showing up in dating and I wanted to talk with my therapist about it.

He suggested we try IFS therapy to understand where this people-pleasing part came from and the role it felt it was playing.

First, he had me visualize being in a place where I felt calm. He then asked me a series of questions about some thoughts and feelings I was having. Eventually, I could name several of these feelings as “parts” of my body. 

I had a judging part, an all-knowing or “observing” part, and a people-pleasing part show up that day.

Trusting my intuition and the first association that came to mind as he asked me each question, I imagined this people-pleasing part as a mini-Michelin Man-looking figure who was bouncing up and down in excitement. Just like I did when I served someone or made them happy.

Eventually, I came to realize that this people-pleasing part took on this job when I was 6 years old.

Through tears, I finally made the connection of why I’ve struggled so much with the fear of abandonment. This people-pleasing part developed in response to the abandonment I felt after my parents’ divorce. 

When I finally started dating guys, I responded with defenses of anxiety and people-pleasing. I valued them infinitely more than I valued myself, which I’m sure turned many guys off and caused them to abandon me.

Even though I wasn’t literally abandoned after my parents’ divorce, it felt like an abandonment to my psyche. 

My psyche responded by developing this people-pleasing part and is also a major reason I waited so long to come out. I wanted no more abandonment or death in my life, even if it wasn’t literal death.

I finally felt the emotions from my parents’ divorce pouring out of me. It was the first time I felt how necessary it was to process my feelings in order to heal my abandonment wounds. 

Slowly, I started letting myself be more imaginative, playful, and open. But it’s still an ongoing process. 

How I’m learning to live from the heart

I overthink things a lot. I worry about what will go wrong with a situation and rarely consider what can go right.

While my meditation and mindfulness practices help me worry less, I still make more decisions with my rational mind than with what my body is telling me.

I was even dating someone recently who seemed to have a lot of great qualities on paper. It took me several dates to realize that my body didn’t feel great around this person. I only sensed the anxiety I felt before seeing him was a warning sign after talking through my concerns with others multiple times.

I tried to use my thinking function at a time where my feeling function would’ve been the better choice.

Here are a few ways I’m trying to live from my heart now:

• Taking time to feel an emotion in my body and understand what it’s telling me

• Listening to and honoring what “feels right”

• Trust “in” words like “instinct” and “intuition”---what’s going on inside can give us more wisdom than things “out there”

• Let things in that feel warm and inviting

• Deciding not to worry about what goes wrong until it actually happens

How feeling will let me create the world I want to live in

Once we love and accept ourselves and embrace non-attachment, I believe we can awaken to the most compassionate and kind versions of ourselves.

I want to live in a world full of more compassion and kindness for all beings.

But the only way I can help shape that world, in my life and in inspiring others through my writing and coaching, is to allow myself to feel.

Trust my feelings.

Express my emotions instead of suppressing them. 

Let my “thinking” function take a back seat to the wisdom of my heart once in a while.

I’m drawn toward promoting a more kind and compassionate world because of how deeply I feel inside for other people. Part of what drew me to Buddhism and walking down this path is that I want there to be less suffering and more joy in the world. It’s what led me to become a vegan last June.

I know that integrating this “feeling” function into my life will let me serve the world better. It’s what will allow me to transcend the ego and live in alignment with my true self in this crazy, divided world we live in.

So if you’re a “thinking” type like me, I invite you to listen to and trust your feelings.

And if you’re already a “feeling” type, don’t think too hard about the inner wisdom your body is giving you. You’re likely on the right track.

Much love,

Spenser

P.S. I’m still offering a few Shadow breakthrough sessions at the end of the month. We’ll spend 30-45 minutes together helping you gain insight into a recent trigger in your life and how that emotion plays out for you. 

By the end of our session, you’ll have more insight into your Shadow and know how to work with it in your day-to-day life, so you can move closer to your true self.

Just respond to this email if you’re interested in a session!