How to stop analyzing your pain and finally start feeling it
Some might say I am a professional at therapy. I work at a therapy practice, I’ve done years of my own therapy, and my algorithm on social media is a mix of golden retriever puppies, sourdough recipes, and mental health content.
So for someone so familiar with the world of psychology, why don’t I have all the answers? Why did I keep finding myself trapped in the exact same emotional cycles I’d been fighting for years? “I know better than this,” I’d tell myself. Frustrated thoughts like this often plagued my brain.
For five years, I saw the same counselor while living in Texas. And a lot can happen in five years — a global pandemic, a divorce, and a total reconfiguration of my life, to name a few. But if I could go back, I actually would have ended that therapeutic relationship sooner. Toward the end, our sessions stopped being about progress. Instead, they became a comfortable space for me to verbally process my week, rather than a space to dig into the deep-seated pain keeping me stuck. It was comfortable, but it was also stagnant.
Moving back to Colorado forced me out of that comfort zone and into the virtual “office” of a new therapist. We’ll call her Jennifer. The fresh perspective and specific skillset she brought in proved more transformational in five sessions than the last two years I spent with my previous therapist.
A few weeks in, I was doing what I do best — brilliantly analyzing my own behavior — when Jennifer stopped me mid-sentence. She looked at me and said something that completely rocked my world:
“Megan, you’ve exhausted your intellectual healing.”
My involuntary, high-achieving reflex was to smile and think, “Wow… thank you.” But Jennifer wasn’t complimenting me. She went on to explain that while the logical, analytical part of my brain was incredibly good at its job, I was using it as a shield. I was researching, diagnosing, and intellectualizing my pain to avoid actually feeling it.
My pride quickly evaporated as the reality sank in: I had built a beautiful, logical world in my mind, but my heart was still bleeding out of the broken cracks. And if I didn’t figure out how to step out of my head, I was going to run right past the very healing I was praying for.
Collecting Labels or Processing Pain?
Before I started working here at Cornerstone, Psychology was merely a General Education class I took in college that piqued my interest. After a few years into my role, I suddenly had a wealth of knowledge and a burning desire to keep learning more. I finally had tangible tools and evidence of life-change happening through our clients. But deep down, I still felt like my brain was somehow broken. I could only see the Grand Canyon-sized gap between where I saw my current self and the destination I yearned for: “thriving”.
There were answers all around me, and yet I couldn’t find my way to a solution that made sense. I was tired of missing deadlines, having zero will to tackle giant piles of laundry at home, and consistently feeling like a failure.
Enter: getting diagnosed with ADHD in my 30s.
I went from “Me? I don’t have ADHD…” to watching the lightbulb turn on. I wasn’t lazy and my brain was not broken. I was just trying to operate in a world made for neurotypicals. Then, I did what any person with a neurospicy brain does: I hyper-fixated on my new diagnosis and became obsessed with learning about ADHD. And as a result, that logical part of my brain felt even cozier. My diagnosis was a weighted blanket. But eventually, God calls you out of the weighted blanket and into the world.
When Logic Becomes Avoidance
Just because I knew “ADHD” as a diagnosis — and it was now as close as a personal “friend” — didn’t mean that I was implementing the changes needed to stop struggling. Starting on medication was a major life-changing win for me that I do believe has helped me to pursue the hard things that used to plague my life (e.g., transforming laundry piles into a system for folding clothes right out of the dryer and putting them away).
However, I still have to pursue sitting in my emotions. And no amount of Vyvanse can force me to do that. In fact, being on stimulant medication can allow me to do more versus feeling more.
So why do we avoid emotional healing? Why do we resist the very thing that will help us to break the cycles we continue to find ourselves in?
If your story is similar to mine, it might be because processing emotions was not safe or welcomed as a child. So much of our wounds can be traced back to childhood. And even knowing the reason why I avoid feeling emotions can allow me to cling to my logical side. It would be so easy to just label myself as “That’s just who I am… my parents couldn’t meet my emotional needs, so now I am just an avoidant person.”
But where is the healing in that? Also, where is the trust that the Lord is going to sit with me in the pain while I allow myself to truly feel the feelings that bubble up to the surface when avoidance is no longer working?
When Avoidance Fuels Anxiety
Just because I fill my schedule full enough to avoid feeling discomfort in my body does not mean that my brain and body don’t feel that refusal happening in real time. When we don’t allow our brains to fully process pain, thoughts can plague us to the point that decisions feel impossible. If you also have a storm of anxiety happening in your head when things in your life feel out of control, just know that you are not alone.
- “Do I want to wear this outfit or this one?” is actually my brain bringing up an insecurity that I need to process through.
- “I don’t really want to go to this party, but I know I’ll disappoint people and they’ll be upset with me” is classic people-pleasing and a form of abandoning myself.
- Berating myself with thoughts like, “Why are you like this? Why can’t you be on time?” while driving 90 mph down a toll road is actually my brain warning me that I am dysregulated and I need to physically slow down and recenter my nervous system.
Then throw in the logical part inside of me that wants to give myself excuses and no wonder anxiety is winning the war in my mind. So how do we pause the storm and invite the Holy Spirit into this chaos?
Jesus Wept: Feelings are not a failure of faith
When God created our bodies, He had the choice to create them as He wanted. God chose to give us emotions and a brain. Both are necessary, beautiful, messy, and complex. God is intentional with all of His choices because He can see the full picture. As broken humans on this side of eternity, we cannot see outside of ourselves every moment of the day. But God can.
Feeling and expressing emotions can be found in Jesus as an example. How do we know Jesus felt emotion? In John 11, we find Jesus learning of the sickness of a loved friend and see His reaction.
So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” (John 11:3-7)
Logically, Jesus knew that Lazarus would live. He knew the power the Lord had given Him and His purpose on this earth. But Jesus did not rush away to heal Lazarus because that was the necessary next step. Jesus waited days.
Later in John 11, Mary finds Jesus once He arrives at the tomb that Lazarus had been in for four days. She is rightfully upset that Jesus delayed and could have saved Lazarus sooner. But the intentionality of Jesus bypassing his logic and entering into his emotions shows up here:
When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. Jesus wept. (John 11:33-35)
Jesus knew He would call Lazarus to rise from the dead and live again. But because He felt deeply moved, Jesus entered into the human experience of grief and loss. Jesus felt the real pain of losing a best friend to death.
Similarly, while we can say we know the Lord has the power to heal our own loved ones from illness, it’s also vital that we admit the sorrow or anger we feel when our people suffer. Because if we don’t experience the true pain of life, we hold it inside and risk resentment building up — or worse, spewing our pain all over innocent bystanders in our lives who don’t deserve it.
So how do we trust the Lord with our pain and allow our bodies to feel our emotions?
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How to Move from Head to Heart
- Less Explaining, More Naming: Stop asking yourself “Why am I feeling this way?” and simply say “I am feeling [emotion] right now.”
- Locate the Emotion in the Body: Allow yourself to get out of your head and discover where the emotion is settling in. Is your chest tight? Are your shoulders near your ears? Are you biting your lip? Give yourself 90 seconds to find this physical feeling in your body without trying to fix it.
- Invite God In: Pray openly and honestly. Be as messy as you feel, no matter how confusing your feelings might be. Picture Jesus sitting right in front of you and ask Him what He would say to you right now.
You Don't Have to Heal Alone
Your intellect is a beautiful gift, but it also makes a terrible shield. A broken heart does not have the ability to be healed when you’re allowing your brain to run the show. You can’t outthink the true work it takes to heal. Feeling is experiential.
This shift from thinking to feeling is not going to be easy. Having a guide through this experience comes in handy. This is where counseling comes in.
Having another human who empathizes and understands the experience of the logical fight allows you to have accountability. A counselor also has the ability to become a mirror to your transformation. Being reminded of where you started and where you’re at now is needed when moving through growth. When you have a counselor that also brings the Holy Spirit into the room, it makes that experience that much more powerful.
After all, as humans, we are limited in our abilities — but God isn’t. Don’t be afraid to feel the feelings and to meet the whole version of yourself that can be discovered through this process. It’s worth it. You are worth it.
Written by Megan Katzer, Director of Client Engagement
