#184 What if we actually felt the feelings? An honest conversation about trauma, hoarding, and allowing yourself to feel

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This week, I talk about what happens when I actually let myself feel the tough emotions instead of shutting them down - a pattern that's shaped my life and my struggles with hoarding, self-harm, and eating disorders. After a thought-provoking conversation with Anna Sale on Death, Sex & Money last year, I started questioning whether avoiding feelings has helped or hurt me in the long run and have been trying to process that ever since! I share what it’s like to sit with big emotions, experiment with messy ways to cope, and why feeling the feelings might just be a way forward.

• Avoiding Feelings
• Realisation that I tend to do anything rather than feel difficult emotions.
• Recent personal reflection and processing feelings over the past few months.
• Impact of mental health and a PTSD flare-up on my ability to manage feelings.
• Connecting Coping Mechanisms to Avoidance
• Experience with PTSD, self-harm, anorexia, and bulimia as different forms of not feeling or avoiding emotions.
• Insights from an interview with Anna Sale on Death, Sex & Money that linked these coping together as forms of avoidance.
• Acknowledgment that these strategies were more than just avoidance - also punitive, protective, and multifaceted.
• The Cost and Pattern of Emotional Avoidance
• Compartmentalising as a lifelong coping skill and its negative long-term consequences.
• Difficulty breaking the habit of not feeling and the impact on my sense of identity.
• Recognition that suppressing feelings can be as damaging as (or more damaging than) the feelings themselves.
• Actively Facing and Processing Feelings
• Engaging in therapy, journaling (both resentful and creative/collage style), and reading poetry to access emotions.
• Talking more openly with friends as a supportive measure.
• Forcing myself to do enjoyable activities (like getting outside), which helps counteract avoidance.
• Community, Connection, and Support
• Impact of Trauma and Suppression on Daily Life
• How PTSD and unprocessed sadness began affecting sleep, revealing that suppressing feelings is no longer effective.
• Discusses the challenge of letting oneself feel emotions, both by choice and when overcome involuntarily.
• The risks of being overwhelmed and the delicate balance between feeling and avoidance.
• Learning and Conversations About Emotional Acceptance
• Revisiting lessons from previous podcast guests about the counterproductivity of suppressing or over-intellectualising feelings.
• The concept that suppressed emotions may “come out sideways” through other behaviours, like self-harm or hoarding.
• Nuanced view of coping mechanisms - not labeling them as purely negative since they served protective purposes.
• Vulnerability, Shame, and Deepening Relationships
• Gradual willingness to share deeper, more distressing moments with friends.
• Examining the reasons behind the instinct to hide intense distress.
• How vulnerability leads to stronger, more meaningful connections.
• Positive Effects of Feeling the Hard Stuff
• Discovering that feeling hard emotions increases the capacity to feel positive emotions more deeply.
• Finding deeper love, joy, and beauty in everyday experiences.
• Recognising the importance of support systems when exploring difficult emotions.
• Reflection and Encouragement for Listeners
• Encourages listeners to be curious about their own patterns of avoidance and coping.
• Cautions that intentionally feeling emotions is difficult and requires support.
• The hopeful observation that allowing feelings can be cathartic, gratifying, and healing—even if it’s uncomfortable.

Links

• My interview on Death, Sex & Money
• Podcast ep 182: What are “towards and away moves” and what on earth do they have to do with hoarding recovery? With Dr Jan Eppingstall
• Podcast ep 169: Compassion-focused therapy for grief and hoarding with Dr Chia-Ying Chou
• Podcast ep 172: Harriet Impey on clearing out her parents’ very full home, through family belongings and personal growth, in the film Where Dragons Live
• Declutter Hub podcast
• Come to a Dehoarding Accountability Zoom session: Accountability Booking Form
• Website: Overcome Compulsive Hoarding
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• Questions to ask when dehoarding: https://www.overcomecompulsivehoarding.co.uk/podquestions
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