Episode 171: Ask a Coach: Feeling It in Your Body

Hey everyone, welcome to this Ask a Coach episode. Ask a Coach episodes are recorded by me or a member of my team in response to a question that we have gotten in the program. In the program there’s a feature called Ask a Coach where you can submit questions, you can submit worksheets, you can submit anything you need coaching on and we respond to you within 24 to 48 hours.

This is a lifetime access thing, so you can submit as much as you would like, as often as you would like and get tons and tons and tons of coaching. It’s one of my favorite aspects of the program. If you want to join us and get your own questions submitted and get tons of coaching, come to centerforovercomingpornography.com/workwithme. Please enjoy this coaching from one of the coaches in our program.

Welcome to the Overcome Pornography For Good podcast where we take a research-based, trauma informed and results focused approach to quitting porn. This approach has been revolutionary and changed thousands and thousands of lives. I’m your host, Sara Brewer. 

Hello, I am Jessica Farmer. I am a coach in Overcoming Pornography for Good, and I am here today with our Ask a Coach question of the week. I’m super excited to be here. 

So our question of the week came from Ask a Coach, which is a feature in the Overcoming Pornography for Good program, where anyone can email in and ask any question, and one of the coaches, myself included, in the program will answer the question. Anything that you have, any time of day. 

This is a question that we get a lot in the program. And the question is, “What do I do if I can’t, quote-unquote, feel it in my body?” And just to give a little bit of background information on this. 

So when we talk about feeling it in our body, we want to start paying attention to the sensations that we get when we have emotions, right? Emotions are just signals that our brain sends to our body, and it creates certain sensations. 

For example, if you’re speaking in front of a large group of people, most of us feel nervous with that, right? We identify the feeling of nervousness. Now, the physical sensation of what that feeling might manifest as like a pit in your stomach, you might get sweaty palms, your heart might start racing, you might start breathing faster. Those are all physical manifestations of the emotion that we associate with nervousness. 

And so one of the skills that we teach in the program that we talk a lot about is becoming aware of what any particular emotion feels like in your body. What are the physical sensations associated with anger, or frustration, or shame, or sadness, right? All of them have kind of a different combination of physical sensations. And so we want to get really good at noticing what those physical sensations are. 

So in this question, the person who submitted it is asking, what if I don’t notice any physical sensations? What if I can’t see it? What if I can’t feel it in my body? And this is really common, right? Like, especially if we have been taught or kind of conditioned over long periods of time, to not pay attention to what’s going on in our body, which by the way, most of us are, right? 

Most of us are taught to kind of shut down a lot of those physical sensations, especially around negative emotions like anger or sadness, right? This is like where well-meaning parents will tell us to just kind of suck it up, right? They’ll say you shouldn’t be sad or don’t be angry, let’s fix it. And so we are taught to kind of disconnect from the physical sensation of our emotions and our emotions in general. 

So it can take some time to learn how to connect with our emotions again, and that’s okay. And it’s worth doing because when we’re connected to our emotions, first of all, it helps us to actually sit and process through things, right? Like a lot of times, if we’re not sitting and processing and allowing these emotions, then they tend to build up over time. And then they kind of manifest in some non-productive ways. 

If we start getting really good at noticing them, then we’re not going to be lashing out at our partner or our children or people at work. We’re not going to feel totally exhausted at the end of the day. A lot of times that is a sign of buildup emotion. So there’s lots of good reasons for why we want to sit with and allow and feel our emotions and get really good at noticing them. 

The second reason is that we want to, when we can identify and name our emotions, it gives us power over it, right? Instead of our emotions having power over us and just kind of taking control, when we can name it and recognize it and see it, then we feel power over it, which is ultimately what we want. We want to be in control of our emotions. We want to be choosing how those emotions are playing in our lives and not the other way around. 

So back to the original question, what do I do if I can’t feel the emotion in my body? Again, that’s totally okay. It’s totally normal. I would say start with something small, right? A lot of times we have a hard time kind of noticing it if we’re already really dysregulated. Like if we’re having a hard time checking in with our bodies when we’re feeling big emotions. 

So start with the positive ones. Notice those times when you are sitting and watching your family doing what your family does, and you’re just feeling gratitude for them, for the people in your life. Or maybe you’re out in nature and you’re feeling connected to nature, connected to God. You’re feeling this sense of love and gratitude and peace. 

So first, try noticing it in those positive emotions. Or it could be like if you’re working and you’re in like the zone and you’re feeling that sense of flow and everything is kind of clicking, notice it then. What do those positive emotions feel like in your body? 

And sometimes it might feel like if I’m in the zone, I’m feeling kind of tingly almost. I feel it kind of in my arms. I’m feeling kind of jumpy, not jumpy in a bad way, but like feeling kind of an excited, happy feeling. And I feel it a little bit in my stomach. It feels a little bit of energy in there. 

And so yeah, just kind of start noticing it in happy moments and start practicing just bringing your attention to it. And that can be all it is, right? It can be like, oh, I’m feeling really happy right now. It feels like butterflies in my stomach or happy feels like kind of a tingly feeling down my arms. And it’s a very subtle thing and that’s okay. 

So just kind of start noticing. And if you’re like, I don’t even know, like I’m in my happy place and I’m not feeling any sensation in my body, I want you to just notice any sensation at all, whether it’s associated with the feeling at all. 

It could be like, okay, if I’m out in nature, I notice that I feel the breeze on my skin, right? You can notice that sensation. Or if you’re sitting with your family, you can notice sitting on the cozy couch, right? Like that feeling of the fabric from the couch on your skin, right? 

So notice any physical sensation, even if it’s not necessarily associated with that particular feeling. Just pay attention to any physical sensation. That’s where I would start and just keep practicing. And as you get better and better at noticing those more subtle sensations going on, it’s going to become easier and easier to notice those emotions and how they are manifesting in your physical body. 

All right, that’s all I’ve got for you today. Thank you and we’ll see you next week. 

I want to invite you to come and listen to my free class, How To Overcome Pornography For Good Without Using Willpower. We talk about how to stop giving in to urges without pure willpower or relying on phone filters so that you can actually stop wanting pornography. 

We talk about how to stop giving up after a few weeks or months. And spoiler alert, the answer isn’t have more willpower. And then lastly, we talk about how to make a life without porn easily sustainable and permanent. 

If you’re trying to quit porn, this class is a game changer. So you can go and sign up at Sarabrewer.com/masterclass, and it is totally free.