Are Feelings Ruling You?

gabriellemmueller7
12 hours ago
4 min read

Written by Gabby Entz, MA, AMFT

Therapist for Color Me Therapy

Do you ever wonder why it seems like feelings are ruling your life? Does it ever feel like they are controlling how you engage in relationships? Or maybe it seems like big feelings are keeping you stuck?

Feelings can take over our lives in two different ways:

We give them our full attention
We try to avoid them

Either way, the feelings are driving the car, not you! So, let’s figure out how to get you back in the driver’s seat.

This article will help you recognize how feelings help drive the car instead of driving the car for you. They give us more information to better understand ourselves and our patterns.

Giving in to Your Feelings

The first way that feelings can rule us is by giving in to them completely. When we are so consumed by a feeling that we cannot separate it from who we are as a person, or when the feeling takes over the way we communicate to someone, we have let the feelings take the wheel.

Avoiding Your Feelings

This might be surprising, but when we don’t acknowledge, identify, or work through our feelings they can also start to infect our lives, sometimes without even realizing it! When feelings are left out, they often have a way of sneaking into our lives and coming out at the most inconvenient times.

Did either of those ways sound familiar to you? Maybe it’s not with every feeling or all the time, but maybe there are certain feelings or situations that feelings rule over in your life?

Your Feelings are Telling you Something

Feelings are helpful to us, because they give us information. When we start acknowledging our feelings as information, they become less intimidating and can’t rule us. That's when we get to decide what to do with them, not the other way around!

Sometimes, feelings even let us know what’s happening under the surface that we didn’t even know was there. They can let us in on the secrets of our own lives!

That’s why I like to use an iceberg to think about feelings. There is a little piece of it showing, but there’s SO MUCH more underneath it that we can’t see until we explore it. Just like our feelings.

Some feelings are trying to communicate a need we have that isn’t being met, or an expectation that might need to shift. Other feelings may be communicating that we aren’t safe. And still other feelings might be communicating that we are safe, secure, and satisfied in life.

Starting to see how feelings communicate to us?

Let’s Make a Plan

At Color Me Therapy, we have a model for intentionally responding to our emotions: acknowledge, explore, and decide (AED model).

Stacey wrote an amazing blog describing some ways to begin acknowledging and exploring your emotions, that includes strategies, skills, and tools to begin using right now.

You can also use the "Iceberg Feelings" worksheet I created to help you explore those feelings. There are many layers to what we feel, so start getting curious about those layers and discovering more about what drives you to feel the way you feel.

This worksheet provides some helpful questions to explore: reactions, expectations, unmet needs, feelings behind the feelings, and more. I hope it can be a helpful tool for you!

These ideas are adapted from Virginia Satir's iceberg model, which helps people get to know themselves better so they can show up in relationships more present and open.

Download the PDF worksheet with this link:

Now What?

After you've done some exploring, hopefully you'll begin to recognize some patterns and some of the underlying layers leading to those feelings. These layers help you begin to be more intentional with how you respond and show up in relationships.

The more you understand what's happening underneath, the more you get to choose what to do with your feelings, rather than the feelings ruling your life. This is probably the hardest step, and it takes time to recognize and shift lifelong patterns! Give yourself the space to try again if you don't get it right away, that's okay!

Support

You’re not alone in making these changes, and sometimes we need a little extra support to get us through the exploring to the deciding.

We would be happy to support you in this journey at Color Me Therapy. Our consultations are free and help us explore if we would be a good fit for the goals and needs you have.