You’ll get ten completely different responses if you ask ten people how they interact with their emotions. Some will claim that they help them feel connected to the world and the people in it, while others will assert that they only cause pain and should therefore be avoided.
Intuition and science agree that the former category of individuals are the fortunate and becoming more and more scarce. Many of us developed the habit of shutting ourselves down from an early age for no fault of our own, and not just as a result of overtly traumatic experiences, whether acute or chronic.
We may have developed the stubborn habit of resisting what our bodies want to feel due to a variety of developmental obstacles, and this was beneficial at the time.
Not showing our fear, sadness, hurt, or anger to those responsible for taking care of us was a common but effective survival tactic, especially if those feelings were a result of something those people said or did. When this occurs, our sympathetic nervous system, also known as “fight-or-flight,” is triggered. We can’t fight or run away from those who are essential to our survival, so what do we do? We shiver.
