Trauma and the Courage to Feel

Allowing ourselves to feel unconditionally sounds simple, but it is one of the hardest skills most people will ever learn. It asks us to let emotions move through us without judging them, fixing them, or pushing them away. It means giving ourselves permission to feel what is already there, even when it is uncomfortable or inconvenient. If you have a history of relational trauma (trauma within relationship interactions), this task is even harder.

For people who grew up in dysfunctional families, relating to or allowing emotions can feel foreign or even unsafe. In many homes, certain feelings were not allowed. Anger may have been punished. Sadness may have been ignored. Joy may have been mocked or overshadowed by chaos. Children learn quickly what keeps them safe, and often that means hiding or disconnecting from their inner experience.

Over time, this emotional suppression can lead to serious pitfalls. Adults who were not allowed to feel may struggle to identify what they are feeling at all. They might confuse anxiety with excitement or numbness with calm. Some become people pleasers, scanning others for cues instead of listening to themselves. Others swing between emotional shutdown and overwhelming intensity, never finding a steady middle ground. Another common consequence is shame around normal human reactions. If a child was told they were dramatic or weak for crying, they may grow into an adult who feels embarrassed by their own vulnerability. This shame creates distance from the self and makes authentic connection with others difficult.

Unconditional feeling does not mean acting on every emotion. In fact, it means feeling before you “re-act”. It means acknowledging the emotion honestly to yourself and allowing yourself to fully feel it before you speak or do anything as a result of that emotion. If anger shows up, you let yourself notice it without calling yourself bad or dangerous, or without acting on it via aggression, yelling, texting, or sending an email about it. You sit with it and make space for it in your body.  You breathe into it and acknowledge the experience of it without trying to escape or change it.

 If sadness appears in the middle of an ordinary day, you do not rush to explain it away, or to rationalize.  You simply allow it to exist without trying to cheer yourself up or talk yourself out of it. Perhaps you let yourself cry even if you are thinking, “Why do I even feel this way? There is no real reason”. 

This pause creates space between feeling and action, and that space is where wisdom lives.

Consider this:  You receive negative feedback at work and feel a sudden tightness in your chest. The familiar urge is to dismiss it and say everything is “fine”.  Allowing the feeling would mean pausing and noticing the fear underneath, or the hurt and labeling it. Maybe it is fear of being seen as incompetent. Maybe you are hurt because you feel singled out or not good enough. By letting the feelings be present and acknowledged, you can respond thoughtfully instead of defensively.

You can address those feelings of shame and fear within yourself. Perhaps some of these feelings are a result of growing up with a critical parent? Or conditional love at home? Feelings become information rather than a problem to eliminate, and this is how personal growth happens. We are able to respond to what is actually happening in the present, instead of reacting to our shadows of the past.

Another example might be grief that arrives years after a loss. Many people tell themselves they should be over it by now. Unconditional feeling says there is no deadline for grief. If the sadness is here today, then today is when it deserves attention. This kind of permission often brings relief rather than collapse.

The depth of our aliveness is limited only by the depth of feeling we are willing to allow.

This prospect could sound scary, overwhelming or absolutely unbearable. Feelings like grief, shame, rage and powerlessness can feel so big and so overwhelming that we are unable to tolerate them without exploding, shutting down, or dissociating. Some of us do not even have full access to these emotional states because we have numbed ourselves from them long ago, during a time when there was no support or it was unsafe to feel. Unfortunately, numbing and avoiding uncomfortable feelings will dampen our ability to feel the more enjoyable ones such as joy, excitement, peace and contentment.

Moving toward a more authentic and self-connected relationship with feelings does not require digging up every painful memory at once. A trauma aware step that can help is practicing naming emotions in the present moment without analysis. Once or twice a day, pause and ask yourself what you are feeling in your body and emotions right now. Use simple words like tense, sad, irritated, tired, or relieved. Then stop there.

This practice works because it builds safety and trust internally. You are not forcing change or demanding insight. You are simply showing up and listening. Over time, this gentle attention teaches the nervous system that feelings can be noticed without negative consequences. The further this develops, the less we may need to explode or shut down. That one practice can begin to heal old patterns.

Allowing ourselves to feel unconditionally starts with building present moment awareness skills, and coming home to ourselves. When we stop fighting what we feel, we gain clarity, choice, and a deeper sense of integrity. Our emotions stop running the show from behind the scenes and instead become allies in a more honest and grounded life.

Working with a therapist through the tough parts is highly recommended. Having someone there to help make space for the feelings that feel overwhelming or scary can support your journey into authenticity.

This path takes courage. It's not the easy path, but it leads to more life and more joy than you can imagine. This is the warrior's path.