Feeling beings that think

I’ve heard it before but recently I was reminded that we are feeling beings that think. We are not thinking beings that feel. Developmentally, we always feel first. Think of the babies and toddlers in your life. They feel everything with more intensity than we can understand. They know exactly when they are hungry, cold, tired, or scared and are not afraid to communicate that need. They are not intellectualizing their needs or wants, they are experiencing the feelings and emotions of it. The thinking doesn’t come til later, despite parents hopes and wishes sometimes.

We live in a world that often forces us to think before we feel. A world that prioritizes our intellectual capacity over our emotional awareness. As I have stepped back from the “real world” over the past few months, I have felt a transition back towards my natural inclination to feel before I think.

It really has been a gradual returning to prioritizing how I feel over how I think these past few years. This shifting that has occurred was helpful but I am still catching myself shocked at times by my responses to the world around me.

It’s not necessarily fun to feel before I think when I’ve lived most of my life doing the opposite. When I let logic lead, I was praised for how well I could manage life. I found a lot of worth and value within my intellectual capabilities. Again, the world drives us this way and praises mind over body every chance it gets.

Feeling into every experience before letting my mind create a story around it has altered how I react and respond to each and every situation. I am still frequently baffled by how much wisdom and understanding my body holds if I allow it to lead. I, myself, have been conned into thinking my intellect is my greatest tool to navigate this world for far too long.

I am not saying that logic and intellect are bad. Of course, having a brain to think and process is an incredible gift and so valuable in this life. But when we forget that our emotional intelligence exists, we lose capacity to sense our world fully.

I am reminded of this as I have been learning lesson after lesson about how important the environment we place ourselves in is. February was a month of a lot of environmental variability for me. I spent time in Ohio, California, Michigan, Asheville, Charlotte and camping in western North Carolina. February is already a tough month for me and a lot of others because it’s cold, dark, and uneventful. It’s the perfect timing for a bit of a let down from the usual holiday excitement, and for me personally, the excitement of my travels. When I am a little on edge anyway, I tend to feel more and think less which cascaded into a bit of a challenging month.

All of this in combination led to some intense discomfort in some environments as well as the opposite. When I say environment I mean the people around us, the experiences we have and the places we take up space. Even when we don’t think we feel the impacts of environment, we all do. I know you’ve left a friends house and couldn’t quite explain it but felt so settled. Or you’ve walked out of a stressful day at work and immediately your body unclenched, not even realizing how much tension you were carrying all day.

Our body is constantly scanning our environment for cues of safety. This is our feeling body or more technically, our autonomic nervous system. The state that our nervous system is in, meaning whether it feels safe or on high alert, impacts how our mind perceives the world. Even if you have zero awareness of your emotional and feeling body, it is driving how you interact with your world daily.

Since the autonomic nervous system has been my passion project for years now, I have been gently forced to have more awareness of this aspect of my being. It has been the greatest shift of my life and has taught me over and over the first line in this post. We are feeling beings that think, not thinking beings that feel.

Since moving out of Ohio over 12 years ago, I have rarely spent more than a few days in the state at a time. Being there for a longer stretch definitely did not feel great for my body. I felt old patterns of tension, anxiety and general discomfort rise up in me. Then I ventured to the city of Asheville next. I thought this would be a good shift for my body but I was a bit wrong. It is a city in the mountains with hiking and a young vibe so similar to my Colorado home. But after a not so pleasant experience with my car almost getting broken into, I felt more unsafe than ever. My body was in such a state of fear that at times I felt like I didn’t have a logical brain.

The fun thing about our nervous system is that when it feels unsafe, it can revert to survival mode. In survival mode, our thinking brain does not work the way it should. Have you ever wondered why someone couldn’t use logic in a fearful or heightened moment? That’s neurobiology at its finest. No wonder in a world driven by fear and uncertainty, people cannot think logically through so much. (Think politics!)

Thankfully, after Asheville I camped for a night. The minute I rolled into the campsite, I felt my entire body take a sigh of relief. I know camping alone in a new place is not comforting for all, but for me, if I’m outside, my body is calm. I was no longer in the chaos of a city, there was no traffic noise, no what ifs that I didn’t know how to handle. Just the trees, a clear stream, me and Trek and a whole lot of quiet.

It was a deep reminder of how my body is always responding to what I surround myself with. Fortunately, after camping, I visited a friend in Charlotte. The moment I arrived, I could sense the effort she has put into making her house a home. It felt relaxing, inviting and so cozy. My body was so grateful to spend a few days with a familiar person in such a sweet environment after the disruption of Asheville.

Our autonomic nervous system is a tricky being. When we are in survival mode, sometimes we don’t even notice until we are back in a safe environment. A body in survival mode has one motive, survive. We don’t always know how impactful our surroundings are until we change them. For me, even with heightened awareness of my feelings, I can easily forget how impactful my environment is on me.

It is a blessing and a curse to have more awareness of how my nervous system is responding. When I can change my environment, it’s an easy decision. Like when I checked out a campsite and immediately felt off so I left. Some call it intuition or your gut feeling. We all have it, but so often ignore it. Suppressing this innate part of ourselves can be like navigating life blindly. It is possible, but you may stumble more often than someone with clear sight.

This past month has been a sharp lesson in how strongly I feel the world these days. I am so grateful for the gift of awareness. It is allowing me to cultivate more self compassion as I move through the shifting environments of my current life. I’m slowly finding a balance between my logical brain and my wise body. I have a feeling it will be a lifelong pursuit but I’m here for it!

Simply remember that we are feeling beings that think. This short sentence can begin to change how you interact with the world around you. Don’t ignore those nudges, even when they don’t feel logical! You never know what kind of magic they will lead you towards.