(Ep. 49) Learning To Feel Your Emotions

What if you were never actually bad at feeling your emotions — you just were never taught how, and never got to practice?In this episode of Triggered & True, Laura Duncan and co-host Brian Freise get practical about the skill underneath all the others: learning to feel your emotions.It's personal for Brian, who spent 43 years not feeling — until, as he puts it, the volcano erupted and landed him in Laura's office. If you've ever said, "I'm just not good at feeling my feelings," this episode reframes that as something you can practice, because it's not a fixed trait.Laura and Brian start with why we stopped feeling in the first place — most of us, as small children, learned that big emotions made the adults uncomfortable, so we were quietly taught to shut them down (no shame in it; we all came by it honestly). Then they make the case for why feeling matters: suppressed emotion eventually erupts, but more importantly, if you don't feel, you can't heal — and you can't connect to who you are, because who you are is tied to your emotions. They get concrete with tools: why joy and pain travel the same circuit (so numbing one dims the other), the wavelike rhythm of moving between sadness and joy that Laura witnessed grieving alongside her kids, Brian's "practice sleeping in" homework to interrupt his doing-protector, and a five-minute daily self-attunement practice you can use as an on-ramp before the remote control exercise.In this episode: 🔹 Why "I'm not good at feeling emotions" is about practice, not a fixed trait 🔹 How most of us were taught young to shut big feelings down — and why there's no shame in it 🔹 "If you don't feel, you can't heal" — and why your true self is tied to your emotions 🔹 The wavelike rhythm between joy and pain — and why numbing one dims the other 🔹 Practical tools: interrupting your "doing" protector, and a five-minute daily self-attunement practice📩 Get your free Weekly Dose of Compassion — two short notes in your inbox every week. One to speak over yourself. One from Laura: https://www.lauraduncan.com/pl/2148814868🔗 Learn more: https://triggeredandtrue.com https://lauraduncan.com