How I Learned to Feel
As a child, I felt deeply – love and excitement, but also fear, anxiety, isolation, and
shame. I couldn’t stand to be away from my parents, but I also didn’t generally find
much solace being with them. I felt alone and panicky much of the time, and the future
stretched out ahead of me – terrifyingly.
When I turned 25, that suddenly shifted. Without conscious thought, one day I simply
stopped feeling hurt, grief, and loneliness altogether. My fear and anger felt suddenly
muted.
I thought I was healed, but if my life had been a car’s dashboard, there were some
blinking lights.
At a certain point, I realized I didn’t feel any desire. I simply never wanted. The idea of
my having an appetite for anything – whether people, food, or things – felt gluttonous,
greedy, and intolerable.
I would shudder at the feeling of touch on my body. The gentler and more loving, the
worse it felt. I didn’t usually mind it for brief periods, but the longer it lasted, the
stronger I felt the need to get away.
I would wake up with a pit in my stomach – an ache, an uneasiness. Sometimes it was
accompanied by thoughts – a cacophony of possible negative outcomes – but other
times it was just a vacant sense of disquiet.
I had relatively little interest in the world around me. I would say that I didn’t like
people and felt much more comfortable alone. I was hesitant to reach out for new
perspectives, relationships, or information that might challenge my worldview.
The fact that I wasn’t swayed by emotions such as hurt, need, desire, or sadness moved
between seemed to me, variously, a sign of growth, a neutral truth, or a vague concern,
depending on the day.
Then, I got a recommendation to see Amanda MacRae, a somatic bodyworker who
works with the Pantarei Approach. I had no idea what to expect. As a strong proponent
of talk therapy, I was skeptical, but also curious, because all my talk in therapy hadn’t
notably improved my life.
From the first session, I felt, for the first time, how deeply disconnected I was from my
body.
Over the coming months, Amanda would notice tightness in my body, and tell me that I
had a choice of whether to let it go. I always replied, “Yes! I choose to let it go!” And yet,
the tightness would remain.
She meant a different kind of choice. This was not the kind of conscious option that my
brain knew how to choose. This was a choice that only my body could make, when it felt
safe enough to let go. Slowly but surely, the more I felt into my body, the safer it felt.
It happened slowly at first, but I began to wake up – to touch, to pleasure, to desire, to
learning.
Once, I noticed I was crying, and I realized it was the first time I had cried in many
years.
Another time, I lay cuddling with my children, and I noticed no urge to move or get
space from them, just the warmth and comfort of our closeness.
I felt desires and dreams starting to emerge: an urge to take a particular class, buy a
particular book, eat a particular food, or spend time with a particular person, all of
which felt new and unfamiliar. And these feelings weren’t generally accompanied by the
pain I experienced in childhood. It was a new way of feeling, with my feet firmly beneath
me.
One day, six months after starting the somatic work, I found myself in a deep state of
peace and flow. That week, I found a way to come home early from work each day to get
extra time with my kids, and then logged back on after they went to sleep because my
ideas were flowing. I felt a deep sense of love and connection – with the people closest to
me, but also sometimes with acquaintances, or even strangers.
I began to think this blissful state was my new normal. Then, as fast as it had appeared,
it vanished. One morning, I woke up with a heaviness in my chest, a mild sense of
dissatisfaction and disconnection that felt all too familiar.
The place I’d found myself felt like heaven, and I was desperate to get it back. I tried
deep breathing, listening to music, meditating, walking outside in the sun, talking with
people I loved. Nothing changed. I grasped frantically for the feeling, and the more I
tried to reach it, the further it seemed.
When I finally stopped trying, I found that behind the heaviness, the numbness, the
dissatisfaction, and the disconnection, that place of peace and flow was always there.
As time has gone by, I’ve found myself able to access the state more and more often.
Even when I don’t feel it, I know it’s there inside me.
I didn’t start this journey feeling like I needed deep healing. I truly thought I was fine.
How could I have known that by pushing away my feelings of sadness, grief, and need, I
was also cutting myself off from joy and love and connection?
How could I have known that those are the aspects of life that make it truly worth
living?
The last 18 months have objectively been the most difficult of my life. I’ve faced more
external challenges and obstacles, felt more rocked and uncertain, had less clear outside
support, than I ever have.
At the same time, I have never felt happier, calmer, more grounded, or more grateful.
Feeling connected with my body has transformed my experience – of myself, my
relationships, and my life. I still have difficult days, when everything feels
overwhelming, when I feel alone. I still have work to do and defenses to tackle. But now,
no matter how hard a moment is, or how intractable a problem feels, I know deeply that
I have what I need.
Healing has not been easy or linear or comfortable. There are times when it still is scary
and overwhelming. It often feels like the ground underneath me is shaky, or even
nonexistent. It sometimes seems like I’m climbing a mountain and the next handhold is
just out of reach. What I feel is a blend of terror and gratitude and uncertainty and love
and confusion and joy and anger and acceptance.
I used to reject the idea of acceptance altogether. It seemed weak and wishy-washy. It
was the opposite of ambition and challenge and growth – all the concepts I felt were
most critical to human progress.
I used to reject the body. It seemed silly and impractical to focus on it. My brain could
wrap itself around concepts and ideas and linearity, but the elusive ambiguity of trying
to connect with my body was too much to grasp.
But, as hard as I tried, I couldn’t heal through my head.
When I first started writing this essay, I kept thinking of the word “allowing.” I never
actually used the word in the writing, but it lies beneath it all. The change I experienced
came not from trying to force a new way of thinking, or a change in behavior, but from
an allowing – a trusting in my body and a letting go. As a cognitive idea, that is simple
and obvious. As an embodied knowing, I’ve found it nothing short of transformational.
I’m now working toward becoming a practitioner of the Pantarei Approach. I have
always felt a deep inclination toward healing, but discovering this method has finally
given me a clear path to doing so. Giving sessions seems to invite the deep feeling of
peace and flow I discovered. I could not be more grateful to have the opportunity to
share this approach more widely.
Written by Emily Pines
Contact: https://emilypines.eu/
IG: emily.jane.pines