“A felt sense is not a mental experience but a physical one. A bodily awareness of a situation or person or event. An internal aura that encompasses everything you feel and know about the given subject at a given time—encompasses it and communicates it to you all at once rather than detail by detail. Think of it as a taste, if you like, or a great musical chord that makes you feel a powerful impact, a big round unclear feeling.”
Eugene Gendlin
Most of us are running from our feelings, emotions, and inner experiences. Many without even realising. We reach for anything that can distract us and take us out of ourselves. For some of us, this might mean throwing ourselves into our work or zoning out on social media. Others find escape in addictive behaviours like alcohol, or substance abuse. It can even be seemingly healthy addictions such as exercise, but to excess. Spending, smoking, shopping, cleaning, destructive relationships – anything to avoid sitting with our inner feelings.
While some distractions are more harmful than others, the end result is the same: We self-abandon. We separate literally from our ‘self’ and our emotions.
And very often, the only time we even know anything is wrong, is if we hit rock bottom, and can’t rely on our distraction or live in denial any longer. The co-dependant abandoned, or abused just one too many times; the spendaholic finally exhausted all overdrafts/credit cards; the exercise addict forced to rest due to injury.
The disconnect caused by relying on distractions and turning too far outward can only be repaired by starting to look inwards. And once true healing and recovery begin, you will start to experience the ‘felt sense’.
The felt sense is a connection between the mind and the body, but felt physically, much like a gut instinct.
Philosopher Eugene Gendlin argued that an increased awareness of a felt sense can emerge from psychotherapy, and today we know that somatic therapy, EMDR, EFT, breath work and other therapies can help us to reconnect with ourselves.
Andrea x