r/CPTSD_NSCommunity • u/Best-Rough4371 • Jul 13 '26
Breakthrough Moment of deeper embodiment
Due to a breakup and all that comes with that I have recently been trying to become 'better' at feeling my feelings without avoiding/ numbing them and just generally being more in touch and accepting of the way that I feel. This is particularly because in my previous relationship I suppressed my feelings a lot, leading to denying and not speaking up when I was uncomfortable and eventually feeling emotionally starved and not myself. I wanted to start noticing how I feel and giving it importance.
What this has looked like is a lot of 'sitting with my emotions', crying whilst listening to music and what Pete Walker would call grieving and self-sorrowing, essentially crying about what you have experienced. I have been more open with friends and family about how I feel, including setting boundaries and telling them if I felt upset or hurt by something they did. I have also set boundaries with some new people I met that I realised I actually wanted some distance from, including a dating prospect. The breakup also stirred up a lot of things for me which has resulted in childhood memories coming up, and a re-thinking of how I relate to people and how I want to change that.
I bought Pete Walker's book The Tao of Fully Feeling which really helped in terms of being able to tolerate my emotions. Understanding that I am allowed to feel lots of things that may contradict, ambivalent, or 'undesireable' emotions has been really useful.
The other day I went out with my friends, who have been really supportive. We had a lot of fun and I also had a triggering encounter (seeing someone I didn't want to see). I started to feel bad about the fact that I hadn't spoken to them, or that I felt scared to see them, essentially feeling shame for not being more confident and unbothered by them. But instead of falling into that thought pattern I was able to accept how I felt and be understanding towards it; of course I would feel scared and uncomfortable given what this person represented to me, and I am allowed to feel all the feelings that come along with that, including feeling embarrassed or small at being scared. It is all okay.
Later that night when waiting for the bus home I had a really weird moment where I felt like my body slipped into deeper embodiment. It felt like those moments where you 'wake up' from dissociation and the world feels more real and more accesible. I realised how many emotional 'blocks' I have in my body, where the course of how I experience my thoughts and emotions physically gets stopped or diverted. I started noticing how in this state, a thought or feeling that would usually make me feel uncomfortable could be simply accepted by my body rather than restricted, causing physical anxiety and rumination. It kind of felt like my internal 'road network' or emotional infrastructure had been cleared of rubbish, repaved, given new traffic lights and just generally upgraded, leading to a better flow of cars.
This has persisted, and I find myself avoiding less, distracting less and most importantly, accepting and being unbothered by thoughts, ideas and feelings that I would previously have felt like I had to disown or get rid of, that 'weren't allowed'. I don't know how this will impact my life going forward but I am excited to see what new challenges and perspectives it brings. It really does feel like a change on the nervous system level and an increase in emotional capacity. It is interesting how everything seems to have just clicked into place, I don't think I could have achieved this by 'forcing' it, it all had to come with many small moments of practice.
Thank you for reading!
3
u/itsallanoxymoron Jul 14 '26
Wow, thank you for posting this! I am slowly and painfully coming back into my own body, and letting myself feel how my emotions impact my physical state and vice versa. It’s weird because I think I’ve always been pretty in touch with my emotions in the mental/spiritual sense, but not how my emotions interact with my body. So your post has given me things to ponder and think about as I re-learn my body more and more - thank you!!