Emotions Explained: Why Feeling Them Is the Key to Real Healing
I've been thinking about a cultural message we get about grief. This idea that feeling our feelings is bad. That we should move through it, get over it, push past it.
I didn't want to gloss over that. I wanted to create a whole episode about what it actually means to feel our feelings.
Because here's what I've realized after a decade of loss. There's a difference between understanding your emotions and feeling them. Between talking about what you feel or writing about it in your journal and actually letting it move through your body.
If you've spent years processing your grief in every way you know how and you still feel exhausted and disconnected from yourself, this might be for you.
In this conversation, I'm walking you through why we suppress emotions, what happens to that energy when we don't express it, and how to create space for your grief to actually be felt. Not managed. Not analyzed. Felt.
This isn't clinical. This isn't more analysis. This is permission to feel what you feel.
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Listen to the Episode on Truth After Loss Podcast
Now I'd love to hear from you. Which part of this episode shifted something for you? Was it giving yourself permission to feel without fixing? Was it understanding where your chronic exhaustion really comes from? Was it the realization that talking about your feelings isn't the same as feeling them?
The invitation here is to notice what came up for you and share it in the comments below if you feel called to do so. The more specific you are, the more your voice becomes medicine for someone else who's been searching for this exact permission.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for your honesty. Thank you for making this one of the most powerful and supportive spaces on the internet.
With endless appreciation,
Kendra 💜
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[00:00:00] Welcome to Truth After Loss. I'm Kindra Merrill, and this is a space that you can explore the truths that grief shows you and the life that you build from it. Because grief doesn't lie. It reveals to us what matters and what never did. So settle in, and let's build a life around that truth
[00:00:23] Kendra Merrill: In episode 10 of this podcast, I discussed three cultural messages that we get about grief that I felt really wrong to me. And one of them, the last one, was really that this idea or this concept that feeling our feelings was bad. We have a tendency in our culture to talk about grief and to, expect people to move through it, move on, get over it, and that feeling our feelings m- or expressing our feelings might not be the best way to handle our grief, and I disagree.
[00:01:04] Kendra Merrill: So I didn't wanna gloss over this thought. I wanted to create a whole, podcast episode about it, so that's what we're gonna talk about today. what does it mean for us to truly feel our feelings?
[00:01:17] Kendra Merrill: And as we get into this, I wanna set the stage first of all that emotions are completely a natural and normal part of being human. The full range of emotions are normal and natural. Rage, , anger, frustration, irritation, joy, excitement, love, all of these emotions that we have as humans are all a natural human process that happens in our experience of being human.
[00:01:45] Kendra Merrill: So let's just, level set there. It's all normal. let me tell you the, psychological perspective here real quick. Emotions are your brain's attempt to make meaning of what's happening in your world around you and in your body. What that means is if you have some sort of a sensation, let's say you're walking down a, a trail, and you see something on the trail, and you have a sensation.
[00:02:15] Kendra Merrill: Your brain then tries to predict what's gonna happen next based on your body's sensation and then based on your past experience. So if you've been on a walk where there has been a snake, Your brain may make meaning out of that object on the ground and think it's a snake, and then you have emotions of fear.
[00:02:43] Kendra Merrill: If you've never had a snake come up on you on a trail as you're hiking along, your brain may be like, "Oh, it's just a stick. We're moving on." And you may have a completely different emotion around that sensation in your body. So our brain is trying to make meaning of what's happening in our body, the sensations that we're experiencing in our body
[00:03:09] Kendra Merrill: So what we know about emotions is they are information. They are valid, and they are real. What you are experiencing is valid and real in your body. So if you were one of those people who experienced, a feeling of fear because you thought it was a snake, that is a real, valid emotion that you are experiencing in your body.
[00:03:32] Kendra Merrill: Does not necessarily mean that it's fact. So let me explain a little bit more with a different example. I've talked about this this podcast many times. It's kind of the foundation of, who I am and my, my personal story. But, many years ago, my husband and I experienced the stillbirth of my daughter at 40 weeks and five days after a totally normal pregnancy.
[00:03:53] Kendra Merrill: And then later, we went through infertility, and we did eventually get pregnant, totally naturally. Another story for another day. but in that second pregnancy with my son, we got to about 38 weeks, and I received some blood work that didn't look great. When I opened it, you get your blood work, and it's in your portal, and you go and you look at it.
[00:04:16] Kendra Merrill: So I had a sensation. My body had a sensation when it saw the numbers. My brain immediately went to trying to make meaning out of that sensation. It used my past experience, my only pregnancy that had gotten to 38 weeks, and it made meaning out of that blood work. And it was basically my brain was telling me, this is not good.
[00:04:37] Kendra Merrill: It's gonna be horrible. It's gonna end up the same way it was." So what I was experiencing, fear, dread, freaking out, basically, was valid and real and not a fact. I was able to get on the phone with my doctor, who unfortunately wasn't super, supportive in validating my feelings, but she was supportive in helping me understand that just because those numbers were a particular way did not necessarily mean we were headed down a, the same path as we had been before.
[00:05:13] Kendra Merrill: And in that particular situation, I had to take a step back and allow myself to, and tell myself it's okay to be scared. It's okay to be afraid. I'm gonna get emotional about it. It's okay to feel fear around what's next because your body remembers what happened, because my body remembers the previous pregnancy, and it's not surprising that I'm having this emotion.
[00:05:43] Kendra Merrill: And when we - allow ourselves to sit with it, and we'll talk about this in a few minutes, like how we can start working with our emotions
[00:05:50] Kendra Merrill: It was not surprising that I felt fear, and what I was feeling was very valid, but it wasn't fact. And so I knew at that point that it wasn't a fact that we were going to lose this child. and in fact, we didn't.
[00:06:06] Kendra Merrill: it was fine. I was able to allow myself and give myself permission to feel scared because it was scary.
[00:06:15] Kendra Merrill: and when I did, those emotions then began to release, and I was able to then, clear my mind up a little bit, where I was able to think rationally and be able to make a decision, because we did have to make some choices about, did I need to go to the hospital? Could I monitor at home? And I didn't feel like I could make that decision when I was in that heightened state of fear and anxiety.
[00:06:36] Kendra Merrill: So I took some time, and I sat with it. And as it moved through and as that emotion processed, I was able to then come to a place where I was able to think more clearly and be able to make a informed and rational decision about the information I had in front of me, and not a completely emotional decision.
[00:06:56] Kendra Merrill: So our emotions are completely normal. They're part of our human experience, and also they're information. They're valid, but they're not facts. If that's all true, how did we get to a place where we were taught or told that emotions are not worth feeling, worth expressing? , How did we get here? So here's the only thing I can say is that for decades we've been told that the mind is in charge of the body.
[00:07:30] Kendra Merrill: We've been living in this age of knowledge, this age of the mind, this age of, intellect. IQ is an indicator of success in our world, and we've been told that the mind is the smart part of our body.
[00:07:43] Kendra Merrill: We've been told mind over matter. We've been told to push through our emotions. We've been told that to make sense of it through, through our minds, and that clarity really comes from thinking, not feeling. That's what we've been taught. And if you're a Gen X-er like I am, we certainly weren't given, space to feel our feelings when we were a kid.
[00:08:06] Kendra Merrill: If you are like me, you didn't grow up, holding space or witnessing or expressing your emotions. Those were not terms we used years ago. I won't say how many. most of us, our parents really didn't understand what emotions were, how we should, how we could express them, and what they really didn't understand was how how they impact our lives and our bodies if we don't express them.
[00:08:34] Kendra Merrill: We were taught that emotions were weak, they were scary, they're to be ignored, they're to be pushed down. "Don't cry," "Suck it up," all these, "Put your big girl panties on and go." Just keep going. , Here I am years later in my life, but I think it's so interesting to think about the idea that we have been taught to suppress something that is so natural and normal to us being human.
[00:08:59] Kendra Merrill: it really boggles my mind a little bit.
[00:09:01] Kendra Merrill: But we are beginning to understand more and more about what emotions are, and ultimately emotions are energy in motion. And energy, if you ever... My dad was a physicist, guys, so I get a little, nerdy in, and science sometimes. So emotions are energy, and if you know anything about physics, energy doesn't dissolve.
[00:09:24] Kendra Merrill: It doesn't disappear. So if our emotions are energy, they have to go somewhere. And if they're not expressed, where do they go? They go in our bodies. So all of these emotions, if we don't witness them, this is- we're gonna get into, what happens when we don't express them for just a minute here. , When we don't express our emotions, the energy from our emotions gets stored in our body.
[00:09:52] Kendra Merrill: . It wasn't till really I went through the grief experience and then became a parent that I started reading about grief and about trauma and about emotions and about parenting and how to allow my kid to feel his emotions that I started to realize something about myself, which is that
[00:10:11] Kendra Merrill: for most of my life, I have experienced, chronic fatigue. And what I realize now, again, hindsight's 20/20, yay. but what I realize now is so much of that chronic fatigue in my body, the utter exhaustion, the depletion, yes, a lot of that came from my grief, but I was feeling that long before I went through loss.
[00:10:36] Kendra Merrill: So it couldn't have all just been the loss.
[00:10:39] Kendra Merrill: What I realized is that I've spent a lot of my life not expressing my emotions, not really feeling my emotions. what I did do a lot of, because I do have a degree in psychology, I do and have always been interested in why do we behave the way we do. I did go to therapy for a very long time, and I think there's a huge benefit in therapy.
[00:11:04] Kendra Merrill: But I also believe there's a difference between understanding our emotions and where they come from and why they're there, is not the same as feeling our emotions. That's what I began to witness in myself
[00:11:18] Kendra Merrill: I started to realize that from the age of 16 when my mom... My parents got divorced when I was young. I was in, eighth grade, ninth grade, something like that. And my mom remarried when I was 16 years old, and in that home, I did not have the opportunity to express myself quite as much as I would have liked.
[00:11:36] Kendra Merrill: And I realize now that I started journaling right about that time, and I have journaled my entire life. It was my coping strategy for expressing my emotions. So my whole entire life, if I die, somebody's gonna get to read how I felt for my entire life since I was 16 years old. That'll be a fun read. and when, when I hit those intense times in my life where grief kinda consumed me, the way I went about expressing that was through therapy and through my journal.
[00:12:07] Kendra Merrill: And those are great and wonderful, and I also know now that putting it on paper and talking about it isn't the same as feeling it
[00:12:20] Kendra Merrill: Let's talk about grief. Let's talk about feeling our feelings in a grief container. sometimes -, there are just no words. There are no words to express the complete and utter destruction you feel when you have a daughter who's stillborn,
[00:12:39] Kendra Merrill: You went in the hospital. I was in labor when it happened, so I went in expecting to come home with a baby, and I walked out without one. There are no words. We can sit in a room all day long and talk about my grief and understand where it's coming from and why it shows up and how it shows up and all the things, but there really are no words to describe what I felt.
[00:13:01] Kendra Merrill: And so I also th- felt I feel like now therapy was really good for me, in a sense that I had a space to talk about things, but also it had a tendency to keep me in thinking loops rather than actually sitting down and residing with my emotions and feeling them and allowing them to exist and to witness them.
[00:13:23] Kendra Merrill: So it's an important distinction for me to share with you that understanding your feelings is important and not trying to fix them or move through them or get over them is also important to just feel them. Because all of your emotions are real, and they're valid, and they're important, and they're information.
[00:13:46] Kendra Merrill: So what does it mean to actually feel our feelings? What does that... How do we do that? How in the hell do we do that? so the way forward, I believe now, is not just through your mind, but it's also in your body. When our brain is constructing these emotions that are not facts
[00:14:06] Kendra Merrill: The first thing we have to do is be okay with whatever emotion arises because it's not wrong. Again, it's valid and real. So how do we do that? Honestly, we sit with them. We accept them. We give ourselves permission to feel whatever it is we feel. We witness what's present when we feel that emotion. So if I am walking down the trail and I have a sensation and my brain decides to make meaning of it, and I have been on a trail actually recently where my husband got bit by a snake.
[00:14:41] Kendra Merrill: So I might have some fear, about whatever I see. I have to witness how it is to feel that emotion in my body. , Let's do an example that's more grief related. Years ago, I was sitting at my desk in, the front of our house that has windows to the front yard. And
[00:15:04] Kendra Merrill: so here I am sitting at my desk working. I've got the windows in front of me, and I'm just working, , and all of a sudden I see a kid walk by with their parent and their little backpack, and they're going off to kindergarten. And I had a sensation, and the sensation was, " Oh, that would've been Adeline," who is my daughter who was stillborn, because it had been that many years, and she would've been starting kindergarten that day It was okay.
[00:15:34] Kendra Merrill: I had to stop what I was doing. I was working in a corporate job at the time. I had to step away, and I had to give myself permission to feel whatever I was feeling. I had to witness what was present for me in those emotions and how it felt to feel that emotion even years past.
[00:15:52] Kendra Merrill: And so I just went and gave myself some time to let it reside. I noticed where I felt it. It was hard. It was heavy. I cried. And after I was able to witness it, I can then go back and ask myself and say, if there's an opportunity for, what am I learning from this feeling? Or how did it feel to allow that emotion to reside?
[00:16:16] Kendra Merrill: It actually felt good because it was me witnessing my experience in life of losing a daughter, and it was honoring, I felt like, honoring her, like remembering her, giving myself a moment to connect with her. Even if it was sad, it was a moment of remembering her, and that felt good for me. So we give ourselves permission to feel what we feel.
[00:16:44] Kendra Merrill: Your feelings are valid and real. We witness what's present, what comes up in our bodies when we feel those emotions. We witness where we feel it in our body, 'cause sometimes that can have something. And then also the last thing is that we just ask ourselves the question, like, how did it feel allowing ourselves to feel that emotion, to allow it to reside
[00:17:08] Kendra Merrill: I think what I'm saying here in this whole podcast and why I wanted to do a whole entire podcast about this is that I think what I'm learning is that we can't just think our way through our emotions. We can't just analyze our emotions. Yes, it's helpful to understand them, but we also have got to create environments where it's safe to actually feel our emotions.
[00:17:33] Kendra Merrill: And when I started Truth After Loss, I really was sure that I wanted this container, to allow for the emotions to reside within it, both my own as an entrepreneur and my clients as individuals who've gone through some sort of loss and are feeling a pull towards something different.
[00:17:57] Kendra Merrill: . And I really just truly believe that our body knows the answers a lot of times. Most of us have been taught to override that. Most of us b- have been taught to think harder, to figure it out, fix ourselves, to manage what our bodies are telling us rather than to listen to it.
[00:18:15] Kendra Merrill: So coaching - doesn't always include this type of work, and that's okay maybe. but I wanted to make sure that because I work with women who've gone through some sort of loss, that we have space for your feelings and your emotions and all that includes. Because if we don't witness our grief, it resides in our body, and it's, in my opinion, very difficult to listen to your inner wisdom, which also speaks to you through your body, if you're holding onto grief inside your body.
[00:18:52] Kendra Merrill: So that's why in all of my programs, in my Centered and Alive coaching programs, which happens either one-on-one or I do have a group program. Actually, my group program starts in September. If you're interested in that, certainly go to my website at Truth After Loss and check it out. But if you just want something simple right now to just help you witness what you're feeling, I would highly recommend my free 10-day True You Reset. You can download that at
[00:19:22] Kendra Merrill: truthafterloss.com\reset10. I'll also put the link in the show notes here. it's a audio reset, 10 days, just an opportunity for you to recenter on what matters most to you and to be able to reconnect with that inner wisdom.
[00:19:39]
Hi there, I’m Kendra.
I’m a woman forever changed by loss and by the quiet clarity that followed. I walked away from the life I was “supposed” to want and began creating one that felt like home.
Now I work with women who are ready to reclaim their identity, their relational sovereignty, and their soulful leadership. The ones who are done shrinking and ready to start living in their truth.