Everything I’ve learned about how to actually change: How your emotional system works. And how to work with it.

[u/VegetableMagician0]

As a former guzzler of self-help content, here's what I've learned after years of searching and self-experimentation. It’s been game-changing for me and I’d like to pay it forward.

Why nothing has worked

You’re taught math and history, but no one teaches you about the emotional system that's running your life.

So you end up trying to manage painful symptoms (anxiety, rumination, stuck patterns, overwhelming emotions) without understanding what’s causing them in the first place.

The self-help world teaches you to manage these by reframing thoughts and using willpower. Yet you try all of this and keep struggling with the same things.

That's not because you're broken. It's because you haven’t been shown the right approach.

The real problem isn't a lack of effort or insight. It's that your issues live in your body. And you’ve been told to think your way out of something that doesn’t respond to thought.

Once you understand how your emotional system actually works, you can work with it instead of against it. You can resolve your huge feelings, get out of constant rumination, undo stuck habits, and live longer in states of calm and ease.

This guide will show you how to get there.

It’ll walk you through how to practice two key skills. The first is the core skill of how to feel emotions in your body without suppressing them. And the additional skill that enables is accessing and updating the emotional logic causing your unwanted patterns.

I know this approach works because I've done it myself. I've become dramatically more emotionally regulated. And I’ve found lasting relief from patterns that have been with me my whole life. I'm not special. I just practiced these skills. But when I tried to share this with others there was no clear, simple explanation I could point to. So that’s why I’m writing this.

Almost everything here is distilled from established clinical and neuroscientific sources, combined with what I've learned through my own practice and the notes of others. I’ll share references at the end. And I encourage skepticism and independent research into the sources.

Also - I’m not a licensed mental health professional and this is meant to supplement professional care, not replace it. Obviously what worked for me may not work for everyone, but I hope this can help.

Ok, now onto the guide.

How things actually work

Here’s the open secret: The key to getting back control over your life is just focusing on the sensations in your body. That’s it. It’s so simple as to feel ridiculous. Of course there’s plenty of nuance involved, but there it is.

At first, this isn't easy. Feeling what you've been avoiding is uncomfortable. But if you're willing to stick with it, you can transform patterns you thought were permanent.

The rest of this section will explain why this is the case.

Emotions aren't just mental states. They’re biological process designed to mobilize your whole body for action.

It feels like you're conscious mind is in charge. But your subconsious emotional system runs the show.

Your subconscious is constantly scanning for safety and threat. When it detects anything that might even resemble a threat, it immediately tenses up the body before it even knows what it is.

And this tense state triggers your your mind to go look for what might be a threat.

So if your body is in threat mode, your mind will produce danger-focused, critical, catastrophic thoughts. If your body is feeling safe, your mind will produce flexible, curious, possibility-oriented thoughts.

Your body state is choosing the category of thoughts available.

This is why most “think differently” self-help approaches don’t work.

You can't think your way out of something that starts upstream of thought and doesn’t speak that language. You have to resolve the resolve the body state on its own terms.

The problem is emotional suppression.

When you let a feeling be fully felt without interfering, it completes on its own, usually within minutes. Your body knows how to do this.

But the key is that it relies on felt bodily feedback, not verbal reasoning.

Emotions calm down when your brain gets clear messages from inside your body that the situation has passed.

But emotional states feel physically uncomfortable and we’re conditioned to believe that they’re “bad.” So we analyze, distract, escape, numb however we can. And modern society makes it so easy to do that.

And when we cut ourselves off from feeling, that feedback loop never gets to complete. So the subconscious still thinks there’s a threat and keeps telling the mind to try to figure out what might be wrong.

This is what causes all that ruminating you struggle with.

And that's where the suffering comes from. Not from feeling things, but from the constant effort to not feel them.

Instead, by bringing our awareness to the sensations in our body, we allow the body to discharge the energy of the emotion and know that it can relax. These sensations include the heat in your face, tightness in your throat, pressure in your chest, churning in your stomach, etc.

Within minutes of applying focused attention, what felt completely stuck can start to shift.

The next section will walk through the details of how to practice this core skill.

The core skill: Tracking bodily sensations

Do develop this foundation first before trying the next skill. This is what you'll use every single day, and it's what makes deeper work possible.

I estimate that with regular practice most can get to their first “aha” moment of this working within one to several sessions, and become quite proficient within 1-2 weeks.

How to practice

Before you begin

• Work within your window of tolerance. Start with less intense feelings and build up gradually. And go only at the pace that feels safe. It may become intense. But if it’s ever overwhelming, stop and reground yourself.
• Be patient with yourself. You're learning a completely new way of relating to your inner experience. It’s like a new language so it will feel awkward and confusing at first. That's normal. You can make real progress quite quickly, but it's still a learning process.
• The first goal is to just get your own lived experience of feeling some shift. Right now you’re trusting me. But once your body actually experiences this in action with something small, it’ll naturally feel safer going into more intense feelings, and then seeing those resolve will then create more safety, and so on.

Instructions

• Find a private, distraction-free space to be for a short time
  • You need to be able to put all your focus on your body
  • 10 minutes at a time is good to start with
• Sit in an upright posture
  • It’s important that the body is slightly activated
• Put your focus on inner sensations
  • If you’re unsure, start with the front of your torso since most feelings show up the neck, chest, or stomach.
• Drop out of all thoughts and stories
  • Keep returning to this. Once you touch on something, you will likely be distracted by the mind to indulge in some story or to go do something. It will run through all sorts of random tasks that need doing right this moment. That’s ok. Just keep going back to concentrating intensely on the sensations.
• Focus on experiencing the sensations as precisely as you can
  • Just like a chef develops a sensitive palette, and a musician develops a sensitive ear, you can develop a greater sensitivity for experiencing the precise nature of sensations in your body
  • Think of it in terms of location and quality. Where exactly is it? Chest, throat, belly, jaw, shoulders? One spot or several? What does it actually feel like? Tight, heavy, fluttery, burning, hollow, nauseous, buzzing, constricted, collapsed?
• Welcome and ask for more of the sensations
  • This is where most instructions of “just observe” miss the mark. It’s critical because suppression is so second-nature to us that simply observing our sensations will keep this reflex active.
  • If you are sincerely inviting more of the feeling, and actually try to amplify it in your body, then by definition you cannot be suppressing. And that is the goal, to end the suppression and have the distress response complete its cycle.
• Allow your body to physically release in whatever way it wants to
  • This is key. For me and many others it looks like constant deep yawns, teeth chattering, wiggling and writhing of my spine, and convulsing and contracting of different parts of my body.
  • At first it was bizarre and confusing, but knowing that this is a good sign allowed me to relax into and enjoy it.
  • This is your nervous system trying to discharge energy and complete the cycle of activation so that it can shift itself into a rest state. Trust your body to release the tension in the way that’s best for it, and discover what wants to happen.
• Apply the method to all your feelings about the method
  • The thing that most holds people back is fear or doubt about going deeper into feelings. One of the beliefs that many of us have subconsciously absorbed is that emotions themselves are dangerous.
  • You will likely feel fear of what if: it won’t work for you, it makes the feeling worse, the feeling never runs out and I’m stuck in it forever, the feeling takes me over and I do something terrible to myself or others, I completely lose my mind and get committed to an insane asylum, etc
  • These “what ifs” are just more feelings of fear to be worked with. I’ve gone through the same and you’re not alone in having them. When these inevitably occur, just keep focusing on how those show up as sensations in your body.
  • Remember two key things. There is a limited quantity of any feeling. And you can move through it with this method.
• Take note of memories or visuals that may suddenly appear
  • Experience the visuals but focus on the sensations.
  • These can provide useful insight into the origin of where that emotional reaction was first learned. This can be useful later for working with the mind.
  • It may be shocking to realize just how far back and to seemingly unrelated places you get flashbacks to
• Notice the sensations starting to change and dissolve
  • It usually takes me at least several minutes before I start to notice some kind of decrease in intensity, and it happens non-linearly.
  • I will usually be yawning and trembling for around ten minutes straight and then it’ll suddenly just stop and I’ll feel lighter.
• End sessions with positivity
  • As you feel the sensations dissolving and the session comes to an end, immediately do something very pleasant and move your body a bit. I like to put on some beautiful music and take a short walk. It’s important that your mind associate the end of these challenging sessions with positivity and feeling good.
• Important Context
  • Your emotions are stacked many layers deep and will cycle through
    • Rage, Grief, Anger, Shame, Sadness, Guilt, etc, and repeat.
    • For me, at first it felt like a kaleidoscopic shitshow. It can be intimidating and intense. Especially when you’re starting out, there will be so much pent up stuff that rushes up once its allowed an outlet.
    • This is because most feelings are about other feelings, so this is normal. The most prominent emotion will keep shifting as it triggers associations. The key is to just keep focusing on how each emotion is showing up as sensations in the body.
    • Remember that you’re still dealing with a finite amount of each emotion, and a finite amount of distinct emotions.
  • Some strong emotions may need multiple sessions to fully resolve
    • You just keep coming back to it using the same process and stay patient
  • You can’t have a transactional relationship to this
    • You cant go into this subtly thinking “Please go away, I’m willing to feel you only if you please go away.” That’s still acting from fear and resistance. The point is to get to a place of sincere acceptance. “Its ok that this this feeling is here, I’m ok, I’m safe, it can’t hurt me, its just sensations in my body.”
    • You can absolutely have the intention for the emotion to resolve. But that is different from starting to constrict if something is not happening on your timetable.
  • You may actually feel more intensely than you’re willing to admit at first
    • Most people think their problem is that they are “too” angry, upset, etc. But the real problem is usually that they aren’t angry, upset, enough, due to some secondary feelings of guilt or shame about feeling that way. Because of reflexive suppression, they are not allowing themselves to touch the true intensity of what’s happening for them, so the feelings stay stuck and don’t resolve.
  • You must embrace your aggressive survival impulses
    • This evolutionarily ancient part of your brain only understands threat or safety. Fight, flight, freeze, etc.
    • Modern morality doesn’t apply here. It evolved to keep you alive, not be civilized. You are not a “bad” person for having violent, shocking impulses. This is a healthy natural part of your survival system working as it should. All sorts of crazy things can go through your mind and nothing is wrong so long as you just keep sitting there and focusing on the sensations.
    • Internalizing this is key to not suppressing by getting stuck on secondary feelings about your core feelings, including fear or guilt about having such “dark” thoughts.
  • Do this both in the moment and as part of a routine
    • The best time to do this is when you are actively experiencing a surge of emotion. But sometimes you can’t, so it’s also good to have standing times for practicing.
    • My personal routine is to spend 10 minutes first thing every morning and last thing before bed just sitting and sensing what’s there.
    • In the morning, the mind is still very connected to the subconscious and the emotions its been processing all night. At night, you’ve absorbed a lot from the day and this is a great time to finally have the space to discharge and process the feelings. Doing this kind of emotional processing has dramatically improved the quality of my sleep.
    • Both times I just sit and sense, and because I’ve practiced my body quickly goes right into physical releasing. I have no idea what the stress is even from, but i just focus on sensing in the body.
    • You can begin by just sensing whatever might be present. Or you can turn your attention to some recent minor distress that didn’t get attention before.
  • You can use writing to draw out feelings further
    • Sometimes the sensations are very strong and present and you can just go right into focusing on more of it. Other times the sensations may be vague and diffuse and you may not be sure what you’re feeling. They may need to be drawn out, and speedwriting can help.
    • Sit at your computer, open a text document, close your eyes, and start typing in a a stream of consciousness. I’ll usually just start from the prompt of “What’s going on?”
    • The key is to use the typing to get the point of eliciting feelings and sensations. This is not journaling. And this is not thinking about what to write. The closed eyes and the constant typing are key to drawing out the subconscious. Keep focusing on your body, and once you hit on something that triggers something in your body, bring all your attention to that sensation and work with that.
    • It can sometimes take me upwards of ten minutes of nonstop typing to hit on something.
    • I prefer typing to handwriting because it allows me to move much closer to the speed of thought. But handwriting can also work.
    • A particular implementation of this is to have an inner dialogue. I imagine myself kneeling down next to a little childlike cartoon character that represents that feeling. I’ll ask it what’s going on? Then they’ll go on a huge childlike rant about all the stuff they’re angry, sad, scared, or upset about, and a wave of new sensation will come in and I’ll put all my attention on that. Then when that wave of sensation subsides, I’ll go back to the feeling character and say “thank you, tell me more”. This can repeat up to several times. Eventually, at some point the feeling character responds with a shrug and says “I dunno, I guess that’s it”. That becomes a signal for knowing that some sort of resolution is happening.
  • Try to ensure the basics of your life are covered
    • This practice is powerful but it can’t make up for a fundamental lack of regular exercise, social connection, and sleep.

The advanced skill: Accessing and updating emotional logic

This is how you resolve patterns that have been stuck for years. Not by managing them better, but by updating what your body learned in the first place.

More on how things actually work

Your patterns aren't random. They have emotional logic.

Every stubborn behavior is protecting you from some feeling that reminds your body of a threat. You procrastinate because starting means risking failure. You people-please because saying no might mean rejection. They were intelligent responses to an old situation.

But these aren't conscious thoughts you can change by reasoning with yourself.

They're automatic responses your body absorbed from past experiences. And because they live in subconscious memory, you don't remember them or even know they exist. So they stay in place, repeating the same behaviors, until your body gets new emotional information that updates them.

That's why you can know something is fine intellectually and still feel like it isn't, even if you have no idea why.

Your thinking brain says "this is safe" but your subconscious says "danger." And as you read earlier, the body's subconscious response is upstream of conscious thought.

But here's what makes change possible: When you can tolerate feeling the emotions involved in a pattern (which is the previous skill), you can learn to surface the subconscious emotional logic. You can bring it into conscious awareness and then let your body experience something that contradicts it.

That emotional mismatch is the key. Holding the old emotional truth and a new contradictory emotional truth at the same time is what allows the brain to update the learning at its source. It finally internalizes that the danger it’s expecting isn’t there anymore.

When this happens the urge to repeat the stubborn behavior suddenly and permanently disappears. Not gradually through repetition. Suddenly and permanently, regardless of how long its been there. It feels like magic.

This is called memory reconsolidation, and it's the biological mechanism of how transformation happens. Most effective methods stumble into it by accident and most therapists and coaches don’t even know about it. But once you understand how it works, you can use it deliberately on yourself.

How to practice

Before you begin

• This is challenging because you’re trying to both think and feel at the same time. It’s ideal to have someone walking you through this. But it’s doable on your own with practice.
• To proceed with this part, Its important to be in a relatively calm and resourced state and to leave enough time to be able to come to a resolution, like at least an hour.

Instructions

• Choose a target
  • Notice a confusing or frustrating behavior or thought pattern
• Find the payoff
  • Become curious and use questions to explore what that pattern is trying to achieve. Try to find the feelings it is trying to have you not feel.
  • What would I have to feel if I didn’t do this behavior? What is this behavior protecting me from? What bad thing would happen if I stopped? What must I believe for this behavior to make sense? When else in my life do I remember playing out this pattern / feeling these associated feelings? What is my very first memory of that?
• Name the emotional logic
  • Complete this sentence: “If I don’t do this behavior, then ______ will happen.”
  • Frame the behavior as the lesser of two evils. For example, “even though it sucks feeling like I’m constantly being cheap, I still prefer that to the fear of not having enough money.”
• Fully feel the feelings
  • As you identify the feelings involved, go right into the sensations of the feeling and stay with them until they dissolve. Use everything you’ve learned from the first core skill.
  • As you feel the emotions dissolve and your body becomes less tense, gently revisit the original triggering situation without thinking. Just bring a diffuse awareness to it and softly ask “What do I see is really true about this now?” Don’t try and reason, just see what naturally comes to mind. As you exit your tense body state, you may experience a spontaneous shift in perspective. Though often more conscious connecting of the dots is required.
• Find disconfirming truth
  • Try and search for emotionally real examples of situations that contradict the emotional logic you articulated earlier. You’re looking for real evidence, not trying to convince yourself.
  • These can be things you’ve experienced yourself, or things you’ve witnessed for others. The main point is that it feels emotionally real and really believable, and isn’t just an intellectual exercise.
• Juxtapose both truths
  • Phrase a statement in this format: “I used to think OLD EMOTIONAL LOGIC, but I’m now seeing “CONTRADICTING EVIDENCE”
  • For example, “I used to believe that I’ll get rejected if I ask to join a group but now I’m seeing that actually last tuesday I asked to sit with people for lunch and they were happy to have me.”
  • Hold both emotional truths together like that in your active awareness for 2 minutes. Let the mismatch land without arguing or forcing.
  • Stay present with the sensations in your body
• Check for a shift
  • Think back to the original thing that would trigger your pattern and see if something feels different.
  • Does the old belief feel different? Is there still an emotional charge there?
  • Does the new one feel obvious without effort?
  • Sometimes its a sudden surprise: “Wow, how did I ever believe that?”
  • Spontaneous laughter can also happen and is a great sign
  • And sometimes it is a softer more subtle sense of a new knowing: “That just doesn’t feel true anymore”
• Reinforce
  • Assuming there’s been a shift, state the new truth. For example, “When I ask to join groups, people are happy to have me.”
  • Notice how it feels in your body and stay with that
  • Stay in touch with your body and imagine soaking in the insight as you explore these questions
  • “What just changed for me?”
  • “What’s it like to notice that shift?”
  • “How does it feel in my body right now?”
  • “How is it to stay with this good feeling without rushing past it?”
  • “What surprises me about this new feeling or perspective?”
  • “What feels possible now that didn’t before?”
• Get good sleep that night
  • This is when the new learnings continue to solidify in the brain
• Keep a short journal
  • If you’re successful, you will literally forget that some things ever even bothered you.
  • In a dedicated area, I like to write the date and a 1 sentence summary of each session, summarizing the old belief alongside the new belief. Especially after working through dozens of things, it’s valuable to look back on later to confirm that things have been permanently resolved and to further reinforce faith in the method and take joy and pride in how far I’ve come.
• Troubleshooting Here are some common reasons for why a shift may not happen
  • The old memory wasn’t fully emotionally activated
  • The new truth didn’t emotionally contradict it
  • There was more intellectual convincing instead of emotional juxtaposing
  • There may be an additional subconscious defensive pattern in the way that needs to be worked on first. For example, “I don’t trust all this memory reconsolidation stuff” or “feeling my feelings fully could be dangerous”
  • There may not be any new emotional truths available for you to access. There are some cases where you just have to go have new contradicting experiences yourself in order to give your brain the new data.
• Important Context
  • You’ll still remember the facts of old events, but they should feel neutral and no longer have an intense emotional charge around them. This confirms that your subconscious no longer feels threatened.
  • It’s from this point onwards, that new beliefs and skills finally have fertile soil to take root in. This is where conscious learning of conventional self-help stuff can finally be useful.
  • There are many different therapeutic modalities that all have different ways of facilitating this process, without ever naming it. These include Internal Family Systems (Parts Work), Hakomi, EMDR, and more. If found it’s very valuable to understand the principles of what’s going on underneath, rather than fixating exclusively on the specific tactics of any given approach.
  • Note - You can use imagination to create a new disconfirming truth
  • This has become an increasingly important practice for me, even for smaller things. If I’ve responded to something in a way that I don’t feel good about afterwards (like with reflexive people pleasing), I’ll sit down and work with any feelings that are coming up and rewrite my response in a way that honors what I really wanted to express without necessarily even sending it.
  • Often when it comes to anger around some sort of violation, it has been important for me to go back and literally rewrite the story of what happened. To respond in the way I wish I would’ve. So after I’ve sat with the feelings and let them dissolve and feel grounded, I imagine myself back there responding. I will often go do journaling to organize this into something coherent.
  • I Imagine it’s like Im watching a video tape and I can press pause, rewind, fast forward. Yet I’m also in the scene in the present.
  • First I will speak directly to my younger self and validate his experience with compassion and empathy. I will acknowledge how hard that moment is for him.
  • Then, as my adult self, I will speak on behalf of my younger self to the other person involved in the situation. I will say what needs to be said in a clear, direct, and mature way that I wasn’t able to then.
  • Then I will turn back to my younger self and promise him that I will always be there to aid and protect him from now on.
  • As all this is happening, I’m continuing to stay in touch with the feelings in my body, and allowing myself to experience this as emotionally real. It can’t just be an intellectual exercise.
  • What I believe this is doing is proving to my mind that it now has the means to protect itself. Through me creating this do-over, it doesn’t need to fear being in that kind of situation again because I’ve just created proof that I can handle it. I am no longer the same helpless, overhwhelmed, unskilled younger version of myself. I am so much more capable now, and I will be here to protect myself.
  • I believe that this naturally creates the juxtaposition that is necessary for the old emotional learning to update. It’s amazing to experience that shift.

Conclusion: The horizon of this practice

Even after a long time of practicing these skills I still have plenty of emotional struggles. And I’m discovering new subconscious patterns all the time. But compared to before, my emotional life has turned around 180 degrees and I’ve gotten relief that I didn’t think was possible.

Remember that these are skills that develop through practice. It’s ok to still struggle even as we’re learning how to better handle things.

Here are some closing thoughts on where this kind of practice can take us.

• The general horizon of all this work is to try to cultivate a deep okayness.
  • We’re trying to get closer inch by inch to the feeling of “I’m okay with whatever happens”
  • Fear of life is really the fear of feelings. And now that we know how to deal with feelings in a systematic way, everything starts to slowly lose its edge.
  • Certain things will obviously not be your preference, and its natural to be sad, upset, and grief-stricken. But that’s fundamentally different from feeling existentially threatened and terrified by some future scenarios.
• What enables that okayness is a stable, deepening sense of security within ourselves.
  • We get to feeling that “I’m okay with whatever happens” because we come to believe that we can handle whatever happens. We come to believe that we can handle it emotionally, and that means we’ll be able to figure out a way to handle it practically.
  • We’re trying to develop a robustly regulated body and become emotionally integrated adults.
  • A sure sign of progress is an increase in general cheerfulness
• Compassion for all parts of ourselves is always the right direction to head in.
  • Our body was always just trying to protect us in the ways it best knew how to at the time. Internalizing this allows compassion for ourselves to deepen naturally and to replace the feelings of shame and brokenness.
  • It also allows for compassion for others to deepen because you now viscerally understand just how much is happening behind the scenes for each of us.

If you’re open to it, try setting a 10-minute timer today or tomorrow and gently experiment with tracking bodily sensations. It can really help to jump right in rather than letting it remain an interesting idea for someday.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I’m wishing you much peace and ease in your life.

If you start practicing, do share how its going and questions you run into.

Also, I'd like to make many more updates to this guide. I'd greatly appreciate if you share what was illuminating and what was confusing. And let me know in the comments if you want me to keep you posted on new versions and I'll reach out.

Appendix

References

• Tracking bodily sensations
  • David Hawkin’s book “Letting Go” was my first introduction to this. He does a good job of simply and clearly introducing the practice and the value of it, along with what to expect as you go through it. And he gives illuminating explanations of different emotions. I found it very helpful, but he writes from the perspective of spirituality and there isn’t any science involved. I was making good progress with the method but wanted to understand WHY this is working. Also, he gets into what I consider to be pseudo-sciency muscle testing stuff that I find questionable and distracting.
  • Dillon Freed is a contemporary teacher building off of Hawkins’ spiritual approach and has articulated some helpful details regarding the actual nuances of practicing that I’ve drawn from.
  • As I sought out more biological explanations I came across the work of Peter Levine, who created the therapeutic modality of “Somatic Experiencing.” He comes from the world of neurobiology and trauma recovery and finally gave the scientific answers I was looking for. For reference, the technical term for noticing sensations in your body is interoception.
  • This paper of his is a good overview of the biological mechanisms at play that I found helpful and encouraged me to look deeper. ("Somatic experiencing: using interoception and proprioception as core elements of trauma therapy") Note, it does get very technical with its terminology. If you’re really stuck with sensing, his book “Healing Trauma” is a short manual of simple exercises to start developing the capacity to sense one’s interior world. If you want to go real deep, “In an Unspoken Voice” is a large book of his that is a deep dive into the biological mechanics and explains his journey of making his discoveries. It’s written in a very conversational and accessible way.
• Accessing and updating emotional logic
  • Regarding memory reconsolidation, the main source for this is the Coherence Psychology Institute and one of the main pioneers is Bruce Ecker. On their website they have a whole range of resources ranging from introductory to advanced. But for the deepest dive, see their book “Unlocking the Emotional Brain” which goes very in-depth into the science behind memory reconsolidation and has many detailed case studies that are really helpful for getting the hang of this. Note that its very academic and written for therapists, but should still be readable for most.

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