Learning to Feel Again: Why So Many of Us Don’t Know What We’re Feeling

By Derek Colvin, LPC-S — The Giant Therapist

Most of us grew up believing emotions were something to control, not understand. We learned to stay busy instead of being still, to solve instead of feel. Somewhere along the way, we mistook calm for numbness and strength for silence. It’s no wonder that so many adults—especially men—reach a point in life where they can describe everything that’s happening around them but almost nothing that’s happening inside of them. And when that happens, it’s not just emotional language that goes missing—it’s connection, curiosity, and self-compassion too.

You can’t grow past what you can’t name.

The cost of not knowing

When you don’t have words for what’s happening inside you, your body and your relationships take over the job. It shows up as irritability when you’re really anxious. Withdrawal when you’re actually sad. Control when you’re afraid. And it doesn’t stay contained. It spills into marriages, parenting, work, and health. Because what we don’t feel, we eventually act. The tragedy isn’t that we don’t feel. It’s that we were taught our feelings were too much, or that no one would know what to do with them. But the truth is this: your emotions aren’t the problem. They’re the signal. They’re the nervous system trying to tell the story your mind won’t. When we start to slow down enough to listen, we realize most anger hides grief, most control hides fear, and most avoidance hides shame. That doesn’t make those feelings bad—it makes them information.

Why it feels unsafe to feel

For a lot of men, emotions never felt safe because vulnerability was punished or mocked. For a lot of women, emotions were dismissed as “too much” or “irrational.”So both learned versions of hiding. One turned emotion into rage or silence. The other learned to apologize for feeling at all. And yet, relationships thrive on what we were taught to suppress—honesty, tenderness, and shared humanity. I tell clients all the time: you don’t have to be fluent in your emotions right away. Just be willing to translate. Start by asking, “What’s happening in my body right now?”Tight chest? Knot in your stomach? Hands balled into fists? Your body often knows before your brain catches up. A lot of the time, clients will also use "I don't know" as a way out or a defense, when they actually do know what they're feeling. They are just worried that they will sound silly or not make sense. In those moments, I tell them, "Say whatever is the first thing that comes to mind past 'I don't know', even if it doesn't make sense, and we will make sense of it together." You just need to start somewhere to begin to make sense and express what you are feeling.

Feeling doesn’t make you weak—it makes you truthful.

The turning point

For many of us, the moment we start to feel again comes after something breaks. A relationship ends. A child grows distant. A dream job loses its meaning. And suddenly the strategies that used to work—pushing through, staying strong, staying busy—stop working.

That’s often when therapy enters the picture. Not as a last resort, but as an invitation to remember what you’ve spent years trying to forget: that you were built to feel. That anger, sadness, fear, joy—they’re not competing states. They’re coordinates on the same emotional map. When we stop treating emotions like intruders and start treating them like visitors, we can finally listen to what they’ve been trying to say.

Learning to speak the language again

The first time someone asks you how you feel and you realize you don’t know, it can feel embarrassing. But that moment isn’t failure—it’s awareness. And awareness is the doorway to everything that comes next. If you’re trying to learn this language again, start small: Notice one emotion a day. Don’t judge it. Don’t fix it. Just let it exist without needing to perform or explain it away. That’s the practice. That’s the healing.

The goal isn’t to control what you feel. It’s to become curious enough to understand it.

The invitation

Whether you’re someone who’s always been “the strong one” or someone who’s tired of apologizing for being “too sensitive,” maybe this is your moment to start over—to stop managing emotions and start meeting them. Because underneath all of it—the anger, the distance, the exhaustion—is a person who’s been waiting to be known. And you can’t connect deeply with anyone until you first connect with yourself. Learning to feel again isn’t a weakness. It’s the beginning of wisdom.

Connect

If this reflection resonates with you and you’re ready to do this kind of work—alone or alongside someone you love—reach out at thegianttherapist.com.

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