It constantly amazes me how the scientific community comes up with new words for common experiences. In previous generations, the expression “They have a word for that” was used in describing this.
One that I came across recently is “Interoceptive Sensitivity”. This term refers to your awareness of the feelings and sensations happening inside of you.
Some of you have no idea of what you are feeling or sensing beyond knowing that you feel ‘bad’. So when friends, therapists or helpers ask what you’re feeling you don’t know what to tell them. When you don’t even know and can identify what you’re feeling, how can you communicate it to them?
The truth is you can’t communicate clearly what you don’t know. You can only let others know what you’re aware of. You may even feel numb due to being overwhelmed by so many sensations you don’t know what to do.
If you’re one of those who can identify and tell others what you are experiencing, it’s a good thing. It will help you recover from the affair with less struggle than those who can’t identify those sensations.
What makes it worse is that you start feeling like something is wrong with you or ashamed for being unable to identify what you’re feeling. The more people ask you about it, the more frustrated you become, which adds to the pressure that you’re already experiencing. I liken it to ’emotional incontinence’. You want to get the feelings out, but are unable to.
Avoiding others and talking about the affair isn’t going to make things go away. It’s only going to send them deeper inside of you. It sometimes feels like you can’t control or master what you can’t put a name on. Your struggle with identifying what’s going on just adds to the struggle.
Being told that your interoceptive sensitivity isn’t what it should be only adds to the list of faults that you’re struggling to overcome. It’s just another thing that’s gone wrong.
I want to assure you that not being aware of what you’re feeling is more common that you may think. There are many others struggling with what you are wrestling with.
The important question concerns how you’re going to deal with it. Will you ignore or stuff those feelings down further? Another option is working through them.
One way of working through them is by treating them as if they were symptoms of trauma. It could be that there are other traumas in your life as well that remain unresolved given your inability to identify what’s going on inside you.
In the video, “Overcoming Affair Trauma”, I share with you ways of moving past this trauma and the others in your life. Your inability to identify what you’re feeling shouldn’t continue holding you back from healing. There are things that you can do that will help move you forward.
Keeping It Real,
Jeff
