Neurobiology and the science of memory tell us that humans only recall memories (whether good or bad) that have deep emotions attached; in other words, memories that activate our five senses – the smell of grandma’s pies cooking in the kitchen, the sound of the football crowd roaring in the stadium as you threw your final pass as a high school senior, or the sensation of holding your newborn baby and the smell of their soft skin. These are the moments that get stored deep in our long-term memories.

But sometimes, life can feel as though it’s just passing us by, with very few vivid memories to serve as historians to our lives.

One reason for this is because we spend far too much energy on completing tasks (focussed on the end-result), instead of on the experiences and emotions surrounding the tasks. As many musicians remind us: It’s about the journey, specifically, the emotions and feelings that surge up along the way.

So why is it that so many of us avoid our feelings? Why do we shy away from fully feeling each and every experience, to the degree that it gets stored away in long-term memory? Experience (and many, many similar conversation with clients) suggests that as we age, we catch on to the reality that a high percentage of our feelings tend to be challenging to live with on a daily basis. We are less likely to want to remember experiences, especially painful ones, because we don’t want to create capacity within ourselves to feel the fullness of feelings like pain, sorrow, loss or rejection. While we may experience a temporary high – brought on by moments of excitement and joy periodically – once faded, the hangover left behind is all the more disappointing, as the familiar feelings of loneliness, sadness or remorse creep back in. Even more challenging emotions, like depression, anxiety, and anger (known as secondary emotions), hide beneath the surface emotions and can be triggered with something as simple as a smell because of our long-term memory’s ability to recall moments associated with the five senses (as mentioned before).

Frequently, I find myself having conversations with clients about the importance of emotions and their vital significance as part of our human experience. Some say, “What’s the point? Emotions get in the way? I’ve just learned to suck it up.”

I get it, and yet, the truth still remains: Life is only remembered through emotions. If we ignore our emotions, we are choosing to float through life accepting that we will likely end up with very few moments to recall.

Here’s another way of putting it:
To feel joy, we must first know sorrow.
To feel excitement, we must feel bored.
To feel love, we must feel loss.
To feel patient, we must understand its counterpart, impatience.

The very essence of the Christian faith is that resurrection came through suffering on the cross. Life comes after death, spiritually, and accepting a Savior in our lives requires surrendering and acknowledging that we are humanly broken and in need of one.
There is no emotion that is sinful or destructive in and of itself. In fact, emotions are gifts, sirens per se, to tell us what a particular moment needs from us.
– Fear is a wonderful communicator that warns me to be cautious or to heed insight/wisdom from others.
– Anger reminds me there is injustice in the world, and to not become complacent or overly tolerant of sin.
– Sadness tells me I am feeling loss, and gives me permission to grieve and find grace.

How we respond to our emotions creates our reality. We either build another memory for long-term storage or we send the moment straight to the cerebral incinerator. It seems that the more a person stuffs and deprives themselves of acknowledging their feelings and the reality of their story, the more they “leak” out of their bodies in odd ways. To be numb is one of the hardest places to live; this is the place where life passes us by like sand through an hourglass. Sometimes being too busy and “doing” a lot is a signal that we are actively making an effort to numb and escape the emotions living inside of use. We are fooling ourselves into thinking we don’t have enough time to feel the heaviness of reality.

Consider FEELING MORE in 2015. Consider learning how to process your feelings and allow them to help you capture life, one memory at a time.