THE KEY ESSENCE

"Stop Managing Your Feelings.
Start Feeling Your Emotions" Elisabeth Krijtenburg, 2025

Most people don’t realize this, but what they call “emotional processing” is actually emotional bypassing in disguise. We live in a world that is obsessed with managing feelings—naming them, analyzing them, narrating them, rationalizing them—but not actually feeling them. And that’s the key difference between healing and staying stuck.

In the healing of chronic symptoms—whether physical pain, fatigue, anxiety, or emotional burnout—your nervous system is not asking for more analysis. It’s asking for more presence. More allowing. More raw, unfiltered experience of what is already inside of you, waiting to move.

But here’s the tricky part: most of us don’t know the difference between emotions and feelings. And until we do, we keep using our minds to try to feel what only our bodies can digest.

Let me explain.

Thought, Feeling, Emotion — Not the Same Thing

A thought is a mental event. A sentence in your head. A belief, an idea, a loop.

A feeling is a psychic impression. It’s often a blend of emotion and thought—a residue, a reaction, a story told with bodily sensation but filtered through cognition.

But an emotion is different. It is raw biological energy. It rises, peaks, and dissipates when allowed. It is somatic, pure, animal. You do not have to explain it, understand it, or even name it. You only have to feel it.

And when you do? It moves. It reintegrates. It dissolves into your system like water soaking into earth. That’s what healing is. Not managing. Not understanding. Not analyzing. But digesting and allowing.

The Body Has a Blueprint for Wholeness

Your body isn’t broken. It’s following a natural process of individuation...

—a Jungian concept that describes how we become whole. How the psyche brings unconscious material into awareness so that it can be integrated. But integration doesn’t happen in your head. It happens in your cells. In your Body.

And here’s the truth: if you allow emotion to move through your body fully, without resistance, you are already healing. You are allowing the blueprint of your wholeness to express itself.

But if you’re stuck in analysis, overriding, narrative, distraction or numbing, you’re just burning psychic energy trying to manage your internal world. That doesn’t lead to healing. It leads to exhaustion.

The Practice: Emotional Tracking

This is where the real work begins. I call it emotional tracking—the practice of following, feeling, and allowing emotional energy to rise and complete.

It’s like somatic tracking, but instead of tuning into pain or symptoms, you tune into emotion. Not the story. Not the thoughts. But the pure, raw experience in the body.

You don’t even need to know what the emotion is. Just ask:

• Where is it in my body?
• What does it feel like?
• Can I allow it?

You might say: “Show me what you’ve got.” And then you breathe. You stay. You let it rise. And you feel the heat or pressure or tightness in your chest or your throat or your belly. That’s it.

Do this enough times, and the emotion begins to flow. You feel a shift. The energy goes from a 10 to a 5. From panic to presence. From chaos to clarity.

This is the real work. Not trying to solve your pain. But allowing your body to finish what it started.

Let Me Tell You How This Looked for Me

When I first started, I treated emotional processing like a full-time job. I would go for walks, and every time something would rise—fear, sadness, irritation, or a mixture of it—I’d stop. I’d choose a tree or a fence post to look at or lean on, and I’d say: “It's okay for me to experience it.”

Sometimes there was no thought. Just sensation. A pressure in the chest. A tightness in the throat. I didn’t try to interpret it. I just stayed with it. Felt it. Breathed.

And slowly, I could feel the energy resolving. Like a storm blowing through. And then I’d walk again. Thirty seconds later, it would happen again. I’d stop. Feel. Repeat. Thousands of times.

This is how I got myself back. Not by fixing myself. But by getting out of my own way and letting the emotions complete.

Allowing Is a Skill

You don’t have to be perfect at this. You just have to practice.
Allowing is a skill. The more you do it, the easier it becomes.

Eventually, I could feel and allow even while talking to someone. Or while doing the dishes. In the garden The body learns. The nervous system rewires. The emotional system starts to trust that it will be heard.

You don’t have to suppress anymore. You don’t have to manage everything. You just have to listen. To allow.

Stop Managing. Start Feeling.

Managing your symptoms, managing your mind, managing your feelings—it’s exhausting. And it’s often just a sophisticated form of avoidance.

What if you stopped managing your feelings and just started feeling your emotions?

That’s the doorway to healing. And it’s available to you every time you pause, breathe, and allow.

Not perfectly. Not intellectually. But honestly. Gently. Willingly.

Your emotions are not the enemy. They are the messengers of your truth.

And when you let them speak—fully, somatically, raw—you come back home to yourself.

Again and again.

This is not a hack. It’s not a method. It’s your nature.

Stop managing. Let’s start allowing.

🌿