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Part II: Feeling What Happened

Chapter 10: Living From the Neck Up

In Part I of this series, we wrote out a full story of "What Happened."

Now we’re ready for Part II—Feeling What Happened.

Over the next few chapters, we’ll focus on experiencing the feelings we were too overwhelmed to deal with the first time around.

Earlier, I mentioned that after something overwhelming happens, our survival brain tries to answer a few key questions:

  1. How did I end up in a situation where I felt so powerless (or vulnerable)?
  2. What did my body go through (how was it impacted)?
  3. What can I do to prevent this from happening again—or be more prepared next time?

This boils down to:

What happened?

What did I feel?

What happens next time?

So far, all the writing we’ve done has been in service of answering that first question. We wrote down what we remembered, and added the sensory details of what our body experienced.

Now, we shift to the second question: What did I feel?

It’s possible that while following the steps so far, you’ve managed to avoid writing about the most painful parts of your story. Or maybe, like it was true for me, those memories still aren’t fully available yet—they may still be suppressed in you for some reason.

Either way, the pain and discomfort in those memories will surface when it’s ready. And when it does, it’s important to be prepared.

Facing this pain is necessary because those tough memories hold some important missing pieces. Without them, we can’t move on to Part III, and write a new ending to our story—one where we overcome the original challenge.

The new ending we'll write in Part III, is a way to give our survival brain the “proof” that we can handle similar situations in the future. It will help update how our nervous system views the baseline safety level of the world around us—and our ability to handle its threats. When our nervous system is able to view the world as a generally safe place, we're able to enjoy the good things in life again.

That’s why the most important part of Embodied Redemptive Storytelling is reconnecting with the body sensations we didn't fully feel in the past. These sensations are the access point to the instinctive intelligence trapped in our fight-flight-freeze responses. We need those instincts to help guide us toward the new ending.

To do all this, we’ll need to revisit the most uncomfortable details of the original event—the places we never wanted to go again. This can bring up a lot of pain. The challenge is, when pain takes over, it drowns out the softer signals beneath it, which can block us from accessing our instincts.

In other words, we need to be able to handle whatever discomfort comes up when we go back into the most painful moments of our lives—so we can uncover the resilience, power, and courage that our pain has been unintentionally shielding us from.

That’s why, before we write a new ending to our old story, we’re gonna explore ways to feel what’s underneath our pain.

Why feel what happened?

For years, I told my military stories to friends, therapists, and other Vets. I described every detail, explaining how I thought I felt. But I stayed in my head the whole time. I wasn’t actually feeling what I was describing.

I was telling my stories from the neck up. Which kept me living from the neck up. 

I didn’t even realize it. I’d spent so long escaping my emotions that I became an accidental Grand Master at it. I could tell stories that moved people to tears, laughter, or shock. But did they move me?

Nope.

Did I actually slow down and feel how I felt about what happened?

Hell no.

First of all, I didn’t really know how. Second, I didn’t see the point.

I thought:
“What good is it gonna do to feel all this stuff? How will that help? I need to stay positive. You don’t enjoy life by being stuck in the past.”

So I kept pretending I wasn’t. I look at old photos now and I can see it—those smiles look more like grimaces.

The idea of actually feeling the rage, of letting it move through me, of letting out that fucking raw howl of bitterness and heartbreak…what was that gonna do except drop me into a pit of negativity that would take me days to get out of?

Then, one afternoon in early 2019, everything shifted.

With my partner by my side, I made it into the places where I’d hidden my grief and rage. For two hours, she sat with me as I stayed with the pain I’d always run from. The black hole of "clenching" in my gut that had sucked all the light out of my life—until I found a way through it.

I stayed there, feeling the most god awful stomach sensations I can imagine anyone feeling. It was like being stabbed with a hot knife or like I was giving birth to a lava baby—over and over.

The next morning, when I opened my eyes I could tell something was different. The constant low-level headache I’d woken up with for years was half gone. Over the next few weeks, the stomach pain I’d lived with for a decade also dropped by 50%. It felt strange—like a part of me was missing.

It was such a change that I felt like less of a person. It was almost like holding onto that grief had given my life meaning. Like it was proof that I hadn’t forgotten the people I lost. Proof that I honored them. 

And it was an excuse to be the way that I was. That grief had become part of my identity. 

I had bent my life around not facing that darkness for so long that I didn't recognize the relaxed face I was seeing in the bathroom mirror.

Who was I now without that black hole Badge of Honor?

That’s a story for another time. But those two hours showed me how necessary it was to get better at feeling my feelings. I saw how much I’d avoided facing my deepest pain—and how little I knew about how to face it.

So I made it my mission to learn how to "feel every truth in my body." I realized that to feel better, I needed to learn how to better feel.

The next two chapters in Part II are about strategies to help you do that—at your own pace.

Starting with Chapter 11: Breathing Across Time

Let’s keep going.