Why is it Important to Acknowledge Your Own Feelings?

Acknowledging your own feelings refers to the ability to recognize and understand your own emotions. It involves paying attention to what you are feeling, accurately labeling them, and acknowledging the role they play in your thoughts and behaviors.

Acknowledging your own feelings is important for self-awareness, communication, decision-making, and mental and physical health. It helps you to better understand and manage your emotional health, leading to overall mental well-being.

In this post, we are going to explore the benefits of acknowledging your own feelings and provide you with a handful of actionable ways to navigate through them.

What does it mean to acknowledge your own feelings?

To acknowledge your feelings means to recognize and accept your emotions as they arise. In other words, it is paying attention to your emotions, understanding what they mean, and finding healthy ways to cope with them. 

Acknowledging your feelings is an important part of your emotional health and self-awareness, and eventually, it can help you to better understand and manage your emotions.

The benefits of acknowledging your own feelings

Why is it important to acknowledge your own feelings?

Taking care of your feelings is as important as taking care of your physical health. 

Recognizing and accepting your own emotions, or acknowledging your feelings, can have a number of benefits, such as:

• Improved self-awareness
• Improved communication with others
• Improved decision-making
• Improved mental and physical health

Let’s take a closer look at each of them.

Improved self-awareness

Acknowledging your own feelings helps you to become more self-aware, which can improve your understanding of your own strengths, weaknesses, and values.

For example, if you are feeling overwhelmed and anxious, acknowledging these emotions can help you to understand the cause of your stress and take steps to address it.

If you are one day before the deadline of submitting your project, you may feel overwhelmed and anxious with the workload and tends to make wrong decisions. The steps you can take might include asking for help from a classmate or negotiating an extension of the deadline from your professor.

Improved communication with others

By acknowledging your own feelings, you can better communicate with others about your needs, wants, and emotions. This can improve your relationships and help you to build stronger connections with others.

if you are feeling upset after a disagreement with a colleague, the last thing you want is to get into a confrontation. Here, you should take a step back by acknowledging your emotions.

Once you acknowledge how you feel and understand why you are feeling the way you feel, you will be able to organize your thoughts and better to communicate your perspectives. This can be effective in resolving conflict.

Improved decision-making

Acknowledging your own feelings can make you aware of your state of mind. It helps you make more informed decisions, as you are better able to take into account your own emotional state and needs.

Without acknowledging our own emotions, we may make decisions based on impulse, incomplete or inaccurate information. This can lead to poor decision-making and regret.

Improved mental and physical health

Acknowledging your own feelings can also have positive effects on your mental and physical health. It can help you to manage stress and negative emotions, which can lower your risk for mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. 

It can also improve your physical health, as managing stress can have positive effects on your immune system and overall well-being.

What if you fail to acknowledge your feelings?

Think of acknowledging our own feelings as taking care of ourselves- mentally.

Some people do it better than others.  Ailing to do so can lead to a number of negative consequences, including:

Difficulty communicating with others

If we don’t acknowledge our own emotions, we may have difficulty communicating with others about our needs, wants, and feelings. 

As all relationship builds on good communication. Failing to communicate your feelings to others can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts in our relationships.

Difficulty in personal growth

Acknowledging our own emotions is an important part of personal growth and self-awareness. 

Before a baby or a toddler learn how to acknowledge their feelings, the only thing they would do is cry. Likewise, as adults, we may have difficulty understanding ourselves and our needs without acknowledging our emotions.

This may give us trouble in knowing what we want and where to go. Over time, you may get lost and find it hard to make positive changes in your life.

Poor decision-making

The worst time to make the best decision is usually when we are in a highly emotional or distressed state. This is because our emotions can cloud our judgment and prevent us from thinking clearly and objectively.

Some examples of states of mind that might be particularly detrimental to decision-making include negative emotions like:

1. Extreme anger: When you are extremely angry usually with hair standing on your head and a red face, you may be prone to making rash or impulsive decisions that you later regret.
2. Extreme fear or anxiety: In extremely fearful or anxious states, we may be carried away by the potential negative outcomes of a situation and unable to make rational decisions.
3. Extreme sadness: When we are extremely sad, we may be too overwhelmed by our emotions to be able to think clearly and make the best decisions.
4. Extreme exhaustion: When we are extremely tired (e.g. after running a marathon), we may lack the mental energy and focus needed to make good decisions.

If you are aware that you are experiencing extreme feelings, you should prioritize tasks and delay the decisions when you feel more in control.

Poor mental and physical health

Ignoring or suppressing our emotions can lead to increased stress and negative emotions, which can have negative effects on our mental and physical health. 

It can increase our risk for mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. And eventually,  it can find its way to impair our immune system and overall well-being.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), approximately 18.1% of adults in the United States (or about 44 million people) experience some form of anxiety disorder in a given year. 

Why is it hard for some people to acknowledge their true feelings?

While it is natural to experience a wide range of emotions, it is important to learn how to acknowledge and manage them in healthy ways. This process is known as acknowledging your own feelings. 

However, for some people, acknowledging their true feelings can be a challenge. There are a number of reasons why this might be the case.

1. Lack of self-awareness: Some people may have difficulty acknowledging their feelings because they are not attuned to their own emotions. They may not be aware of what they are feeling or may struggle to label their emotions accurately.
2. Fear of negative consequences: A person may avoid acknowledging their emotions because they fear the negative consequences that might result. For example, they may fear being judged or rejected by others if they express their feelings.
3. Personal beliefs: Some people may have personal beliefs that conflict with acknowledging their emotions. For example, they may believe that emotions are a sign of weakness or that it is not appropriate to express certain emotions.
4. Social norms: Different cultures have different social norms around the expression of emotions. In some cultures, it may be more socially acceptable to express certain emotions, while in other cultures, it may be more common to suppress or hide emotions.
5. Family values: Some families or cultures may place a greater emphasis on maintaining harmony and avoiding conflict, which could lead to the suppression of emotions.
6. Trauma or past experiences: Past experiences, including trauma, can also affect how people express negative emotions. Some people may have been conditioned to suppress their emotions as a coping mechanism, particularly if they have experienced trauma or have been raised in an environment where it was not safe or acceptable to express emotions.
7. Difficulty processing emotions: Some people may have difficulty processing their emotions, particularly if they are intense or difficult to cope with. This can make it harder to acknowledge and understand their feelings.

The good news is, emotional processing skills can be developed and improved over time through practice and self-reflection. 

So, while some people may be more naturally inclined to have difficulty processing emotions, it is not necessarily a fixed trait, and it is possible for anyone to learn how to better understand and manage their emotions.

How to acknowledge your own feelings?

Pay attention to your emotions: The first step in acknowledging your own feelings is to pay attention to them. This means taking the time to notice and recognize your emotions as they arise.

Here are ten phrases that you can use when acknowledging your feelings in self-talk:

• “I am feeling [emotion] right now.”
• “It is okay to feel [emotion].”
• “I acknowledge that I am feeling [emotion].”
• “I am aware that I am feeling [emotion].”
• “I am allowing myself to feel [emotion].”
• “I am acknowledging and accepting my [emotion].”

Practice self-reflection

Self-reflection refers to the process of examining and understanding your own emotions. As the name suggests, it’s like looking at the reflection of yourself in a mirror. 

The main goal is to ask yourself why you are feeling a certain way and what might be causing your emotions. Here are the three basic steps in practicing self-reflection:

Step 1: Set aside dedicated time each day or week. This might be a few minutes each day or a longer period of time once a week.

Step 2: Choose a comfortable and quiet space. Find yourself where you can focus on your thoughts and emotions without distractions.

Step 3: Choose your tool. There are many tools that can be helpful for focusing the mind during self-reflection, such as journaling, meditation, or deep breathing. Experiment with different tools to see what works best for you.

It is important to approach your thoughts and emotions with a non-judgmental attitude. This means accepting your thoughts and emotions without trying to change them or criticize yourself.

Use these tools to help you acknowledge your feelings

Mindfulness techniques, such as deep breathing, meditation, and gratitude journaling, can be helpful in helping you to acknowledge and manage your emotions. Here are some activity examples:

1. Mindfulness meditation

This involves focusing on the present moment and paying attention to one’s thoughts and emotions without judgment. It can be helpful for reducing stress and increasing self-awareness.
Here’s a 5-minute mindfulness meditation to let you relax and connect to yourself, try it and see how it feels.

2. Deep breathing

Deep, slow breathing can help to calm the mind and body and can be used as a mindfulness technique to help focus the mind on the present moment.

3. Body scans

A body scan involves lying down and focusing on each part of the body, starting from the toes and working up to the head, noticing any sensations or emotions that arise.

Here’s an exercise to let you relax and be refreshed with a guided body scan:

4. Walking meditation

Walking meditation involves paying attention to the physical sensations of walking, such as the sensation of the feet on the ground, as a way to stay present and focused.

5. Gratitude practice

Practicing gratitude involves focusing on the things in one’s life that one is grateful for, which can help to cultivate positive emotions and increase well-being. This can be done through activities such as keeping a gratitude journal or sharing gratitude with others.

6. Seek support from others

Sometimes it can be helpful to talk about your emotions with someone you trust, such as a friend, family member, or therapist. Sharing your feelings can help you to process and make sense of them.

Final thoughts: Your feelings matter

Acknowledging your own feelings is an essential part of emotional health, and it can have a number of benefits for your overall well-being. Hopefully, we have given you some actionable tips on how to take care of your feelings day by day, bits by bits. And you are on your way to a better version of yourself over time by following through.