What Are You
Actually Feeling?

For the feelings that keep returning, in the same situations, with more force than the situation seems to call for

A partner says something small. A colleague makes a comment. A friend cancels plans. And what arrives in your body is bigger than what just happened. You feel it before you can name it. You react before you can think. Later, replaying the moment, you cannot quite explain why it landed the way it did.

You probably know which situations do this for you. The one parent. The one colleague. The kind of conversation where you can already feel yourself bracing before it begins. You have noticed the pattern. You have probably apologised for it, or hidden it, or promised yourself you will not do it that way next time. And then next time arrives, and you do it that way again.

The question this guide walks you through is not what am I feeling. Most of us can answer that. The more useful question is what the feeling is responding to. Is it the moment in front of you, or a feeling sitting underneath that the moment touched, or an earlier time your body has not finished with? A small distinction. It changes a great deal.