You’ve been told to “trust your feelings.”
Cute advice.
Terrible strategy.
Here’s why:
A feeling is an emotion… plus the story you tell yourself about it.
An emotion is just the raw sensation in your body no drama, no narrative, no spiral.
When you feel that knot in your stomach or the tightness in your chest, that’s emotion.
When you start thinking, “I’m failing. I’m not good enough. This always happens to me” that’s a feeling.
See the difference?
This is where cognitive behavioral therapy gets it right:
Your thoughts create your reality.
A thought + an emotion = action.
Your action creates results.
Your results become proof to your brain that your original thought was “right.”
Congratulations you’ve just built yourself a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But here’s the wild part:
You can have an emotion without attaching a story to it.
You can feel sadness without deciding it means you’re broken.
You can feel fear without making it mean you’re in danger.
You can feel anger without turning yourself into the villain.
When you stop meaning-making around your emotions, you stop the spiral.
You empty out.
You create space.
And here’s the universal truth: nature abhors a vacuum.
Empty space will be filled and you get to decide what with.
Fill it with something good.
Something expansive.
Something that moves you toward the life you actually want.
The key to breaking free?
Experience your emotions fully. Drop the story. Let the sensation pass.
You’re not bad.
You’re not failing.
You’re just a human, feeling human things.
And that’s the most powerful place to start.