Unpopular Opinion: Feelings Aren’t Facts!

I don’t know who needs to hear this (probably just me), but I’m just going to throw something out there into the universe. Here it goes. Feelings ARE real, but that doesn’t mean that they reflect reality. As someone who is recovering from both a mental health diagnosis AND addiction, I’m in a constant state of exploring, identifying, and questioning every feeling, thought, or emotion I have. If I’m honest, it takes quite a bit of mental and emotional energy, but it’s not as exhausting and conflict-ridden as you might think. With that in mind though, a question I often find myself asking is how can it be that feelings are real if feelings aren’t facts?

So, here’s the thing. As a general statement, people like me (alcoholics) are extremely sensitive and emotional. If you find that you disagree or cannot personally relate to this generalization, that’s perfectly fine. Just know that, for all intents and purposes, this notion will be the underlying theoretical framework utilized throughout this post, as it has been true for my own personal experiences as an alcoholic.

Feelings AREN’T Facts:

As I’ve shared numerous times before, the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous has been the foundation for my journey to and through sobriety. The program, as I have experienced it, very much ascribes to the belief that alcoholics, such as myself, are very sensitive and emotional people. I say this next part with all the love in the world, but for all of you big book thumpers out there, officially this concept is mentioned absolutely nowhere in the program literature. It is, however, implied, and because that has been my experience, that is what I am choosing to discuss here today. Feel free to take what works for you and leave the rest.

Now, back to the main point here. With the premise that we alcoholics are in fact highly sensitive and emotional people, the program of A.A., as it’s designed, suggests that the majority of our emotions and feelings often cloud our judgment.

I have often heard “Feelings aren’t facts” in my four years of attending meetings. My personal favorite version of this comes from a gruff old-timer in my home group who loves to say, “Good news? It’s just feelings. Bad news? It’s just feelings.” Essentially, my understanding of these simple phrases suggests that in the grand scheme of things, how I feel about something, doesn’t change anything.

For me, it’s a round-a-bout way of putting things into perspective during an emotional time, shrinking things down to size, and being able to see the whole situation for what it is rather than viewing the situation based solely on how I might feel about it.

While this has been an incredibly useful tool for me when I find myself in an emotionally sticky situation, I find, that it does beg the question: If feelings aren’t facts, does that mean my feelings don’t matter?

Receiving Outside Help:

Recovering from an addiction isn’t for the faint of heart. This much we know is true. However, what happens when you slap on a mental health diagnosis that pairs stunningly with an addiction? Welp… you wind up with a person like me. Yep, I’m one of the dually diagnosed over here.

There are hundreds of thousands of recovering alcoholics that also have a mental health diagnosis. For many of us, we find that in addition to our substance use disorders, we also have clinical levels of Anxiety, Depression, or PTSD. Now whether or not our diagnoses were present before our addiction or manifested as a result of events throughout our active addiction is a ”Which came first, the chicken or the egg” situation.

In any case, I have a touch of all of it. It is like a smorgasbord of disaster if left untreated. Luckily, most of my “challenges” are easily self-managed today, but that wasn’t always the case.

In early sobriety, not long after being discharged from rehab, members of my A.A. home group suggested to me that I may need some additional “outside” help in dealing with my anxiety, depression, and PTSD symptoms.

This came as an absolute shock to me, as up until that point, I was pretty sure that most A.A.s were of the belief that “God” and A.A. would solve all my problems. While some folks are like that, I was privileged to be in the presence of open-minded and compassionate people. They knew that not everything fixes itself through quitting drinking and working the steps. So, off to counseling, I went.

Self-Sabotage:

I won’t lie to you, for those first few sessions, going to therapy was debatably a more miserable experience than detox. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration, but it certainly wasn’t fun. It took a little shopping around to find the right therapist for me; eventually, I found a good match and shared my story.

As I continued to attend my weekly sessions, open up more, and unpack things from my past, I began feeling frustrated by what I felt was a lack of progress. Apparently, my therapist agreed because one day in the middle of a session she stopped me mid-sentence, and asked: “It seems as though you have a habit of minimizing your own emotions, do you feel like this ever prevents you from fully processing troubling events or difficult situations?”

Umm… no?

In all honesty, I had no idea what she was talking about at first. As we began to explore the concept, I realized that she was spot on! We discovered that perhaps at earlier stages of my life, minimizing my own emotions or experiences was a behavior I had learned over time. Eventually, ignoring or denying my feelings was a self-defeating, but also, a protective instinct that I developed. Apparently, I’m really good at stuffing my emotions and pretending like they don’t matter. One might even say I took the “feelings-aren’t-facts” to a whole new extreme. The way I saw it was that if feelings weren’t facts, then they were altogether irrelevant. As it turns out, that’s not at all true, and apparently, I wasn’t as good at it as I thought I was anyway.

Learning this about myself was all good and well, but I still needed help figuring out what to do about it…

All Feelings ARE Valid:

Personally, I’m a little picky about feelings. I only want the good ones, and you can keep all the bad ones locked somewhere far away from me. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works, which is a total bummer in my opinion. Evidently, “life is an equal opportunity lender.” In this game of life, all feelings are valid.

Ironically enough, early sobriety was a treasure chest of all kinds of feelings and emotions, so I got a lot of practice on how to ride the roller coaster of emotions back then. Considering that I was working a 12-step program and meeting with my therapist on a weekly basis, I learned a lot about how to identify, share, and navigate difficult feelings.

After a lot of hard inner work, I learned the importance of being able to allow myself to feel all the feelings. There were some cheesy exercises of naming my feelings, describing them, recognizing the physiological effects different feelings had on my body, and when appropriate, learning to let go. The whole process was beyond cringe, but I learned a lot about myself, which is kind of the whole point.

Essentially what it boils down to is that there is time, space, and a place for any and every emotion. Feelings are irrational, much like the fact that the Easter bunny carries eggs… it doesn’t have to make sense. I can feel tired even though I’m fully rested, I can feel sad despite hearing good news, and I can even feel at peace even though everything around me is going wrong. Feelings are funny like that, sometimes they make sense, and other times, they just show up and show out just for the heck of it. Feelings don’t have to make sense, they just are.

Feel how you feel, and know that it’s okay to feel that way, even if it doesn’t add up.

Real Vs Reality:

Okay, so here’s where it all comes to a head. If feelings are real, even though they aren’t facts, and if all feelings are valid, do feelings reflect reality?

In short, yes and no. See my feelings, whatever they may be, are real. If I feel like I’m sad, then I’m sad. The same goes for anger, joy, frustration, and peace. If I feel those things, then that’s real. What can be kind of tricky though is that just because I feel a certain type of way, doesn’t mean that is how things are.

I can feel angry because I perceive that I have somehow been wronged. You see, while my feelings are very much real and valid, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve been wronged. I can feel stupid, ugly, or worthless, but that doesn’t mean that I am. Similarly, I can feel peaceful, serene, and hopeful even if there is abundant chaos and devastation around me. That’s the takeaway, really. Feelings and facts don’t always line up. It doesn’t make my feelings any less real or valuable. It just means that I should also take other factors into account when analyzing a situation.

Feelings are feedback, and they serve an important purpose. How we feel lets us know what is going on within us mentally, emotionally, and even physically. At the end of the day, feelings deserve a seat at the table, they’re just not the VIP.