How to Feel Your Feelings: Meeting Shame

How To Feel Your Feelings is a monthly space where we learn how to feel and heal. 

Each session explores a different theme: a specific emotion, inner experience or technique. You’re welcome to attend one or many. Each one is a complete journey in itself. 

This month, we are exploring shame. 

Shame is the invisible driver of many modern maladies: the inner critic, self-judgement, self-sabotage.

Healing this dimension can be so freeing. Imagine life without the inner critic! (Or at least a quieter one). 

We often try to overcome shame with willpower or reason. But it doesn’t work, because shame doesn’t live in the mind. It lives in the body.

Real relief comes, not by fixing or changing it, but by allowing it.

When we meet shame with presence, it can soften and release. And in its place, we find something deeper: a natural authenticity that’s not afraid to be seen.

We will explore:

• What shame really is
• How shame shapes our identity
• How to feel shame without collapsing into it
• How allowing shame can reveal authenticity

When you fully feel an emotion, it moves, softens and transforms.

• Anger becomes strength
• Fear becomes courage
• Shame becomes authenticity

This is how we access the wholeness, freedom, and aliveness we’re really longing for.

Not by bypassing the pain. But by learning how to meet it, feel it, and let it flow.

If you want to feel better, get better at feeling.

Your feelings live in your body. So I take a body-based approach that emphasises the direct experience of the body here and now.

My approach is trauma-informed, prioritising the safety and wellbeing of participants above all else.

Common advice on how to feel - ‘Just let it be as it is’ or ‘just allow’ - is not (in my experience) sufficient to deeply feel and heal.

It’s too passive. These lost parts of us need more than just being watched.

I try to give very precise and clear guidance on *exactly* how to feel.

In particular, paying loving attention to the invisible parts of you that are understandably hesitant to approach certain emotions that may have been unsafe to allow in the past.

You’ll learn very specific skills, including:

• What a feeling actually is
• What it means to feel a feeling fully
• Techniques to feel more fully and deeply
• How to feel safe enough to feel big feelings
• How to notice resistance and protector parts

This is a safe, confidential, non-judgemental space where the golden rule is a complete allowing of all the parts of you.

We will be exploring different exercises and techniques to help you:

• Connect safely to the body
• Understand what you’re feeling
• Let emotions process and release
• Notice unhelpful patterns
• Gently unwind resistance

Note: this is a group class, so we won’t be diving deeply into overly difficult emotions for the sake of everyone’s safety. We will be practicing foundational skills in safe ways that you can incorporate into your life.

All the exercises are optional, there is no obligation.

My name is Ben, I’m a somatic therapist based in Brighton.

On my own journey recovering from alcoholism, I discovered the power of feeling as a direct path to healing. Now, I help others to do the same.

Everything I offer is rooted in my own personal experience of deeply feeling and healing.

Learn more: www.drunkenbuddha.net

“The workshop was incredibly valuable. It was a joy to do with others and the hard parts were held with compassion and support.”

“Ben really knows his stuff. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to know - exactly - how to ‘just be with’ your feelings.”

“A warm, honest space with excellent explorations of feelings. I appreciated the humour and inclusivity of the space. The work is deep, yet the space felt light and safe for gentle exploration.”

“A very well-held, safe space with a great atmosphere for processing anger in a constructive way.”

Also check out other Workshops in Brighton and Hove, Meetups in Brighton and Hove.