How to Get Your Heart and Your Brain on the Same Page

Curiosity can help you bridge the gap between intellectual understanding and emotional reality

Photo by Alex Radelich on Unsplash

I know better than this. Why am I still so stuck in my feelings? We’ve all been there — in that uncomfortable space between knowing something to be true, but the intellectual knowledge not being enough to fix or change the emotional experience.

Maybe you last encountered this discrepancy after angrily critiquing your body for its pandemic changes even after your deep dive into the history of fatphobia.

Or you noticed it creep up after weeks of crying over a layoff despite knowing that your workplace severely mistreated and undervalued you. Regardless, you’ve likely judged yourself and your feelings due to the gap between them and your intellectual understanding. For many, this gap between what we know and how we feel generates confusing and overwhelming dissonance. In these moments, how do we create space to acknowledge our present emotional reality without attempting to judge or criticize our feelings?

Last week, I wrote about my first time learning about the imposter syndrome and finally having language to describe a familiar occurrence. Though I didn’t need the academy to legitimize my emotions and experiences and while…