Feelings Aren’t Facts — What That Means and How To Manage Feelings Vs Facts

Maybe you’ve heard the saying, “Feelings aren’t facts.” Though this is true, they’re still real, and they matter. The point behind this saying is that feelings don’t need to rule your life. Take your feelings into account, but don’t necessarily use them as the only guide to your actions.

I used to let my feelings rule my life — if I didn’t FEEL like doing something I didn’t. If I was afraid of doing something, I didn’t do it. If I felt like indulging in a hot fudge sundae I did.

I now understand that just because you feel something, doesn’t mean you should act on that feeling. We also want to consider facts when deciding on a course of action, not just our feelings.

Feelings are often based on the past rather than on what’s currently going on. This is particularly so for people who have any kind of trauma. When that’s the case, you’re likely to have feelings that are out of proportion regarding something that’s happening in the present.

I think of it like this — it’s like trauma creates a kind of “fault line.” When something happens in the present, it bumps up against that trauma fault line, which causes a reverberation through your system. The way that reverberation gets expressed is through our feelings.