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Yes, there is a better way to say hard things to the people you care about. And no, bottling your feelings inside is not a good solution.
In this episode of The Body Knows, we explore how somatics — specifically, felt-sense awareness — can change the way we communicate in hard moments.
We’re often taught to deal with conflict by either swallowing our experience or hurling it outward through judgment, blame, or analysis. Understandably, that puts the person we’re talking to on the defensive. But there's a way to share our inner experience that makes it easy for the other person empathize with us, and turns conflict into a moment to create deeper connection.
So in this episode, we break down common complaints, laying out a simple formula that you can come back to whenever you need to say a hard thing.
Speak from sensation, not story.
When something happens that feels off, we often react with analysis:
“You always shut down when things get hard.”
“You never follow through.”
“You only reach out when you need something.”
These kinds of statements, even when true, tend to spark defensiveness because they make the other person the problem. But before you had a conclusion about what was “wrong” in the dynamic, your body felt something that you didn’t like.
We’re coming back to this sensation. Not what happened. Not why it happened. Not who’s at fault. But what it feels like inside your body.
So instead of, “You always shut down when things get hard,” try this instead:
“When I shared something vulnerable and you went quiet, I felt my body tense. My chest tightened, and I started to wonder if it was safe to keep sharing.”
That’s not a judgment. It’s a truth. It invites curiosity instead of excuses. It lets the other person feel you, rather than fend you off.
However, most of us have very little practice speaking from either this level of sensation or vulnerability. So let’s break it down into a simple formula, so you have something to reach for in a moment of tension.
Felt-Sense Dialogue: The simplest framework you’ll ever need
“When this happened, I felt this.”
That’s it.
No need to justify it, explain it, or prove your feelings are valid. Just tell the truth. From the inside.
For example:
“When I’m consistently the one who initiates, I feel depleted and start to pull away.”
“When something we planned doesn’t happen, I feel wary. I want to trust your word, and I notice that’s getting harder.”
“When I only hear from you when something’s going wrong, I feel sad. I miss the parts of our friendship that felt mutual and curious.”
This kind of language makes space for empathy because it’s vulnerable. It reveals rather than accuses. And it keeps the focus on your own internal world, rather than making assumptions about the “objective” state of things. So it is easy for the person you’re sharing with to want to hear you out, instead of defending themselves with their side of the story.
A quick check: Is that really a feeling?
One of the most common communication traps sounds like this:
“I feel unimportant.”
“I feel misunderstood.”
“I feel like you don’t care.”
“I feel that this relationship is one-sided.”
They all start with “I feel,” but none of them are actually naming a feeling. What they’re really doing is telling a story, an interpretation of what’s happening, often focused on the other person’s behavior or intentions.
If you say “I feel” followed by the word like or that, you’re no longer naming a feeling. You’re offering a thought or judgment that is an analysis of the situation. And when we do that, even subtly, it tends to make the other person defensive. They’re now being analyzed or blamed, rather than invited into connection.
Similarly, “unheard” and “misunderstood” are not actually true feelings. They’re interpretations of how someone else is seeing or treating you (or not seeing or treating you), rather than an emotional state or bodily sensation arising from within you.
A more honest, embodied version might be:
“I feel hurt.”
“I feel resentful.”
“I feel sad.”
“I feel lonely.”
These are true feelings — emotional states that arise in the body and belong to you, regardless of whether someone meant to cause them or not. And naming them cleanly helps the person you're speaking to stay connected to your experience, rather than pulling back to defend themselves.
So when you say “I feel…” pause and check: Is what follows an emotion or a story?
When you can’t name the feeling, name the sensation.
Part of what makes this hard is that most of us are trained to think our way through feelings.
We’re used to scanning the situation, figuring out what’s wrong, and building our case for what we’ve decided needs to be fixed. Having learned to intellectualize our emotions, it can be quite hard to even know what we’re feeling, especially in the heat of a moment.
This is where the body becomes our greatest ally.
Instead of trying to name the emotion, we can speak directly from sensation:
“I feel my chest caving in.”
“I feel my gut clenching into a knot.”
“I feel my shoulders curling forward like I want to disappear.”
“I feel a weight on my chest and it’s hard to breathe.”
“I feel my hands get hot and my breath speeds up.”
These signals are not only worth listening to for yourself, but worth sharing with another.
This kind of sharing is deeply human. It’s raw, it’s real, and its reveal often helps the other person connect with us even more powerfully than naming an emotion. Because they know how you feel. They’ve felt their chest tighten. They’ve had their breath catch. They’ve wanted to curl inward and disappear too.
Sharing a sensation builds a bridge of empathy between nervous systems.
So if you’re struggling to name the emotion, don’t worry. Go to sensation. Let your body speak in its own language. It’s just as valid, and often, even more honest and disarming.
Add a shared desire.
Sometimes it helps to include one more layer: your desire for connection.
This doesn’t mean smoothing things over or sugarcoating. It means being clear about where you want to go from here, not just what felt painful.
For instance:
“I want to be in this with you, not against you.”
“I want a friendship that feels mutual and curious.”
“I want to trust you without a second thought.”
“I want to feel safe being vulnerable with you.”
“I want to feel deeply connect with you, and for me that means sharing honestly, even when it’s uncomfortable.”
This kind of clarity softens the moment. It reminds the other person that you’re not attacking them, you’re actually trying to move to a deeper level of connection, trust, or love between you.
Practice when it’s easy.
This kind of communication takes practice, and high-stakes conflict isn’t the place to start.
Build the muscle in low-stakes moments with tools like the Soma Check-In — “In my body, I’m noticing [sensation], and I’m experiencing [emotion].” (You can read a longer description of that practice here.)
The more fluent you become in eddies and ripples of your inner landscape, the easier it becomes to speak from it before you get swept away in old patterns of story or blame.
And the more often you lead with your embodied truth, the better the chance of others to meeting you there.
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