Why Insight Alone Isn’t Enough in Therapy

The Important Role of Feeling and Sensing in Creating Change 

Many people come to therapy hoping to understand themselves better. And insight does matter. Naming patterns, making sense of our histories, and seeing how we got here can be deeply relieving and satisfying. 

But insight alone rarely creates lasting change.

Real, embodied change happens when understanding is paired with sensing and feeling; when something shifts not just in the head, but in the body and the emotion system too.

From Knowing to Experiencing

You might know you’re worthy of love.
You might know your reactions make sense given what you’ve lived through.
You might know you don’t have to be so hard on yourself.

And yet… your chest still tightens when you’re misunderstood. Your shoulders still brace for rejection. Your stomach still drops when someone pulls away.

This is because our nervous systems don’t update through logic alone. They update through experience.

Sensing and feeling are the languages of the nervous system. They tell us what feels safe, what feels threatening, what needs attention, and what longs to be soothed or protected.

What Do We Mean by “Sensing”?

Sensing is about noticing what’s happening in the body, often beneath words:

• Tightness, heaviness, warmth, buzzing, numbness

• A pulling back, a leaning forward

• A shallow breath, a held breath, a deep sigh, or a quickening heartbeat

These sensations are not random. They are information. They are how emotions first arrive before they become thoughts or stories. If you have ever been in therapy with me (Lara), you likely have heard me say, “before we are thinking beings - we are feeling and sensing beings.” Our bodies know what to do here, but we have often stopped listening to the gentle nudging they provide. 

When therapy includes sensing, we’re not asking clients to “analyze” their bodies. Instead, we are inviting gentle curiosity:
What happens inside when you say that? What do you notice right now as you remember this moment?

Feeling as a Pathway to Change

Feeling in therapy isn’t about being overwhelmed or flooded. It’s about contact—staying present with emotion in a way that feels supported, regulated, and meaningful. Sometimes this comes naturally for folks, sometimes it takes a long time to feel safe, and other times we have to really build up a safe container to explore this way in the therapeutic relationship.  

When emotions are felt (rather than avoided, intellectualized, or rushed past), something important happens:

• Fear softens when it’s met with compassion

• Shame loosens when it’s witnessed without judgment

• Grief moves when it’s allowed space

• Longing becomes clearer when it’s named

Emotion, when felt safely, reorganizes how we see ourselves and others. It creates new internal experiences. I can feel this and survive. I can be seen in this. I don’t have to be alone with it.

Why This Matters for Lasting Change

Many coping strategies such as; perfectionism, people-pleasing, withdrawal, emotional numbing, were once brilliant solutions to emotional overwhelm. They helped us survive times of unbearable aloneness.

But they don’t change just because we understand them.

They change when the emotions underneath them are:

• accessed

• validated

• felt

• and responded to differently

This is where sensing and feeling are transformative. They allow the nervous system to have a new experience - often for the first time.

Not “I should feel safe,” but I feel a little more settled right now.
Not “I shouldn’t need this,” but I can feel how much this matters to me.

Therapy as a Slowing Down

This kind of work requires slowing down.

Slowing the pace of conversation.
Slowing the urge to fix.
Slowing the mind enough to notice what the body and emotions are already communicating.

In that slowing, something tender and powerful often emerges: a clearer sense of what matters, what hurts, and what is needed.

Trusting the Inner Process

At its heart, therapy that includes turning towards feelings and sensations trusts that people already carry the seeds of their own healing. They don’t need to be told who to be… they need support to listen inwardly and stay with what they find there.

Change happens not because we force it, but because we make space for experience to unfold.

And often, that’s where things finally begin to move.

If this resonates with you, we would love to meet with you in therapy at Alara. And if after reading this you feel you need a bit more feeling and sensing in your therapeutic relationship, I would invite you to let your therapist know about this desired change. Often, we are able to meet you there, and it is great to know this is what you’re needing more of in your therapy. 

Until next time, take good care. 

Lara