The ability to feeeeeeeel
I speak a lot about embracing and understanding our emotions and this is because it’s been such a big part of my healing journey. Not allowing and accepting my feelings caused me to feel regularly overwhelmed and often overthinking because I was unsure of what it was I actually wanted. I’d be reactive and defensive which led to resentment in a lot of my relationships and unfulfilled in how I was living my life, when I had everything I thought I wanted.
When I first got told by my meditation teacher to actually let my feelings come up to the surface, I was so resistant. I’d spent so long pushing my feelings down that I was nervous as to what feelings were going to come up for me. Also, a big narrative in today’s society is to just get on with things which I’d fully absorbed and the thought of taking time to feel felt so unproductive and a complete waste of time to me. Most of my efforts at that time were spent achieving and ‘doing’ things and I really couldn’t see what there was to gain from bringing up emotions I’d long ago stuffed down. I had so much hesitancy around allowing myself to fully feeeeel into the truth of my experience, as though if I let my feelings in I’d be a big emotional blob that never got anything done ever again. But the opposite was true.
Resisting what we truly feel requires SO much energy and effort, it’s exhausting. As Abraham Hicks says ‘What you resist, persists’. Avoiding your emotions doesn’t get rid of them, they just continue to simmer until eventually they erupt at usually the most inconvenient and inconsiderate of times. But when we accept our emotions their grip on us begins to loosen. When we start to detach from the story we’ve created around the emotion and stop labelling certain emotions as good and others as bad, the tension around them dissolves. We start to notice that emotions are simply sensations in the body. They have a location, a temperature, a weight. Our awareness zooms out and we realise that we are not actually consumed by these emotions, they are just one part of our experience.
Traumatic experiences, no matter how big or small, can cause your nervous system to regularly get stuck in survival mode. The smallest of things can trigger this. And when you’re operating from your sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight mode), looking at your feelings can add more confusion and distress to an already overworked system. So, in order to get to a place where you can embrace your emotions you actually need to feel safe in your body first. You have to trust that your nervous system and mind can handle all that comes up.
This process takes some time but if you continue to soothe your nervous system, let your mind know that you are safe and develop emotional awareness; you start to heal from the difficult experiences you’ve had and the painful memories you’ve associated with them. When you become triggered, with the right tools and practice, rather than reacting in ways which are unconscious and not in support of your growth you learn how to let your mind and body know that the event is no longer happening, you no longer need to be on high alert and that it’s ok for you to rest. From this place of ease and clarity you can now be conscious in how you decide to show up… and that’s when things can get really interesting.
The healing, freedom and joy you get from developing the ability to fully feel and process your emotions is life-changing. But like I said, it does take the right tools, practice and consistency.
Which is why I created my online 1:1 program RISE. It is 12 weeks of deep inner work providing you with all you need to continue your healing journey well beyond our time together.
If you’d like to know more, please reach out :)