Feel your feelings
The next few weeks for me are going to be crazy busy and I feel like I have 5 million things on my to do list. They're mostly all good things, but it feels like my plate is extra full right now.
On top of that, I have a few big life things happening. My son finished his schooling and is moving into his profession full time in just two weeks. It's a wonderful and exciting new chapter for him, but I'm finding myself processing through some grief because it feels like his childhood is over.
I'm also working through a lot of emotions around the changes coming to my own business. Moving away from what I've always known as a Massage Therapist into a new career as a Health Coach along with launching my first course; it's stepping into brand new territory which is very exciting, but also incredibly intimidating.
Through all of that, I can easily start to feel like it's just too much. I find myself wanting to shut down and just escape into a novel or binge watch Netflix.
But this may be the first time in my life that I've been able to prevent that shut down. And it's been surprisingly uncomfortable.
My comfortable place is Functional Freeze mode. I can detach there. I go numb and launch into “Get things done” mode. I'm incredibly capable in that mode. I can tackle a to do list like no one else in that mode. But I also can't feel. I disconnect from my loved ones. And long term it has a negative impact on my health.
Healing my nervous system has meant teaching myself that I don't need to be in freeze mode anymore. That doesn't need to be my baseline. I'm safe. I'm not just surviving, I can actually thrive.
But feeling my feelings as they come up is hard! I'm not used to it! It's great when it's fun emotions like gratitude or love. But it's difficult when it's things like grief or fear.
And because I'm not used to fully feeling those emotions, when they start to bubble up, it can easily feel like I must be doing something wrong. It's easy for me to judge those emotions as wrong.
“I shouldn't be feeling that way.”
“It's not that big of a deal, just get over it.”
“Stop thinking that way, you're fine.”
But there is no “supposed to” with emotions. There is no “should”. We feel what we feel. There is no right, and there is no wrong. There just is.
And I think that's a hard thing for people to accept. It was for me too.
You might have heard that all feelings are valid. But I think a lot of people say that but don't really understand what that means.
All feelings being valid does not mean that all feelings are “right”. It just means that all feelings are real.
When we start to judge our feelings as either right or wrong, we can easily start to stuff them down or avoid them. Emotions are just data. It's just information that something inside of you was triggered in a certain way.
If your arm started hurting and you didn't know why, you wouldn't think, “well that's wrong, I didn't do anything to it. You're wrong arm.” That'd be silly. You'd instead start listing out what could have possibly caused it to start hurting.
And what's fascinating is that once you suddenly remember, for instance, that you washed all your windows the day before and really only used that arm, then it's almost like it hurts a little less. Knowing why you're hurting can take away the intensity.
Our emotions can be the same way. Understanding where they're coming from can be the first step in processing through them.
But it's only the first step. A lot of people stop there. They spend all their time thinking about their emotions and dissecting them. They end up doing everything they can to avoid feeling them.
But feelings were meant to be felt. This doesn't mean that we need to express every feeling, and it certainly doesn't mean that it's okay to allow our emotions to control our actions. Your feelings being valid DOES NOT validate your actions.
So what does it mean to feel your feelings?
First - Just be aware. It's an awareness in the moment. When you have a wave of emotion come up, stay present in that moment, witness that emotion. It's been shown that emotions only last for 60-90 seconds. That's how long it takes for that initial chemical process to be completed once it's triggered. Which means we don't need to fear or avoid our emotions. Once we can learn to witness them without judgment and without jumping into action, they become a fleeting experience.
What makes emotion last longer is when we create a story around it. That story can then keep us stuck in our thoughts and cause us to ruminate, which only keeps us in that emotional loop longer.
Which takes us to the next part of feeling your emotions - Be aware of your thoughts. Your thoughts are not you, they are also just pieces of data. So even if the thoughts are judgmental, just notice them. Witness any story that pops up. Instead of judging what's there, be curious about it. Once you can understand that your thoughts are not you and are not “right” or “wrong”, you're better able to get some separation from them.
And the final part of feeling your feelings - Be aware of your physical sensations.Ask yourself where in your body are you feeling that emotion. Do you have a tightness in your chest? In your throat? Do you notice your posture curling forward? Allow yourself to fully feel that sensation. Gently place your hands there if possible. Breathe in deeply and imagine all of that breath is going straight into that area. Allow your body to move however it feels like it needs to. Maybe you need to gently shake your hands or arms. Maybe you need to stand up and walk. Maybe you need to rock back and forth. Do whatever movement allows for that sensation to have more space. Stay in that moment until the intensity passes.
This process takes practice. Give yourself permission to be a student in this. If you've never learned how to feel your feelings before, then that means you're learning something new. And anytime we're learning something new, we can't expect ourselves to do it perfectly from the start.
If you've been like me and have detached from your feelings for most of your life, expect this to be difficult and uncomfortable. But that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. And it also doesn't mean it's not worth doing.
When we numb from fear and pain, we also numb from joy and love. We cannot selectively numb. We must either feel all of it, or we feel none of it.
And I don't know about you, but I'm willing to feel the hard emotions if it means I get to fully experience things like love and gratitude and hope.
I mentioned at the start that I had been feeling some grief around my son finishing school. I wanted to make sure you didn't miss an interview I did with Jessica Anne Pressler who is a Psychotherapist and Grief Counselor. We talked about the complexities of grief and all the different ways it might come up for us. I've gotten a lot of great feedback that it was incredibly helpful so I didn't want you to miss it!