Throughout this time I’ve spoken about how it’s important to allow yourself to feel the feelings that are arising within, even when they’re really uncomfortable, even when you just want to stuff them back into a box and deal with them later.
This used to be me, I’d feel an emotion risinh and make the biggest effort to squash it, I remember even thinking, I’ll deal with that later!
But feelings don’t work like that, they don’t just hang around until you’re ready again and immediately pop back up, and anyway when would we ever really want to feel the crap stuff?
When we suppress the feelings we bury them, and all they do is cause low level problems within, even if we give ourselves time to process at a later date, we’ve buried them so deep that retrieving them is a big old job.
So the best way to deal with feelings is exactly what they say on the tin, to feel them. This way we allow ourselves the proper processing patterns, we can ride the wave and eventually come through the other side with a lot less baggage than we would have had if we’d have packaged them away.
There are two big problems with suppressing emotions;
1) Suppressing causes pain, causes them to rise up when least expected and ultimately causes more pain than initially, whilst these emotions are being suppressed we are much more likely to “take It out on others” our subconscious needing somewhere to place these emotions will lash out, send the uncomfortable feeling away from us by projecting it onto another
2) Suppressing emotions over and over tends to cause a disconnect with our feelings, this numbing affect not only numbs the shitty feelings but also the big amazing feelings that are their partner, if we suppress and numb our sadness, we never really feel true full out happiness, if we withhold our anger we withhold our ability to feel joy, if we don’t allow ourselves the opportunity to feel disappointed we won’t feel excitement.
I numbed for years, I became so good a disconnecting I would actively say with pride I don’t get excited until it’s actually happened!! This to me was the way to live, to avoid all chance of feeling uncomfortable so living a numb life.
I actively sealed pain, put it in a box and told myself that’s for another day. This meant I never really felt happy, I lived a kind of half existence, always there but not quite.
And the biggest emotion I knew I’d blocked was love, because I didn’t trust I could deal with loss.
Right now as I write this I’m actively dealing with loss and grief, and I’m doing it consciously, I’m actively engaging with the feelings and emotions as they rise, I’m noticing when I would want to normally push them down and I’m choosing to allow myself to sit with them, open to them and let them flow through me, this is one very interesting experience, because all that I fear happening if I allow myself to do this doesn’t actually happen, I don’t break, I don’t crumble under it all, I don’t fall apart, what I do do is feel it, be so so grateful for being able to feel it, I allow it to wash over me, through me and the. It leaves!!! It actually leaves!! Like fully exits and I’m left with this feeling of light awareness of love.
The opposite actually happens when you commit fully to feeling, the feelings don’t hang around for very long, and the biggest feeling I’m left with is deep love and gratitude for being able to feel, to be fully human, to experience it all, for being able to have loved another with such intensity that letting them go is so hard but also so beautifully connecting, and for being so so so grateful for having loved my life with them.
Feeling our feelings isn’t just about feeling the good stuff, it’s about riding every wave of life that is sent to us, enabling our body to really live the whole experience and trusting in the biggest energy of all LOVE and not suppressing because we’re in fear.
As you go through times of hardship, of sadness, of grief and of anger, let me tell you, commit to feeling it, at that moment, you’ll be in a far better place at the end of it if you do.
love and light
Megs
xxxx