"Emotional pain cannot kill you, but running from it can. Allow. Embrace. Let yourself feel. Let yourself heal.” ~Vironika Tugaleva
When we allow ourselves to fully experience painful or uncomfortable feelings, we are doing work. Sitting with our feelings instead of disengaging or distracting ourselves is work.
Once we accept that we are doing work, we can silence our internal critic that believes that feeling pain means we’re “doing something wrong.” Instead, we begin to understand that feeling our pain is important and productive.
Shutting out our negative emotions is a habit most of us have, it feels better to ignore how we feel than to face it. Unfortunately, feelings don’t go away, they are stored within us until we feel what we need to heal.
When we understand the true nature of our work, we can summon compassion for ourselves as we move through our uncomfortable feelings on the path to healing, peace, and wholeness.
This framework has changed my life. I’ve applied it to my most acutely painful emotions, like heartbreak, as well as milder ones, like unease.
Before I learned the benefit of sitting with my feelings, doing work of this nature didn’t appeal to me. Why wallow in sorrow when you could just do something about it? I wondered.
When I felt uncomfortable, I would find a way to occupy my time and distract my heart. I’d burrow my nose in a screen until I was only dimly aware of the world around me; call one friend after another, repeating the same painful story, swimming concentric circles around my pain without ever diving in; grab a pen and scribble a to-do list to feel the rush of purposefulness at the expense of true catharsis.
In retrospect, it’s easy to see that my “coping strategies” were no such thing.
When we distract ourselves from our pain with a flurry of motion, we fool ourselves into thinking we’re being productive. We fall victim to the addictive high of the quick fix. But as any hard worker in any field will tell you, there is no substitute for good, hard work. Work that gives us a sense of our own intrinsic worth and yields desirable results.
Which begs the question: Given the undeniable difficulty of this brand of work, why do it at all? What is the reward for expending such mental and physical effort?
Different folks will offer different answers. As for me, I’ve always believed that our purpose on this earth is to live our richest, most beautiful lives. Anything less seems like a terrible waste of the gift of conscious experience.
I believe that in order to live such lives, we must live our essential truth. Living our essential truth means making the conscious effort to feel the spectrum of our pain, magnificent and minor. It means giving ourselves permission to feel emotions as they are, and rid our lives of the pressures to conform, perform, and self-delude.
When we act in accordance with our deepest feelings, our lives become simpler. Instead of constantly choosing how to act or what to say—spurring waterfalls of anxiety and self-doubt –there is always one choice: the choice that is true for us. The choice that we feel in our hearts.
One of the basic steps to learning to feel and then to heal is to develop an awareness of what is happening in your physical body. We keep stress and dis-ease in our bodies all of the time. I’m sure most of you reading this have had some unique and difficult challenges over the last couple of years through the pandemic. During this time, have you taken the time to look deeply inward to see how your body is reacting?
Meditation is the most helpful tool possible to aid you in feeling your emotions. When you meditate you align your breath with your mind which allows you to watch your thoughts as they go by. You bring your attention to the space between your thoughts and gain a clear perspective away from the analysis and stories your mind drags you into.
If you focus your meditation on your feelings you can observe how you feel and give your feelings the space to transform. You can use your presence in the moment to see the feeling and move around it. If you feel ready to you can dive into the feeling and feel every corner of it. You must let out whatever you feel in whatever form it comes out, there's meant to be a release. At first, it may feel very heavy, like a crashing wave, but you’ll find as you continue to feel that the emotions will transform in front of you. The emotions will feel lighter and lighter, shifting from being deep and dark to being more comfortable to stand, until finally dissipating. It will transform into its healed state, a feeling of positivity, gratitude, or at least neutrality. You might feel a sense of freedom, like a weight has been lifted, or like you have let something go.
There are three essential ingredients to make this practice effective:
Patience - give yourself the time and space alone, this is not something that can be rushed.
Compassion - feel compassion for yourself, negative self-talk will not aid this process. You need to love yourself throughout it and give yourself all the kindness you’ve ever needed.
Presence - without your presence you cannot give yourself all the attention you need. If you are going through stories in your mind about events tied to the feeling then you cannot be completely present. It might be beneficial to stop and come back to this emotion when you have distance from it and have practiced meditating.
Please remember that this is a practice, meaning that no healing can happen in one transformative flash. No difficult emotions should be taken on all at once, you must feel in increments so you can be prepared and resilient. You might only feel ready to feel 10% at a time, just know that it gets easier as you practice. Feeling the fullness of your emotions at any moment is a difficult but rewarding and healing process. However, some things are too heavy to feel on your own so if you feel you need some support make sure you try this with a therapist or someone you trust.
The next time you are hurting, uncomfortable, or lonely, feel your pain. Feel as much of it as you can bear. Your pain is a necessary step on your journey towards healing. And remember:
You are doing your best.
You are healing at exactly the right pace.
p.s. if you want a song which audibly illustrates 'feel so you can heal' go listen to The River by Aurora. https://youtu.be/P7lE-G1oC34
To explore more, contact me, let’s talk.
Joe Turan
- Life Coach
- Tantra & Kuscheltherapeut
00436643884305
www.joeturan.com
Sources :
-Hailey Magee
(https://tinybuddha.com)
- Lucy Scott
(https://www.lucyscottillustration.com)
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