What are your thoughts about feeling your feelings & processing your emotions?
When we don’t feel our feelings, they take over our day.
When we resist them, they get worse. My favorite analogy for this is holding a beachball underwater. When you let go, it pops up out of the water. Or, you could just hold that beach ball in your hands; it’s easy & light, & there is no pressure. We spend tremendous time, energy, & effort resisting our emotions when we could instead learn to process them.
The second thing we do with our emotions is to distract from them. We avoid feeling them by scrolling, snacking, or overshopping; even seemingly productive things like going for a walk, working, or organizing helps us not feel a feeling because we are focused elsewhere. (Does anyone else suddenly need a long hot bath when facing something uncomfortable? No, just me?)
Another thing we do with an emotion is react to it. We think feeling a feeling means we have to react to it, like yelling when we feel angry, smiling when we feel happy, or crying when we feel sad. But this is not true. It is possible to feel a feeling & not react to it; in fact, many of us do this regularly. For example, you could yell at your children one second & then answer your phone with a sweet “Hello,” the next. Or you might have a challenging work day but leave that behind to enjoy an evening out with friends. Likewise, it is possible to sit, feel angry (or sad or mad or happy), & not show it at all.
The last thing we can do with an emotion is to feel it, then decide to process it if it’s a feeling we no longer want to feel.
We do this by first letting it be. We are not resisting, reacting, or distracting; the emotion just is. (This is what I mean when I say that all feelings are welcome.) There is no opinion, no judgment, no should or shouldn’t-ing. We do this by taking a big breath from our heads to our toes. And if you’re a person who hates to ‘just take a breath,’ like I used to, you can say to yourself, “I’m not resisting, I’m not reacting to, I’m not distracting from, I’m just letting this feeling be; all feelings be welcome.”
Next post, I’ll share more about how to process your feelings.
