Feeling is Healing (it's kinda that simple)

Growing up I didn't have a very good relationship with feelings.

I used to believe that negative feelings were something I was supposed to avoid experiencing. I thought if I felt them it meant something was wrong - either in my life, or more often, with me. 

I would only allow these negative feelings if they "made sense". Like if broke up with a boyfriend, or someone died etc. But even then, I believed I was only supposed to feel them for an "appropriate" amount of time, and then I needed to move on to trying to feel happy again.

With that kind of relationship with feelings, it's no wonder the heavier, denser emotions seemed scary to me.

I would stuff down my feelings, try to distract myself, or achieve a life I thought would protect me as much as possible from feeling unwanted feelings. 

What a lot of pressure! 

The problem with trying to not feel these emotions is that they keep wanting to come back up. 

What I didn't know about feelings is that when you avoid feeling them, they don't actually go anywhere. They just stay there in the emotional energy body until they get triggered and pop back up!

One of the primary ways in our culture that we attempt to steel ourselves from feeling unwanted emotions is through achieving an "ideal" body.

Having a socially acceptable or admired body means we are more likely to be seen in a positive light by others (and ourselves), and therefore less likely to have any dormant negative emotions triggered. 

By now I'm sure you know that the work involved in trying to attain and keep a socially acceptable body is stressful, exhausting, and never-ending. 

So while avoiding feeling unwanted emotions by trying to change our body or outer-circumstances to protect ourselves from feeling, doesn't really work. 

The emotions aren't going anywhere, until we open a space for them to move. 

Feeling emotions that come up is healing, because it allows the stored feelings to be processed through our bodies and released. 

And how emotions are processed is by being felt and witnessed by us, through love.

All what any of us really want is to be seen, acknowledged, and accepted just as we are. And we can give that to ourselves by feeling our feelings: providing a space for the hurt, scared, or sad parts of us to be seen and heard through feeling.  

The beauty about feeling our feelings is we don't need anyone else to say or do something in order for us to heal. While it can be nice to have someone who made a hurtful comment to us apologize, waiting for them to do so may never come. And you're healing can happen now.

It was through a change in understandings my feelings (that they are OK, I can handle them, and by feeling them they actually move through me more quickly) that I was able to open to feeling them.  

And when I realized that feeling is healing, it made the prospect of welcoming all emotions all the more inviting.  

Photo by Evellyn Cardoso