Feeling feelings can be hard!

I love this picture, which of course I found somewhere on Facebook. The main point that I would like to elaborate on a bit here is the idea that it is important to allow ourselves to feel what we feel.

There are times that people, in their efforts to be supportive or helpful, have invalidated what I'm feeling. It isn't because they don't care about how I feel, but it's because so many of us have a difficult time sitting with uncomfortable or undesirable emotions, and it's not easy to see someone we do care about suffer.

But I want you to understand: feelings are not negative or positive. They aren't good or bad. When we start thinking of certain emotions as "bad," then what happens? When we experience them, we try to hurry up and get back to the good feelings. We might deny what we're feeling. We might suppress it, or avoid it. Whatever we do to get away from it, I promise you, it is not helpful.

So when I realized how icky it made me feel when people encouraged me to push aside those distressing or painful feelings, I decided I needed to refigure my approach to managing. Expressing how I was feeling was healthy. But trying to force myself to feel happy or content or peaceful when I was still in the middle of those feels was not helpful. And sometimes only made me feel worse--so on top of the painful emotion I had, I was also feeling bad about feeling bad!

My process now is different. I still express when I'm feeling some kinda way. Even if I can't quite put my finger on it, because sometimes (let's be real!), I'm not even sure WHAT I'm feeling at the time. But getting it out is healthy. Journaling. Drawing. Dancing. Talking. Singing. Crying. Whatever helps externalize the emotion without amplifying it or causing more harm. I allow myself to sit with it. I honor it, because it is valid, even if it doesn't make sense!

Once I started doing this, it became easier to honor my emotional experiences rather than trying to rush through the uncomfortable ones. Don't get me wrong--sometimes it is hard to sit with a painful emotion. Some feelings are extremely difficult. But the last part of this process is recognizing that I don't have to stay with that feeling. I can visit, but I don't have to live there. Each of us gets to decide how long we need to sit with a particular feeling, because each of us is different, and our process is going to be different.

So, while sitting with certain feelings can be hard, it's healthy for us to develop strategies that allow us to honor our emotions, sit with them as long as we need to, then move on. Often once we have a little distance from the emotional experience, we begin to have a clearer understanding of what we were feeling, and we can reflect on the experience to gain better understanding about ourselves moving forward. It's all about self-awareness, and self-love.

The graphic above also provides excellent tips about being mindful of the stories we might tell ourselves when particular emotions arise. It's good to be aware of these kinds of thought-patterns, because some patterns are very challenging to break, and the ones that don't help us tend to harm us or hold us in the feeling longer than we need to visit. I'm happy to discuss more about the narratives we tell ourselves about ourselves, and help you to explore ways of revising your own processes so that you can more healthily honor your emotions. Contact me if you would like to chat more about this!