Sometimes I like to think of my body like a car.

The body, like a vehicle, moves us through life. We put fuel (food) into it. And when you listen to it, it will tell you if something is not working properly.

At some stage in history, listening the language of our body, aka our feelings, got a bad name.

‘Feelings’ haven’t always been labelled for the ‘soft’, ‘weak’ or ‘weird’. Because we evolved to have them in the first place, right? And natural selection/survival of the fittest wins, right?

Feelings are the language of the body—and powerful and insightful. Just like listening to our car, feelings let us know something good or bad is going on… or something is good or bad for us.

But be mindful, ‘feelings’ are different to body ‘sensations’ like lust, taste and satisfaction.

Feelings help us connect to others. And they make life exciting, smoochy or just fun.

But feelings can hurt too. They can be cripplingly painful. For how long, depends on how we manage our feelings.

Enter, the shutdown.

Shut your doors, eyes and heart

Many of us have learnt to shut down our feelings because it is easier and less painful than feeling rejection, hurt, grief, trauma... Shutting out feelings (stuffing them down and blocking them out) can help put a hurtful experience behind us and move forward in life.

Yes, something shutting down feelings can and are a coping mechanism. But sometimes emotional shutdowns disable us. We can become emotionally numb—causing relationships to breakdown, we can be disconnected to life, and we can lose touch of who we authentically are.

The problem is that most of us are not taught how to deal with our emotions.

The Sensitive Child

I was a ‘sensitive’ child. I found that my emotions were a tremendous roller-coaster of highs and lows. As an adult I’ve had to learn to manage this double-edged sword. And wouldn’t have it any other way today 😊.

On one hand deep emotions roll through me like the ebb and flow of the tides, on the other hand I can be extremely intuitive, insightful, creative and connected to nature and the world around me.

2020 Mental Health Month is themed ‘Tuning In’.

As a Self Directed Healing practitioner and coach, here’s a gold tip to honouring who you are at the core of you; at your emotional roots.

Honouring your feelings

If you can, when you’re feeling strong emotions, take a moment for yourself. Tune into your feelings. Especially when you are sad, anxious or hurting.

• Breathe deeply (oxygen helps the motion of feelings—to let them pass authentically and quickly).

• Locate the feeling in your body. Where is the pain, sadness, grief or other feeling? Is it in your heart, chest, gut?

• Say out loud, “I feel…”.

• Label the feeling, but do not attach yourself to the feeling. For instance, if you notice a feeling of guilt, think “this is a feeling (thought) of guilt”.

• And feel into the emotion—it wants to be felt.

• Try to keep within the location of the feeling in your body–it might move around, and that’s ok.

• Try to see, hear, sense AND feel the emotion.

• Allow it to be felt—that is all it wants to do. It wants to be able to have its moment in time.

• Feel, observe and let it pass. It will pass.

Our problems often come when we push down our feelings (with drugs, food, drink, distractions etc.), smothering and covering them. Be warned, in doing this, FEELINGS WILL NOT DISAPPEAR. They are likely to compress and compile until they manifest as an emotional explosion or illness.

e-motion

emotion meaning: The Latin word for emotion is ’emotere’, which literally means ‘energy in motion’; e-motion.

Your emotions just want to be felt, to pass through you. That’s all. They want to do what they were designed for, to be experienced. Your mind can observe them. So often we unnecessarily judge or feelings. Stop that.

Feel, observe, be.

Tune-in. Honour your emotions, allowing the energy to move through you.

It can take practice. Be patient with yourself.

The irony of all this is that feeling is actually for the brave! Those who dare win.

If you’d like to shift a cycle of negative feelings, trauma or learn more about Self Directed Healing, get in touch with me.