Most everyone on this planet has experienced some form of relationship pain and/or trauma. Feeling your feelings fully, which often can be scary, frees you from those past hurts, resentments and abuses. This perhaps sounds overly simplistic but it works.
I don’t know about you but I grew up not feeling heard and not having a safe place to feel like I could express myself. Expressing your feelings or even admitting that you had them was not allowed. I remember watching my grandmother sit at our Thanksgiving dinner table, not eating, and saying she was fine. The next day she went into the hospital for major surgery.
Talk about stuffing feelings! I learned that one early and it stuck with me.
Often when uncomfortable feelings raise their ugly head we want to run, to hide, to find anything that can alleviate the pain, if only for a little while. Many turn to food, chocolate (my personal favorite), burying themselves in their work, or just staying busy all the time perhaps thinking if they keep running fast enough their feelings can’t catch up with them.
The truth about feelings is that they are there to help us learn something about ourselves. They are a wonderful signal, although not always pleasant to experience.
When we take the time to stop and acknowledge our feelings and feel them fully, we can get to the other side of the discomfort and discover the valuable wisdom that is there.
All of our answers to anything we want to know are inside us. When we can be grateful for these amazing emotional signals and learn how to work WITH them instead of stuffing them, then we can start to trust ourselves again. We will move beyond our past pain and trauma. We can put ourselves back on the path to being clear, feeling happy and being free of worry and stress, living our life joyfully, the way it was meant to be. We can get back to that place of feeling passionate and excited about every new day.
Just for today, I invite you to acknowledge your feelings and allow yourself the time and space to feel them fully. When you feel an uncomfortable feeling, just STOP. Breathe deeply into your belly. Center yourself and ground yourself into the earth. Then allow the feelings to flow. You can even set a timer and really go for it for 2 minutes or 5 minutes, really letting the full force of the feelings come up and out through you.
At the bell, breathe deeply, sit quietly and ask what the message is. Find out what the feeling wanted you to know.
If you do this just for today, then see how different your life is by the end of the evening. Chances are you will be lighter, happier, and more joyful. Doing this daily puts you in charge of yourself rather than allowing your feelings to dictate automatic (often inappropriate) responses. You will begin choosing how you respond rather than automatically reacting to situations. And when we Choose to Respond from love, more love flows to us. After all, that’s what we’re all here for, to express as much love as we possibly can. What else is worth anything?
Remember the words Johnny Depp spoke in Don Juan de Marco?
“There are only four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same: only love.”
It all starts with loving ourselves and loving all the parts of ourselves. Feelings are our allies. They are the way we are alerted that there is a message for us. Will you pick up your messages today?
Blessings for a peace filled day,
Maryann
