Feeling your feelings
The sinking feeling in your gut when the school’s phone number is on your caller ID for the second day in a row. And yesterday it was about an issue with your child. The sensation in your gut is the physical manifestation of an emotion. Have the conversation, deal with the issue at hand, but we need to also tune into the gut and process the emotion to move that energy up and through. This is often the missing step.
Ok, so take a deep breath. Exhale slowly. You are safe at this moment sitting here reading this. You may not like what I have to say but here it goes... To live as healthy adults, we need to face our feelings. The full range. Not just happy, sad, angry, fearful.
The good news: Pure, raw emotions that we allow to be authentically felt will metabolize in 90 seconds (Jill Bolte Taylor). That’s it!
But what the heck does feeling an emotion look like? What even is an emotion?
Emotions are energy. They are triggered by our internal and external experiences. When we feel them, they are moving through our system on a conscious and physical level. When we can sit with them, they metabolize and move through. Emotions are temporary.
From my perspective as an Adult Chair® coach, I see emotions through the lens of the chairs (adult, adolescent and child). When we feel an emotion, we are in our child chair, where raw authentic emotions are stored. To process them, we observe. We allow it.
How this might play out is we look out our kitchen window and see a Blue Jay outside. Suddenly our chest tightens. We realize this bird reminds us of a time we were with our beloved grandfather as he loved Blue Jays. We choose at that moment to turn towards the chest tightening, allowing the emotion of sadness to enter our body. It is all encompassing but we feel it. We do not question it. We do not try to minimize it. We do not attach thoughts to it. It is painful. Our eyes water with tears. We feel the need to sit down because our legs feel weak. Within 90 seconds, the sadness dissipates and we are left feeling like the cycle was completed. We move on with our day.
The more common scenario when we feel sadness might be to shove it away. The thought “what the heck, Grandpa died years ago,” might enter our mind and we latch onto that and think “I already grieved him, I’m moving on.” We get a bit annoyed with the emotion and start aggressively putting away the dishes or even get irritated at the mess your kids left in the sink that morning. We are afraid of feeling sadness because we don’t know that it won’t carry us away. We don’t know that it can be moved through.
This is not easy. This takes practice. The next time you feel an emotion rising up, turn towards it with an open mind and see what happens. Awareness is the first step.
“When we name an emotion or experience, it doesn’t give that emotion or experience more power, it gives US more power.”
- Brené Brown, Atlas of the Heart
Rebecca Fellenbaum is a certified life coach, intuitive guide, blogger (yep, you’re reading it right now), and entrepreneur. She helps women who have “made it” on the outside feel great about themselves on the inside so they can find joy in their lives, kids, and families. Get her free guide: Slowing Down: 9 Steps to Live With Intention to start meaning it when you say you’re doing fine.
