Want to Feel Better? Get Better at Feeling!

Things come into our lives and then they go. Those things sometimes create bad feelings, and so we are grateful when they leave. Other times the things are good and we mourn when they go, wishing they would stay forever, instead of seeing this as the natural ebb and flow of life.

Because these times can BOTH be so painful, we tend to clinch, tense up, against ANY changes at all. Because we just don't believe we can handle any more processing, any more work, any more pain. But this doesn't work. And it's the root of stress and even addiction.

I'm going to ask you to do something completely counter-intuitive, but will actually work like a charm. I want you to sit for a minute, take a deep breath and PURPOSELY feel these feelings. Really lean into them. Whatever you experience, whether a mental labeling (Oh, I feel sad and its seems to be in my stomach area to the left) or you actually cry or rage or feel otherwise negative---let it happen. Let it roll through your body. You may want to put out a yoga mat and roll around however your body dictates---possibly moaning or making other strange sounds as the body releases pent-up emotion. See whatever comes as energy, and try not to label it as "good" or "bad".

Hopefully, this will become a regular practice. When you feel any emotion, good or bad, you let it in. You stop what you are doing and bring in full force....and eventually....what you will notice is that these emotions, once fully felt, will go. You no longer feel the feeling for days and even weeks. You are back to normal or even peaceful as soon as you completely feel the feeling. Now, a word of caution: you can't go into this process saying, "If I feel the feelings, then they will go away!" You can't go in with that agenda, but that is what will happen.

And over time, you will see that emotions can't kill you. It sure seems like they are going to, but it turns out they just need expression. They need to roll through the body. What's ironic is that the holding in or avoiding emotions actually WILL ultimately cause disease and premature death! We all know that now with studies that connect unexpressed anger with heart attack and intense sadness with cancer and so on. Not to mention the intermittent back pain, headaches, etc.

In short, the answer is not to feel better. We need to get better at feeling. When we block the negative expression, we will find that we also can't really take in the good times...we don't completely feel the joy of a wedding, a graduation and so on, because we've blocked those channels too.


See Stephanie's site Work Stress Solutions for more information like this.