It can be uncomfortable and even painful to feel some emotions.
Grief can feel like a hole is being ripped through your heart.
Anger can feel like your blood is boiling in your veins.
Shame can feel like you can’t get small enough.
So it makes sense why we don’t actually want to experience unpleasant emotions - they’re unpleasant!
On top of the fact that they are uncomfortable, we often have unconscious beliefs about emotions that keep us from allowing ourselves to feel them. For example, “Anger is destructive”, “Men don’t cry”, “Only weak people feel hurt”.
The emotion may be uncomfortable, but we often add a second layer of stress by judging, resisting, or fearing the emotion itself.
I'm anxious → I hate that I'm anxious → Why can't I just be normal? → Now I'm anxious about being anxious.
I’m angry → Being angry isn’t Christian → I shouldn’t feel this way → Now I’m ashamed that I’m angry.
So we suppress the feelings. We avoid them. Ignore them. Cover them up. Pretend we’re happy.
All of this takes a lot of energy.
And when we continually suppress, avoid, or ignore these unpleasant feelings, they don't necessarily go away. They can remain unresolved for days, months, even decades. They can stay mostly dormant until something in the present pokes them, wakes them up, and initiates the “feeling → feeling about the feeling → shutting down the feeling” pattern all over again.
What if we could interrupt the pattern?
What if having an emotion wasn't a problem?
What if we could experience our emotions without making the experience itself another source of stress?
What if we didn't have to make the feeling go away?
What if we could simply allow ourselves to feel it?
Maybe we can begin by saying:
“Okay. This is what I'm feeling right now.”
We can get curious about the experience instead of immediately judging it.
What am I feeling?
What does this feel like in my body?
Can I allow myself to experience this without needing to change it right now?
Maybe we don't have to fix the feeling.
Maybe we don't have to justify it.
Maybe we can simply allow ourselves to feel what we feel.
Because when we stop fighting, resisting, or suppressing what we're feeling, we don't have to spend so much energy trying not to feel it.
Maybe the goal isn't to never feel uncomfortable emotions.
Maybe it's to learn that an uncomfortable feeling doesn't automatically mean there's a problem that needs to be fixed.
If this is something you recognize in yourself, this is the kind of work I do with clients.
Here’s to calming stress at the source.
With heart,
Louise
The Stress Experts
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