Why feelings aren’t scary and crying is worth it.

The first thing to understand about feelings is that they are meant to be felt. Understanding this one concept alone will change your life. 

We are taught to avoid certain feelings and chase others. We are told to control feelings and suppress them.  Culturally we have learned that to feel is weak and logic is the undeniably superior state of a human. 

This is all bullshit. 

A feeling is a sensation in your body. That’s it.  A sensation.  Having a feeling does not inherently mean something about you unless you give it meaning. 

It’s also the most natural thing in the world. If you don’t believe me then just spend 30 minutes with a dog (or a toddler). A dog is excited for a walk, curious about a new plant you brought into the house, playful with a toy, and content when resting its head on your lap. They can also be sad that you are leaving and scared of a stranger entering the house. You can read these emotions with ease just from observing them. 

I’m a dog mom, not a human mom but babies and toddlers are the same way. Their little bodies are built to feel emotion.  It’s a natural instinct.  So why as adults do we go to such lengths to avoid feeling them?

So now we come to this.  Are you ready for it? 

It’s okay to feel. Everything. All of the emotions. 

The first time I heard this in a podcast I wanted to throw my phone across the room (For more teachings that make you want to throw things check out Kara Lowenthiel’s life changing podcast called UnF*UCK your brain). 

I hadn’t even realized until that moment how many years of my life I had spent running away from ‘negative’ emotions. How many hours I had numbed out on TV shows to avoid feeling sad, how many situations I had avoided attending as a single person so that I wouldn’t feel lonely, how many hard conversations I had skipped so that I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. 

At that point in my life I tried not to cry.  I never let myself feel angry. I always found a way to logically talk myself down from a situation where I was disappointed.  I felt shame constantly, but I didn’t know how to name it. 

Avoiding and controlling my emotions had been a full time job that I didn’t even know I had. 

The good news is you can learn how to feel your emotions. The even better news is that feeling an emotion actually scientifically makes them flow through faster.  The thing you have been trying to avoid is actually prolonged in your body when you avoid it. It’s kind of a low level discomfort slowly boiling in your body.  When you let the full feeling in, it’s like an electric kettle.  You boil fast but it gets all the steam out.   

The bad news is you will cry. A lot.  

I used to hate crying. I never let myself do it and so when I did it was overwhelming, a tidal wave of sadness crashing around me.  It felt scary actually.  So there was sadness and fear mingling and a sense of dread that it would never end.  

If this is your experience too, let me tell you it does get easier. First, you prove to yourself that it does end. The waves come and rock the shore but then suddenly they go.  It also helps when you stop telling yourself it’s not supposed to happen. Resisting the emotion is never the way to go.  

But it does take some practice. And some tears. 

If you want help learning to process your emotions, reach out to me for an introduction.  I promise you, learning to feel your emotions is the key to living the life you’ve always wanted.