The Peace and Power of Feeling Feelings

The reason we do anything is because of how we want to feel.

The reason we don’t do things is because of how we don’t want to feel.

Imagine if you could feel any feeling without wanting to buffer, numb or avoid it. 

You could do almost anything without fear. 

Our thoughts create our feelings. Which drive our actions, non-actions or reactions, which create our results.

This is evident when you consider two people who have exactly the same lives.

One thinks, I never have any luck, nothing works out, everything is wrong, it all happens to me, it’s never enough’.

The other, with exactly the same life, thinks, ‘I am lucky, everything happens exactly how it’s supposed too, I learn from my failure’

The first lives in a perspective of scarcity and negative emotion and then acts from those feelings creating negativity in their life.

The second lives from a perspective of abundance, creation and love and lives an open, happy life.

Why feel and process our feelings all the way through?

When you resist feelings, you make them stronger and worse, that's one reason.

The second reason is if you're willing to feel any emotion, you will be willing to show up in the world in a way that most people are unwilling to do which means you’d  probably have a life that most people are unwilling to create for themselves which is super awesome. 

The last reason that I offer you is because it will give you access to your brain. If you're willing to stop, breathe and feel, you will get access to the thoughts that are causing that emotion. Some of those thoughts are often times out of our awareness. We don't even know that we're having a thought that there's something wrong with us, that we're bad, that we're unworthy, that there's something that we need to prove to the world or there's a reason why we need to hide. Those are all just thoughts. We don't recognize them as thoughts when we're in it. We think that's just our reality but really, it's because of something that's going on in our brain

It's the best news ever. 

So, if you're willing to stay in that feeling and notice the thought causing it and don't try and change anything. Don't try and swap the thought to get out of the feeling. Allow it to be there until you have felt it through. Feel that feeling all the way through because why not? It's just a little bit unpleasant when you allow it. It doesn't usually last very long when you allow it. When you are willing to walk into your own suffering and not resist it that is how you release it because when you are willing to feel it, that's when you claim ownership of it. Don't be in a hurry to do this. If you're in a hurry, it means you believe that the feeling is so awful that you’ve got to get out of it. What I want to teach you is that the worst thing that can happen is feeling the emotion and if there is no feeling that you're unwilling to feel, there's no reason to be in a hurry. 

About half of your life is going to be negative emotion. You're going to have negative emotion. It's part of the human experience. If you allow it to be there, you will create an intimacy with yourself, a trust with yourself and ability to know that there's nothing you can't handle. There are no thoughts that you can't handle. Then and only then will you be able to then release that thinking and then you can adopt a new thinking. When you truly understand the current thinking, that it's not working for you, that's when you can release it and start new and pick a new thought that will ultimately stay with you, that will ultimately change your life, that will become that new pattern. You can't rush your way through it. You can't pretend it's not there but you don't need to because remember, there is no feeling that you can't feel if you're willing to experience it. I am not disregarding a chemical brain imbalance and the place of a a doctor and psychologist. Some of us need additional advice and help. Then we can start practicing mindfulness and awareness.

How do you feel feelings in a productive way?

This is how you do it.

With gentle, kind, non-judgemental, awareness.

You name the feeling. You name it, "I feel sad. I feel humiliated. I feel frustrated." Then relax into it. Put out the welcome mat. Now, if you're trying to pay attention to exactly how it feels, you will l go into the watcher in order to observe your body feeling. Instead of being really at the effect and the resistance of the emotion, when you go into the watcher to describe the emotion, you get a little bit of relief from that emotion. Notice as many things as you can. 

What does it feel like?

Where do you feel it in your body? 

What exactly? Like you're describing it to the alien exactly how would you describe it. 

Imagine I just gave you an injection of rejection. You know it’s just for the experience of feeling rejection, so you are not afraid or anxious. You just get to be the watcher for the next 5 minutes and describe rejection.

Is there a certain colour associated with it? What adjectives would you use? Is it hard? Is it soft? Is it fast? Is it slow? What is the worst part about the emotion? 

For me shame, it's the heat. I feel like the heat in my face and down my neck and on my chest, like the heat of it. Really when you think about physically, the physical heat of shame, it's not like it's burning. It's just unpleasant. 

Now, when you're feeling any emotion that feels unfeelable, one of the best sentences, one of the best thoughts that I've ever had is, "I'm feeling this emotion," whatever the emotion is, "I'm feeling shame because of a sentence in my mind." Now remember, our thoughts cause our emotions. So any emotion that you're having is caused from a sentence in your mind.

Now again, it doesn't mean we don’t want to be having the emotion. I always use the example of grief. A lot of times we want to be feeling an emotion like grief but it's still caused from a sentence in our mind thinking, "I'm going to miss this person. I'd loved this person so much".

So let's say you're feeling rejection. Allow yourself to feel rejection. 

What does it feel like? Then say to yourself, "I'm feeling rejection because of a sentence in my mind. This is rejection. This is what rejection feels like. I'm feeling rejection because of a sentence in my mind." 

When you are able ‘to name it, you can tame it’. Bringing mindful attention to emotions as they arise is a way to shift the activity of our brains. We get to decide and create a sense of acceptance, freedom, and connection that is key to uncovering happiness.

Learning how to bring kind attention to our feelings allows us to not only stop buffering, avoiding or resisting them, it  allows it to be nurtured . To notice the heaviness on my chest, the depth and width of it. The image of a dark cloud right there in my body. Then, I allow myself to put my hand on my heart, acknowledge and connect to to the sadness as if I am putting my arms around a small child (me). I can choose to stay with the emotion and my hand on my heart, and I feel a sense of caring toward myself. It becomes a sweat sadness that I feel. I feel a sense of peace in that moment, a moment of clarity. It’s a’ ah ha!’ moment. This is a beautiful thing.

It does not serve us to become anxious about being anxious. Or getting frustrated about being frustrated. We call this using a thorn to remove a thorn. We should treat our anxiety, our pain, our hatred and passion gently, respectfully, not resisting it but living with it, making peace with it, penetrating into it. Feeling it right through to the other side.

We all have emotional thorns that we try to avoid in life because of a feeling we do not wan to feel. We make strategic decisions to guard against these thorns, we buffer with alcohol, drugs, porn, Netflix, Facebook, we avoid, and we numb and put a protective box over them to steer clear of them. But we can never remove a thorn unless we approach it. Loneliness is a thorn that most of us feel and we arrange our lives to avoid it. We obsessively check our social media, be on our phones. What we resist persists.

The only way to remove a thorn that drives a negative feeling is to manage our mind and become more mindful. This 180 degree shift is approaching our thoughts and feelings with curiosity. The truth is our thoughts create our feelings which drive our actions and the results we get in life. The truth is there is no feeling we cannot feel. We have the power to change our thoughts that create our feelings. This is a beautiful thing.

The truth is some feelings are unpleasant.

Inevitably, even the dark parts of us want to feel understood and cared about; when in the presence of being the watcher of our thoughts or mindfulness, a kind of posttraumatic growth arises naturally. 

While we may spend a lot of effort (and this can be exhausting) protecting or avoiding our emotional thorns (negative feelings), this merely keeps the thorn in place. Only through approaching them can we see how to pull them out and care for the wound they caused. We get to create new thoughts that serve us to feel positive feelings and drive our actions to create the results that we want in our life.

Emotions/Feelings

Fear:  apprehension, anxiety, distress, edginess, jumpiness, nervousness, panic, tenseness, uneasiness, worry, fright, feeling, overwhelmed

Confusion:  feeling bewildered, uncertain, puzzled, mystified, perplexed, chaotic, foggy, or unaware

Anger:  aggravation, agitation, annoyance, destructiveness, disgust, envy, frustration, irritation, grouchiness, grumpiness, rage

Sadness:  alienation, anguish, despair, disappointment, gloom, grief, hopelessness, insecurity, misery, unhappiness, rejection

Shame:  guilt, embarrassment, humiliation, invalidation, regret, remorse, mortification

Love:  affection, arousal, attraction, caring, compassion, desire, fondness, infatuation, kindness, liking, longing, warmth, sympathy, sentimentality

Joy:  amusement, bliss, contentment, eagerness, elation, enjoyment, enthusiasm, excitement, exhilaration, hope, optimism, pleasure, satisfaction

Let’s have a look at everyday life just for fun.

Choose the top 3 feelings you have in a day. Write them down. They may be 3 negative feelings. That’s OK. Be honest. Don’t judge yourself. Your feelings do not define your character.

Now explore the thoughts you have to create these feelings. For example, ‘I have so much to do’ ,I’ll never have enough time’, ‘My daughter is not happy’….

Now choose 3 feelings you would like to feel most in a day. I like to imagine a waiter with a beautiful silver platter. On the platter he has a pile of all the available feelings he is offering to me. Which ones would you choose?

I would choose, self-confidence, pride, and joy

Now explore and write down all the thoughts you would need to have to create those feelings.

For example I would need to think’,’ I can do this’, ‘I’ve got this’, ‘I will show up and get to work’.

Our thoughts create our feelings. Which drive our actions, non actions or reactions, which create our results.