Thanksgiving just a few days away often our emotions can run wild.
And by wild, I mean stress for a variety of reasons – loved ones no longer with us, illness, worry for one reason or another or just getting together with family and/or friends and bringing together a variety relationships under one roof, at times — can be uneasy. Or, possibly you are alone and feel sad.
Or, you are the host and are adding stress on an already tired body trying to pull it all together seamlessly having your guests over.
As a human you are an emotional being.
We have both negative and positive emotions at any given time — as is supposed to be.
Most humans aren’t taught really how to deal with emotions especially as a child.
You grow up with your parents/caregivers/family/teachers/other people thinking they are doing good by saying — don’t be sad, don’t cry, or be angry, worry, scared, nervous, disappointed, you shouldn’t be upset, chin up, here’s a lollipop — learning no coping skills especially if you tend to have anxiety and didn’t/still don’t know what to do with it.
What you resist persists & seems an even bigger feeling in your body when you resist.
As a human you are rigged to avoid danger, in the most efficient way and seek pleasure/comfort — this often leads to unwanted behaviors and habits you don’t even know your body is favoring because it’s automatic and unconscious.
This also can lead to addictive behaviors as a coping mechanism.
Some lend anxiety itself as a bodily physiological response that just happens – you’ll notice heart rate goes up, pounding sensation in your chest, sweating, etc leading into what is known as a “full blown panic attack” and you have no idea why.
Without going into a “full blown” details because everyone situation is different — whether it seems automatic or not or related to a past traumatic situation. Most often anxiety is directly coming from your thought even though it doesn’t seem that way in the moment. And, for the sake of this post – it can be hard to catch it in the moment as you are in it.
Emotions are born from our thoughts not circumstances — although it could feel its automatic and unconscious response and is often left unprocessed. You just want it to subside.
In today’s world, it’s normal to be under lots of stress just with all the technology available at your fingertips and the constant “neediness” of your attention. Ping here, ping there.
It can seem like a lot to handle in the moment.
I can tell you — feelings can’t harm you.
And — the better you get at feeling and processing them, the better your health and wellbeing will be.
The better you get at doing life!
Learning to process feelings will make them seem less intense especially when they appear again because you can’t avoid emotions.
And, if you have avoided them maybe your entire life, I encourage you to just take notice and start to change your approach.
You are an emotional being and life is 50% negative / 50% positive — always.
So that doesn’t mean you’ll never feel that emotion that you don’t want to feel again — it means you can learn to handle any emotion — even strong anxious ones that freak you out!
Your willingness to FEEL is huge.
You do it all the time but it’s usually the Happy one you want or you don’t even notice it because your body automatically welcomes it and feels it — you just feel happy or excited or elated — those are wonderful!
But what about the ones you don’t want to feel 😭.
Like when sadness comes, it’s a whole different story.
You don’t want to feel those but it’s important to as well.
When you are in a stressful situation — sad, anxious, disappointed, lonely, grief, angry, uneasy, disgusted, any emotion for etc — you can learn to process and feel them.
Here’s a helpful way to deal and process emotions that you can practice next time a feeling comes you may not rather feel but very important to feel.
Become the watcher:
- Take a deep breath
- Close your eyes and continue to take breaths.
- Notice where the sensation you feel is in your body.
- Where do you feel it the most? Do you feel it in your chest? Is it in the pit of your stomach? Your throat? Notice exactly where it is – it’s different for everyone.
- Take several slow deep belly breaths (filling the air in your stomach not your chest) — this takes practice because automatically you want to breathe in up through your chest — you want the air to fill in your belly instead. This will calm you, not heighten your feeling.
- Name it. What is the feeling you are feeling?
- Breathe and just let it be there. Keep noticing where you feel it. Becoming the watcher!
- Describe it.
- Is it hard, does it have a color? What does it look like? Is it heavy and dark? Is it zagged, soft, round, fast etc?
- Put your hand on the area you feel it and comfort yourself to know you got you.
- Let whatever emotion there is, just be there, let yourself actually feel the emotion.
- Take all the time you need, but you will notice at this point, it will get lighter.
- Maybe it’s moving, maybe it’s dissipating throughout your body. Maybe it’s leaving. Watch how and where it goes and breathe.
- Raising your awareness to the emotion in the body helps for your human body know – it’s okay to feel this way, you aren’t going to die.
- This releases the strong unwanted sensation and helps processing them.
- This also helps to let it go so you don’t harbor emotions or avoid them next time which often tend to stagnate in your organs. Leading to disease later in life.
So next time an emotion that feels awful. Take a moment, sit down and take notice of it in your body, breathe and really digest it — think of it as the Pacman game back in the day! Sad, hello, angry, it’s okay, anxious, I got you!
We are supposed to feel all emotions.
When you realize you are capable of feeling any emotion is when you will realize just how powerful you really are as a person on this planet — willing to feel any emotion — even the ones that feel heavy and hard.
You are way more powerful than you think! All the things that may scare you, you can get to the other side!
Have a blessed holiday! May peace and light be in you and your family during this time!
I encourage you to try this next time you are feeling stressed.
Having someone go through this process with you is also very helpful so please set up a completely FREE appointment. No pressure, just love and your emotions to feel – completely confidential.
On the call we take it deeper so you can learn and pinpoint the root cause of your stress right on this FREE discovery call! Awareness is everything!!!!