(This video is recorded from a YouTube LIVE session)
I grew up without an understanding of what emotions are. It wasn’t until I went to therapy in highschool that I started to have a vocabulary for feelings.
It’s so interested that some of us are taught from a very early age to not feel. “Suck it up” “Man up” “Pull it together” “Get over it” “Get a grip” “Tears are for wimps” “No one wants to be around a basket case.”
Ask yourself what kind of messages you received or still receive about feelings. Is it positive or negative?
But there is another option, something that I think is a more loving approach. And that is opening up to your emotions with radical loving and acceptance.
Come back into our senses and train ourselves in our thinking to notice what is here in the present. Over and over. Start noticing oh I have been lost in excess of thinking that becomes easier and easier. Practicing scanning our body and paying attention to sensations.
So let’s look closer into what feelings are…
Feelings are sensations in the body. But they aren’t a part of you.
This blew my mind once I started to understand this: you can CHOOSE the way you feel. What creates your feelings are the thoughts that you think.
7 Ways to befriend your emotions:
Recognize that I am feeling something – admit that you’re having an emotional response.
Feel the feeling in your body
Create a non-judgmental space for yourself.
Name the feeling
Feel it some more
Express it in a healthy way
What do I need to release it? Ask yourself what do I really want to be feeling?
This process begins with this powerful question:
WHAT AM I UNWILLING TO FEEL?
