Being Comfortable with Discomfort
I once had a woman at one of Repotted Retreats who admitted she had no interest in dealing with her feelings. She knew that she had a backlog of feelings backed up inside her and she wanted to ‘get them out’. She was asking if there was a way she could ‘move them’. “I know that they are there and I want them to go away.” She said very matter of factly! I suggested that she take some time to deal with them to acknowledge and process. “I don’t really want to,” she said. “I would rather they just went away!” I loved her honesty. I shared a quote from an excellent movie “The Fault in Our Stars” -
“Pain demands to be felt.”
I love this quote as it explains the demanding nature of pain. We can keep pushing it away but eventually, it will demand to be felt. I completely understand why people do not want to know about their emotions. They do not want to experience the pain and the discomfort caused when they step into an emotional space. The funny thing about uncomfortable feelings and conversations is that you always feel better on the other side of them. I cannot remember the number of times people have said to me, ‘I feel so much better since I had this conversation!’
It is often difficult to label how we are feeling. I love the work of Karla McLaren in her book ‘The Language of Emotions’. She asks, ‘What if every feeling – even shame and anxiety – brought you vital information and wisdom?
Emotions – especially the unwanted and dishonoured ones – hold a tremendous amount of energy. We’ve all seen what happens when we repress or recklessly express them. Karla worked with her Dynamic Emotional Integration® community to create a list of emotions organised alphabetically by emotion and intensity:
This list is genius when it comes to assessing and articulating how and what you are feeling. Using it to identify your emotions and the level of each that you are experiencing helps with awareness. Each of our emotions has a vibration and if you don’t know what it is, then it is very hard to become aware of how you are feeling and the impact that this has on your energy and the energy of those around you.
Having regular stillness in your day will create space for your awareness and connection to yourself to grow. It’s very hard to hear your feelings while you are running around a supermarket or an office!
We often go to stillness when we are feeling overwhelmed or searching for guidance but it is the everyday quiet that will boost our emotional energy. We need to make space for feeling. Connect to your breath and check in with how you are really feeling. “I am exhausted” might lead you to “I am disappointed” to “I am really sad”.
This week, create the space to feel. Start by writing down your feelings each day and exploring what is sitting under them… what is the source?
LISA LOVES:
This week’s best energy product is the humble apple! It’s true…. An apple a day will keep the doctor away! There are so many benefits to good gut health!
Apples contain pectin, a type of fiber that acts as a prebiotic in your gut microbiome, pectin promotes the growth of good bacteria.
I am on a gut health mission committing to eating an apple a day!
