Face Your Feelings July 20, 2015 – Posted in: Confidence, Personal Development – Tags: family, fear, happiness, Life Coach, Life Coaching, mindfulness, perfectionism, Personal Development, Positive psychology, positive thinking, relationships, self esteem
I’ve been thinking about the strategies we employ to deal with our feelings and how so many of these strategies backfire.
I’ve lost count of the number of clients who tell me they’ve buried their feelings about their childhoods, or their failed marriages or the death of someone they once loved. And these same people are suffering with terrible anxiety or chronic addiction or low self esteem or generalised apathy about life. Why? I truly believe it’s because they have unfinished business lurking around in their psyches.
Life IS painful sometimes and we HAVE to deal with it. If we don’t deal with it then it comes out sideways in addiction, inappropriate anger, resentment, guilt, shame, illness and stress. If something hurts us emotionally the very worst thing you can do is ignore it or bury it. This is just giving it permission to hurt you again and again and again. Would you keep walking on a broken leg in the hopes that it will just go away? No!
Ignoring your emotional pain is a form of non-acceptance; it’s like saying “I don’t like this thing that’s happened so in order to deal with it I will ignore it.” But guess what? It’s still there! It still happened! It’s still whispering to you.
The alternative is to find someone you trust and tell them how you feel. Have a scream, have a cry, get angry – feel the feelings and allow them time and space to pass through. If you have no one to talk to then buy a journal and write to an imaginary other.
Most people think that they’ll become totally broken if they look at their stuff- that it will all come tumbling out at once and overwhelm them. I used to believe this too. But this is a lie!
The truth is FACING YOUR PAIN IS LESS PAINFUL THAN LIVING IN FEAR OF IT.
I promise.
So, do something wonderful for yourself this weekend. Find a quiet space and allow the skeletons in your cupboard to come out and talk. They’re just skeletons after all. They only have as much power over you as you give them but my old skeletons had some beautiful lessons for me as well.
Shine a light on your past, accept the consequences and you will be free.
Jo