A lot of what’s been coming up recently with clients is not allowing ourselves to feel our feelings so I thought I’d share some thoughts about it.
We feel (or are conditioned to believe) that we’re not allowed to be angry, nor be sad, that we’re not allowed to grieve, that we are not allowed to feel hurt, that we’re not allowed to be fed up, that we’re not allowed to complain because complaining feels like it’s been ungrateful.
It’s that not allowing ourselves to feel the way that we feel that start to cause this misalignment in our body. It’s that voice that we’re constantly telling to be quiet – that constant noise, those feelings in our body that are there but we’re trying hard to ignore.
It’s all of that stuff that we’re doing all the time. And that can lead to all sorts of issues that can lead to much more serious issues around such as stress and overwhelm. It can lead to more serious mental health issues because you’re not allowing yourself to feel that.
There’s a phenomena called spiritual bypassing where we’re taught we can just think out way out of situations through sending ‘love and light’, thinking positively, told to let go of everything or forgive everyone without complete disregard to how we actually feel. When we go into spiritual bypass and neglect to recognise how we feel we become out of balance.
I do 100% believe in the power of positivity and the power of gratitude and the power of affirmations. But I think there’s all the ‘stuff’ underneath that we actually need to work through too. That happens by allowing ourselves to feel those feelings.
Once you allow yourself to feel those feelings or have an awareness that you have these feelings and have an awareness that they’re there, you can start noticing the words that are coming up, noticing how it’s feeling in your body, noticing that it’s impacting on your life. Then you can then start to work through it and processing it. It’s at this point you can then move on with your life.
I know personally how important that’s been for me to work through a lot of the things that are there and how by working through that it’s had a massive impact on the rest of my life and how I live and how I feel about myself and how I feel about others and impacts on my work.
It’s so vital that we worked through those things. A helpful tool for you to try next week would be to journal these feelings. If you start to notice things that you’re feeling in a specific way and it feels uncomfortable (i.e. that you feeling angry, fed up, frustrated etc), write it all down and write it down as much of the detail as you can. There’s so much power in that writing and lots of research evidence around writing. Write everything down that’s coming into your conscious thought like a stream of words, letters, thoughts, images, memories etc.
The power is in the detail. Detail that uncomfortable feeling – how it’s feeling in your body. If you have an image – draw or detail it. If you have thoughts – what are there? If it’s a conversation – write down the details of it. It could be something that’s been brought for another time – write about it. There is so much therapeutic value in the detail. Write down every single detail you possibly can about what it is you are feeling. And then my advice is burn it. This is a stream of your conscious thoughts. And if you know that no one will ever read them… then you can really let it go on that paper.
I’d love to know your thoughts on this and if this is something you can do.
Much love, Tricia xxx
