Trust Yourself to Feel, Recover Your Energy

Yesterday, I wrote about how coronavirus had me scared, worried, and grieving - and that it was okay.

Today, I feel clearer, focused, and motivated - I know will be creating at a higher quality today because I felt deeply yesterday. I’m still scared and worried and grieving, but I’ve given it a space to be, and I’m not pushing it away.

I let myself be yesterday. I just trusted that my body needed to slow down, pause, and feel what it needed to.

I could afford to do so, so why not allow myself that? Why do I have to shift my perspective right away? Why is it so uncomfortable to do “nothing” but feel? Why do I feel I “should” be doing something instead?

Why are we so judgmental of ourselves for resting, for being with our feelings?

Why do we call it “wallowing” as though its a bad thing - a luxury? Animals wallow to keep cool, avoid insects, and to relax. Why is it framed as indulgent for humans to just be? When are we allowed to be with our feelings? Isn’t a pandemic an appropriate time?

I think its because we don’t know how to be with our feelings, so we can get trapped. The perspective here is that feelings are scary, uncontrollable, and will trap you. Then add in the judgment and guilt that our anxious culture creates around just resting and being, and then we’re in the guilt trap for even longer.

We don’t trust ourselves to feel safely. Most of us aren’t taught how to do that - so of course it’s avoided.

It’s not the feelings that trap you, it’s the shame we create around resting. We push down the feelings and keep moving, keep moving. Until we burnout and/or breakdown - that’s when our bodies force us to listen.

What let’s me slow down to hold feelings AND then make quality progress?

I have been learning to be with emotions for others as a coach, and also for myself via therapy.

I trust that if I let myself (and my clients) sit with the feeling, we release the energy we were spending on worry or fear and transform it into energy for our work. We’re not doing nothing, we’re processing. We are trusting ourselves to feel, and in doing so we recover, we shift, we ‘bounce back’ on the schedule our bodies can handle.

Slow down in order to speed up (and prevent burnout): listen to your body, name the physical sensation (tightness in my throat, lightness on my shoulders, butterflies in my stomach, tingling, etc). This acknowledgement of your body’s signals are a great practice to let emotions move through us, and then return to what you were doing with greater clarity.