Feel This

Hello everyone! I hope you’re all having a wonderful Thursday morning!

Right when I think ‘Sheesh! The universe has been giving me so many lessons lately, I’m sure there will be a nice break,..another one pops up. Ha!’ I hope I always feel that way about my life.

I can CRY easily and often so I’ve always known that I’m just really expressive with my emotions. I’m this wet well of feelings and I’ve learned to accept it. However, I’m seeing now that there maybe more to the story.  I’ve recently started to get some coaching on personal stuff and I’ve come to find out that just because I CRY it doesn’t mean I’ve cleared the emotional experience out of me. Whhhhhhhhhhhat.

So. My assignment for the next couple of weeks is to do this feeling meditation to release past feelings that did not get fully felt. It’s actually pretty scary. Surprisingly there are so many experiences that I’ve dreaded looking back into. So I’m grateful that I’ve been able to muster up enough courage to do this. Something that helps is when I remind myself that FEELINGS CAN’T HURT US, they are meant to be felt. They can only hurt us if we don’t feel them. Hm.

Because I’m in the feelings mode, I’ve decided to take it a step further and become aware of when I’m avoiding feelings in my everyday life. It looks like nothing on the outside:  ‘Oh shoot, I feel annoyed, so I’m going to go paint. Or. ‘ Yikes I feel angry,  I need to go to the gym and forget.’ I usually do healthy things, but they are still a way of attempting to alleviate the pain of FEELING, instead of just embracing the feeling and letting it go.

And then I had the craziest realization.

I even do it with JOY! There are times when I have avoided even feeling the DEPTH of my joy. Can you believe it??? Seems crazy I know, but since I’m working more towards being PRESENT with everything I’m doing, I discovered this sad truth.

There are many times when I’m painting, and just as I’m settling in and feeling the warm elation of doing what I love, I’ll distract myself by NEEDING TO TEXT SOMEONE RIGHT NOW, or

SUDDENLY NEEDING TO CHECK ON AMAZON FOR A PRODUCT.

I know it’s not like I’m doing heroin, this is obviously much smaller scale. But I don’t want to shut off my joy in any way. If I’m used to shutting off my sadness or my anger or my hurt, it makes perfect sense that JOY could get squashed as well.  What about you? Does this resonate with any of you?

Ahhhhhhhhhh!!!! I love getting these realizations because then I can make a tweak!

Yesterday, I put my phone away when I was making art. I sat in the silence so the only sound was my breath, and the paintbrush sliding across the paper. And. I. Was. In. Bliss.

I’m just going to believe that the more I embrace feeling my feelings all the way to the bottom, there will be more space for clarity, focus, connection and creativity.

xo