Bad Feelings.

There is no such thing as bad feelings. 

It’s extremely dangerous to tell yourself this and even more dangerous to teach this to our children. 

When we tell ourselves that anger, pain, shame, sadness, and grief are bad, when they come up our brain learns to move away from them.  Once our brain learns this pattern, it takes A LOT of conscious work to unlearn it.  The danger of this is that those emotions get stuck in our bodies. 

Let’s take your mind and your heart and separate it for a moment to understand.  Your heart never lies.  Your mind often does.   

When your heart is feeling anger and somewhere deep in your unconscious you have learned that feeling this is bad, we often will lie to ourselves and say we don’t feel it. 

You don’t just have a heart and a mind, you also have another power.  The power of choice. 

Let me ask you a question?

When your heart is feeling angry and your mind is saying “I’m not angry.” where does your power of choice go?  Your heart?  Your mind?

No. Neither.  It goes to an addiction.   The nature of addiction is to escape.  And that’s exactly what happens when you form a war between your heart and your mind.   It’s not just alcohol, food, or drugs.  You can be addicted to a belief, a fear, something outside of yourself that will make you feel tranquil.  Because there is no peace on the inside.

My wish for us all is that we learn how to process these emotions so that we can be emotionally available for ourselves and others and so that we can feel other things like joy, and peace. When we numb any emotion, we numb them all. 

I remember a few years ago, I was teaching yoga at a yoga festival and my friend and I were giving a talk at the same time.   I think my talk was titled “The Journey Into Your Soul.”   Or something like that.   I think I got 10 people to come.   My friend titled her talk “Anxiety.”  I think over 100 people showed up. 

Anxiety is the symptom of not feeling.  It’s what we feel when we are afraid to feel what’s true in our bodies. 

Shame teaches us how to heal and where we have been lied to and it gives us a direction to be seen and to not hide.  Anymore. 

Grief shows us how and what we love. 

Anger shows up as a boundary issue.  Always.  Always.   It teaches us where we need to be more honest, ask for what we need and want, and shows us where we aren’t communicating.  

Pain wakes us up.  Nothing will make you be more present than pain.  It’s a language and points us in the right direction.  

If we can learn to dive into these “bad” feelings and not push them aside anymore then we can awaken a part of ourselves to be more present in our own being. 

Let’s learn to give ourselves that grace.

I see your kindness and I hope you can focus on learning how to see it in you too.

XO,

Diana