Can You Feel Your Feelings?

This is a time of the year when for a lot of us, emotions and feelings run high. Family, or lack of family; friends or lack of friends; loneliness, big ups and big downs, and of course the lingering resentments, something many feel at this time of the year.

One of the big challenges I faced in starting a journey to a better life was feeling my feelings. I stuffed them and would not take ownership of them. Heaven only knows, I would not let “you” see how I was feeling, and was in denial to myself. I grew up in an era of “Big Boys Don’t Cry”. This was a mantra that I lived, and it really messed me up. Funny, I was 46 years old when I learned how to cry as an adult, and learned that it was OK.

Initially, I learned how to express my feelings in terms of colors as in “I’m feeling orange (warm and bright) today”. In time, I learned names for the feelings I had, and then learned to tell those I trusted how I was feeling. It was hard work. Eventually, I learned to “own” my feelings and know it was OK to feel them. I quit stuffing them and started to get them out.

For me, this was learned behavior, and learned from professionals. I had built very thick walls. Today, from my friends at Express Coaching, my coaching alma mater, I got the following: “Don't think away your feelings
"When emotions are managed by the heart, they heighten your awareness of the world around you and add sparkle to life. The result is new intelligence and a new view of life." -- Doc Childre and Howard Marti

How do you intellectualize your emotions?

Many of us live so much in our heads that we intellectualize our emotions. We analyze, rationalize and explain them away so quickly that we don't actually experience them.

Learn to honour your emotions at all times by being willing to feel them. Of course, you may need to exercise some judgment over how and when you express them.

"Learning to be aware of feelings, how they arise and how to use them creatively so they guide us to happiness is an essential lifetime skill." -- Joan Borysenko “

Today my feelings are a part of my creative recovery of life. They are what they are good bad or indifferent. There is an element of how I feel that is under my control, and I work hard at finding positives where possible. Sometimes things suck!

I am blessed that at this point of my journey I can feel my feelings and not stuff them.