Feel It to Heal It: Are You Running from Your Emotions?

Are you running from your emotions? During my 20’s and 30’s, I experienced my parent’s divorce, my brother’s suicide and the death of my mother and father. All of the pain, sadness, betrayal, anger and abandonment these losses brought up for me left me with a deep desire to stuff, ignore or run from strong emotions (and intimate relationships). Understandably. I was afraid that if I truly allowed myself to feel my feelings, I’d surely be swallowed by them, carried away by a violent tsunami. Until I learned that the opposite is true: when we feel it, heal it.

As a teacher who supports men/women in living intentionally, a big piece of my work has been learning how to be with strong or uncomfortable feelings and to not intellectualize or “positive thought” these away. I often tell my intense, passionate 23 year-old son that feelings are like the weather in Texas—constantly shifting and changing like storm clouds overhead. In fact, on average, meditation teacher Tara Brach says, a strong feeling only lasts about 90 seconds if you fully let it in. Feelings are just energy moving through our system (e-motions). They come, they go.

My brother Kert, a soulful management consultant in Canada, has been my biggest teacher around this theme. He constantly encourages me to allow uncomfortable feelings to come knocking, to invite them in for tea and ask them what they’re here to share.

Does hearing this make you think you’d rather go to the dentist for a root canal than embrace that which you most fear? I think most of us have this reaction.

I’ve found, over time, that the more we’re able to be with our old wounds, the less scary they become. When we feel our feelings, we become more open and accessible to our loved ones, we’re more connected to our passions and desires and we become comfortable voicing our needs and drawing clear boundaries. When we stay with our experience, we begin to harvest the gifts that come from living with the light and the dark. And, contrary to what we might think—we begin to feel more alive, free and less fearful.

We begin to have breakthroughs that we never thought were possible. 

Having tea with these unexpected visitors (as the 13th-century poet Rumi calls them in his poem, The Guest House) allows us to experience more freedom, levity and ease. When we learn to fully feel what we’re feeling, we can go with the flow of life. We become more trusting and believe we can handle whatever comes our way.

Dear feelings: the welcome mat is out. The kettle is on. I’m listening.

Warmly,

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Subscribe here to Live Inside Out, a weekly blog written by mindfulness coach/author/speaker and self-care evangelist Renée Peterson Trudeau. Passionate about helping men and women live more intentionally and find balance through the art/science of self-care, Renee has been facilitating high-impact, interactive workshops for Fortune 500 companies, national nonprofits/conferences and organizations/teams worldwide for 25 years. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Fast Company, Good Housekeeping, US News & World Report, AARP, Spirituality & Health and more. She and her team have certified more than 450 facilitators in 10 countries around the globe to lead self-renewal groups/retreats based on her pioneering self-care curriculum. She’s the author of two books on life balance including the award-winning The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal: How to Reclaim, Rejuvenate and Re-Balance Your Life. Renee and her husband live in Western North Carolina and they have one son in New York City. Her latest venture is Wild Souls Nature Adventures. More on Renee here.