In my work as a school counselor, I am one to draw out the feelings of others, or help students analyze situations, to "deal with" them. I have a student that I see on a semi-regular basis and she challenged me with a question that I've been pondering myself.
"If I have to feel the feelings to move through them...how do I do that? What does it look like?"
As I said, "That'a great question" and stalled...I realized that we are all really good at stuffing our feelings down and putting them off. I am just as good at it as others. Then when we talk about how we need to sit in our feelings to move through them...we wonder how on earth that is feasible. AND why would we want to do that? Why would I want to do that??? If we are hurting, or angry, or frustrated, or mad, or sad...those don't feel good. Those are the feelings we shove down. It is easy to feel all the feelings when they are joy-filled, happy, peaceful, exciting, or loving. As a society we show all of those and people share in the emotions with us. But what happens when we hit a wall and are feeling those yucky feelings? We close off because the world doesn't always want us to express them, to be honest about them, to sit in those states because it might "bring someone else down" or not fit into the timeline that we think they should. Even in examples like losing someone we love...life moves on. People move on, but not everyone moves at the same speed. Some of us get stuck and don't know how to "move through" the feelings.
Society tends to say through well-meaning friends:
*Cheer up. *It will get better. *You have to move on.
*You can't change it so get over it. *Don't be sad. *You need to let it go.
Like I said., all well intentioned messages and not meant to hurt in any way...but they aren't helping. We aren't teaching people HOW to move through emotions. How to feel them and not just feel them but to sit in them, experience them, analyze them, ponder what they mean, and dig in to HEAL from them.
Even with my training. I feel so challenged by this in my own life. I help others do this and know it is valuable. Yet, personally, I don't want to take the time, or I don't have the time. Or the time that I do have, I don't want to be sitting in the hurt or the "negative" emotions. I want to be enjoying life, relaxing, laughing, resting. Feeling the feelings is hard work. Hard. Hard. Work. It is hard work that I help people do nearly every day...and yet still struggle to do myself. Would it be any easier if society shifted it's narrative and was more accepting of all of those feelings, if we didn't hide it from others? Perhaps. I honestly don't know. It will be hard either way because there isn't a way to go around the feelings. They always catch up, don't they?
I don't have a cozy, cute way to end this because it's honestly all still swimming aorund in my brain. I don't have the answers. But I know that I will continue the conversation and I will continue to help people feel the feelings...and maybe someday I'll get to my own (smile).
Feelings aren't bad. Maybe we just need permission to feel all the feelings? For what it is worth...I give you permission. Sit in them. Feel them. Let the tears fall. The praises ring. The laughter echo. All of it. Feel them. In them there is healing.
