When you experience unwanted feelings, you essentially: indulge, resist or allow.
Indulging in the emotion, you give it what it wants like you have no choice. If it were a person, you give it the keys to your car while you hover in the backseat.
Because it calls, you answer.
You experience all the drama.
You create the drama.
Maybe you curl up into a ball and sleep all day long. You yell at your kids. You eat the whole box of Oreos.
Or, perhaps you resist emotions. Resisting is such an interesting one to me. It looks smart and logical. And yet, it gives away so much power.
Resistance sees the emotions as so threatening and so it wards it off.
Resisting an emotion accomplishes the opposite of what you are trying to do. Like ignoring a child, it gets louder and louder until you answer.
The resisted emotion may come out in head or body aches, chronic pain, passive-aggressive comments, delayed road rage, overeating, over-drinking, face-booking, or unwarranted shopping sprees.
Resisting emotion is like trying to push a beach ball under the water. You push it away, but it pops back up. The more you resist it, the more your energy is taken by it.
You may hide your feelings like junk shoved in a closet, but eventually, the junk topples out. Eventually resisted emotions get the final say.
Resisting sadness turns into depression. Resisting frustration turns into anger. Resisting anxiety turns into debilitating fear.
What you are resisting is the equivalent of a monster in the corner of a child’s room. It is when you avoid it that it has so much power. Turn on the lights, quit hiding and face it head-on. You will discover what you fear is a chair piled with clothes under dark shadows.
An alternative option, Allowing Emotions welcomes all feelings.
It is not threatened by them. It is not indulgent. It is not resisting.
It is warm and welcoming. It is gentle. Kind. Patient.
It does not give the proverbial car keys to the emotion. It allows feeling but does not surrender to it.
If you are rushing to get through emotion, to get it done and over, then you aren’t allowing.
If you are forcing a new thought to create a new feeling but find the thought not sticking, it is because you are forcing the new emotion without first allowing the less preferred one.
As long as it takes, let an emotion linger until you know you have welcomed it without resisting. If you have spent a lifetime canning your feelings, it may be days or weeks you experience that emotion. It is harmless. It is when you resist or indulge it that you crown it with power.
How do you allow the feeling without indulging?
You Breathe it in. And as you do, you let everything around you relax. Kind of like getting a shot. You know it will hurt, but you just let it happen and you know it will pass.
As you experience the feeling you can describe it. Where do you feel it in your body? Is it hot, cold? Flat, sharp? Light, dark? Now name it. Is it frustration or anger? Annoyed or really sad?
When you become an observer of your feelings you are no longer fighting, judging, or being controlled by them. You see feelings are not WHO you are.
Once you allow yourself to experience emotion, it dissipates.
You will discover what is on the other side that you have been resisting. And when you quit adding all the extra drama and consequences that come from your reaction, then you really do shorten its life.
Hearing about these concepts they are easy to understand. You may easily see some of your own tendencies. And yet it is a practice. It is building a new skill. A new habit. It’s committing to a new way of life.
When you really open yourself up to experience all
emotions, you will start to change your experiences and your marriage.