Being with your feelings can seem impossible!
Sitting with your feelings can be extremely difficult, especially when those feelings come from deep-seated wounds. Let’s talk about the different things we do to get away from our feelings.
So looking at the things we consume to get away from our feelings could be:
- Sugar, caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, food, prescription drugs, illegal drugs, chocolate, gum, candy, or soda.
Now let’s look at the things we do to get away from her feelings:
- Shop, gamble, work, sex, relationships, binge, purge, affairs, care take, rescue, enable, fix, worry, spend, religion, music, TV, computer, exercise, blame, focus on others, criticize, judge, gossip, rage, depression, lecture, manipulate, control, keep secrets, thinking, keeping busy, focus on the negative, perfection, sleep, take things personally, bite nails, chew on objects, self-harm, isolate, withdraw, shut down, argue, fantasize, sarcasm.
Some of the things that we consume or do, seem pretty obvious, but some of them are very insidious. Some of the sneakier things we do to avoid our feelings are fixing others, focusing on the negative, criticizing, shutting down, taking things personally and blaming.
When our anxiety from a triggered situation gets so high, we go into autopilot and start medicating and don’t even know that we are doing it. We want to escape the anxiety, fear, or sadness so badly that we might do anything to get away from it.
It’s important to notice when you are fixing others, blaming others, withdrawing or any medication. When you notice this, immediately pause and notice what you are feeling. After pinpointing the feeling, sit with it, without the story, just the sensations of the feelings. What you will notice is that you will not want to sit with them for very long, you’ll want to escape them.
For whatever reason the feelings that we have around situations that trigger us are very intense. We are not used to sitting with our feelings, we are actually taught to ignore and stuff them. So this is a new way of being for us. Try sitting with the sensations until their exhausted, until they just lift. The only way to heal our old wounds is through the feelings and sensations not bypassing them.
