If we get into the habit of always skipping past the FEELING part of an experience to “the lesson”, then we actually miss out on the most important part of the experience and of what it means to simply be truly alive.
This can be a spiritual tactic that we’ve learned; it could result from defending against overwhelming emotions early in life; it might be the pattern we grew up in our family, or it could be the result of traumatic experiences at any time in our lives.
Yet, to allow ourselves to actually FEEL our spontaneous feelings in the moment is far more important than objectively understanding or “getting the lesson”. That can come later, but it can only really be authentic, meaningful and integrated if we have FIRST felt something. This is because our feelings and emotions are the carriers of consciousness and movement of energy in the psyche and body; they facilitate the much needed internal shifts; they remove blocks, and they release bodily tension and dysregulation.
Bypassing our emotional responses to skip forward and get the lesson from the Universe is a dangerous game to play. In the end we are only putting off what really needs to happen now: For us to be able to feel, in the moment, the whole gamut of emotions as they need to arise. Otherwise we are simply further suppressing our authentic self and feelings; stuffing them back inside and adding layer upon layer of pent-up pain and burden to carry around in our body and heart. Until that is, the inevitable and sudden eruption of affect like a volcano is the only course left to our emotions, where we explode leading to, paradoxically, even more fear of feelings to set in so that we don’t actually heal.
So, while it’s a very tempting habit to form as it avoids the discomfort and pain of feeling difficult feelings like anger, rage, sadness, grief, fear or terror, in the end we’re merely putting off today what will return to haunt us some time in the future. As Freud said: “Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.”
So, let yourself feel; give yourself time to let your feelings come up; don’t automatically push them back down; don’t rush into the head and start thinking and analysing the situation. Feel, breathe, let them rise up and dissipate in their own natural time. There’s plenty of time later to sort out what the experience might mean and why it came into your life at that time.
©Angela Dunning
Image by Gouache7, licensed via Shutterstock.