DAY 3: FEELING YOUR FEELINGS

When we are stuck in codependent ways of being and thinking we try to control situations and people to be a certain way. We try to control things outside of us so that we can feel a certain feeling that we think is unavailable to us without these ideal conditions.

We think “I can’t feel the way I want to feel until this happens or until this person acts the way I want them to. If these conditions aren’t met, then I am incapable of accessing that feeling that I want to feel.”

This leaves us powerless to the actions of others which we can never control, and perpetuates the codependent cycle of us not taking responsibility over our own emotional lives.

In codependency, we also think that the trouble is in the negative feelings that we experience, so we try to avoid these feelings and end up harming ourselves in the process. The truth is that the trouble only comes when we try to deny, resist, and avoid them, as I’ll discuss below.

When you develop the skill of recognizing, feeling, and processing your emotions, you never shy away from an experience, you never try to avoid your life…You are simply living boldly and bravely knowing that you absolutely can feel, handle, and process any emotion that may come up. This enables you to engage fully in your life instead of avoiding any scenario in which you may encounter a negative emotion that you haven’t learned how to handle. This also enables you to experience the full range of human emotions both painful and pleasurable without needing to rely on coping mechanisms (TV, work, drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, etc) to try and numb away from the reality of your emotional experience.

If you developed the skill of feeling and processing painful emotions, there would be no need for the self-destructive coping mechanisms you may have been seeking to dull your life to a more bearable state.

Today’s lesson is all about deciding to stop denying, distracting away from, and avoiding your feelings, and learning to feel them so that they can help you make decisions about where you want to go in your life in every moment of each day. Remember: our emotions are a precious resource that we can all tap into and are here to guide us.

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The Work:

1. What feelings are you afraid of admitting that you have? What are you afraid to feel?

2. Why?

3. What are you using to avoid or distract away from your emotions?

4. How is denying, resisting, and avoiding your emotions affecting your life negatively?

5. Are you ready to choose to open yourself up to feeling your emotions, even the ones that you’re scared of feeling right now?

6. Set aside 10 minutes today to be alone, to take some deep breaths, and to feel just one feeling you’ve been avoiding instead of eating or listening to an audiobook or music or cleaning or exercising to avoid the feeling. Take some notes on paper or on your phone of what this experience was like for you.

7. What do you think this emotion is trying to tell you or teach you?

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Tomorrow in Lesson 4, you will learn all about how to use your intuition to start making your own decisions so that you can become the decisive, self-directed person you’ve always wanted to be.

If you’d like some free 1:1 guidance about anything we covered in this lesson, click the button below to schedule some time with me.