Feel your feelings.
Hello, cuties:
The time has come! I get to to dive into one of the cutest ideas I’ve ever come across, and one I promised I’d explore: Feeling your feelings.
(Boom. Mic dropped. Show’s over, folks - feel free to head home out the side door. Heck, I might as well pack up this lil’ Substack, because this idea underlies all my posts.)
On the beauty of this approach:
It helped me carve out an unexpected path of beauty in my life, beyond what I thought I was capable of and beyond what I thought was possible in this life.
At the same time: It helped me embrace my own complexity, when exploring more confusing or uncomfortable reactions. My complex feelings have been instructive in articulating and creating the Very Raha world I desire - and feeling them was probably the biggest catalyst towards my own growth and well-being.
Ok, so - a tool that both brings us compassion and pushes our potential? YOU get a car - and YOU, and YOU! Sign us all up!
Hold on, Oprah(a). “Feel your Feelings” sounds like the most self-evident statement around. Then - why does it also feel like one of the most counter-intuitive tools out there?
Let’s dive into it.
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On brains and bodies
Feelings are NOT designed to have us slow down and really feel them. Our lil’ brains have always told us that the function of emotions is to act, not feel. Nature encourages us to develop reflexes to avoid/satisfy immediate feelings - and we often deepen these reflexes over decades and carry them into adulthood.
Society doesn’t help, either: We’re also often told to suppress negative emotions and only embrace or celebrate positive ones. (Reacted strongly to my prompt in my last post to “eliminate self-doubt”? Good! Read on.)
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A few challenges emerge
Our reflexes are designed to satiate/avoid an immediate feeling, not to move us towards long-term goals or our well-being. Reflexes don’t let us ask how we want to act in the moment, and can often get in the way of long term goals we actually desire.
Our reflexes aren’t that reliable. Reflexes can cause self-fulfilling lenses of the world that might not reflect reality.
Trying to control immediate outcomes through reflexes feels automatic… but exhausting. We end up spending so much time resisting unavoidable discomfort that the resistance itself turns into a hugely energy-consuming task, in a world where discomfort isn’t actually totally avoidable.
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The beauty behind our dark feelings
Our underlying feelings are so instructive. Anger, for example, tells us so much. Underneath it is often sadness, and grief about the world we want but can’t access. Underneath is therefore an articulation of the values that matter to us, and the world we want to create.
In my last post, we also touched on how comparison can be a tool to tell us about what we value, and the world we want to build - if we’re willing to look at this feeling with gentle curiosity.
Sometimes, it can be hard to hear underlying lessons when we’re busy reacting to feelings like anger or jealousy, even (especially!) if by trying to suppress them. Yet, sitting with these feelings can tell us beautiful things about ourselves and the world we want. Listening to our feelings points us to how we want to react, and to the world we want to create.
Acknowledging our heavier feelings can also tell us when we may need some help in regulating or navigating them, if they feel too heavy for us to manage alone (especially in the case of trauma) - in a way that reflexes like shame cannot. Acknowledging our more difficult feelings connects us to support, instead of shutting ourselves off in an attempt to avoid these feelings altogether. Through this, our hard feelings can also show us how we are deeply connected to the world around us.
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The path to feeling our feelings
There are so many ways to connect healthily with our deeper feelings - general mindfulness practices, meditation, various forms of therapy like CBT, dance, and so on. At their core, 4 steps emerge from these practices that we may never have explored before, when trapped in our brain’s reflexes:
We name our feelings.
We allow ourself to feel the sensations in our body.
We feel curiosity to mindfully explore what lies under our feelings (not a story whipped up by our schemas or rumination, but something simpler: What am I trying to avoid? What fears or values underlie this?). We may notice our actual sensations changing or falling away over the course of this exploration.
We feel compassion for what we’re experiencing (rather than frustration, or wanting to wish it away.)
As we allow ourselves to feel our spectrum of feelings, the world becomes less of something to fear, and more of something to explore with kindness and curiosity. Our minds become less of something to fear, and more of something to explore with kindness. We feel more connected to others, both in our happiness and our complexity. We explore paths and patterns that we may never have thought to do before. Boom - a growth mindset emerges.
Most importantly: We realize that the journey of self-compassion and curiosity around our feelings never really ends. We begin to embrace the continuous act of learning how to listen to and soothe ourselves, like a little baby. Soon enough, we begin to extrapolate this vision to the world around us - a world full of folks seeking their own soothing. What a beautiful, healing and centring vision that is.
What will you do this week to look at yourself like the cute little baby that you are?
Much <3,
Raha
Can you think of someone who has soothed you in the past, who deserves to read this cute post?