Feelings. They creep up on us out of nowhere, confuse us, bring us joy, and even pain. But what do you do when they hit you like a tonne of bricks? When you’re overwhelmed by this perhaps foreign concept, these things called feelings?
A lot of us struggle when we begin to have different feelings, or when we start to feel things again after feeling numb for a time. I know I sure do. But I have gradually been learning how to deal with them, using these 3 simple steps:
- Recognise them
- Acknowledge and accept them
- Own them
I just want to briefly talk to you about these three things, and hopefully it might encourage or even help someone who is struggling to deal with things.
Recognising feelings:
It’s really important to recognise your feelings, if they’re good, if they’re negative, and even if they’re unhealthy, or if they are simply just “feeling” again after a time of not feeling.
It might sound a bit weird for me to be telling you “how to recognise your feelings”, but bear with me. From my personal experience, it can be super overwhelming to start feeling things after a period of numbness, during one of my depression episodes. I can get really moody, be afraid of feeling in case it hurts again, and many other things. You might experience crazy highs and lows as you try to work out where you’re at, and that’s okay. You have to be patient with yourself during this. You could be extra irritable and your thought patterns will change. This is okay too. It’s just your mind getting used to feeling what you’re feeling, be it good things, or bad.
Eckhart Tolle said “Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.” It’s important to be aware of them and recognise them, before you can acknowledge them. This is the first step to being able to deal with them properly.
Acknowledging and accepting feelings:
Why is it so important to “acknowledge and accept your feelings and emotions”? Well, acknowledging your feelings/emotions helps you accept them, which assists you with processing and dealing with them.
How do you “accept” feelings, even the difficult ones like pain and grief? You actually need to talk to yourself, and even to those crazy feelings (even if it’s just in your head, not necessarily out loud). You need to say I see you and it’s okay for you to be here for a time. And you need to understand that it is okay to feel.
By accepting them, you’re allowing them to be with you a while. Just a while. Until you have dealt with them and what you are going through. If you don’t accept them and you stay in denial, you are only making it more difficult for yourself, and causing it to be harder to accept in the long run. As I’ve said in other posts, it’s OKAY to not be okay, it’s okay to BE OKAY, and it’s okay to FEEL (https://confessionsofasimplemum.com/its-okay-to-be-okay/) All these things make us human. So recognise, acknowledge, and accept these feelings and emotions, and you’re on your way to the next step: owning them.
Owning feelings:
Why do you need to “own” your feelings? It’s really about you, as the owner, having control over them and not letting them control you. As Marshall Sylver said, “When you control your thoughts and emotions, you control everything.” It’s really important that you don’t become a slave to your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. If you maintain control by owning your feelings, you can let them stay as long as you need to, and you have the power to let them go when you are ready.
How do you own your feelings? It simply by you being in control of them, and you do that by recognising them, acknowledging and accepting them, and being honest with yourself about what you are feeling. I believe the key here is honesty, and by this I mean being honest with YOU. “Your thoughts and emotions are yours alone.” – (John Buchanan Robinson) Your thoughts, feelings and emotions belong to you, so you are the only one who can control them. That’s why it is so important that you are honest with yourself. You feel happy? That’s great! You feel anxious? That’s okay! You feel down or depressed? That’s totally okay too. But don’t try and convince yourself that you are happy if you aren’t. Recognise what you feel, accept it, and OWN it, because all feelings are valid. But stay in control. Don’t become a slave to what you are feeling. Spend time with it for as long as you need to be able to process and deal with it, then say goodbye and let it go.
Remember that it is okay to feel happy again after being sad. Or that it’s okay to get depressed or anxious again after a period of feeling good. And it’s okay to feel again after feeling numb. It’s overwhelming and hard at times, but it’s life, and it’s okay. Life goes on, people and things change, thoughts come and go along with feelings and emotions.
Don’t feel guilty for feeling good or even not so good. After all, it takes rain and sunshine to make rainbows! It takes the good things as well as the bad things to make life beautiful. Just recognise what you’re feeling, accept it, and own it, because you’re not a slave to your emotions and feelings. You are strong, and you need to stay in control. You’ve got this.
Julie xo
