How To: Feel Your Feelings
How long do I have to feel my feelings?
Emotions can be hard. There is a reason why we humans have found copious ways NOT to feel-including, but not limited to: eating away our feelings, drinking away our feelings, working away our feelings, binge-watching away our feelings, TIK-TOCKING away our feelings, ect., ect.
Which brings me to my second piece of good news: uncomfortable feelings are here to stay.
Wait, don’t leave!
Uncomfortable emotions are here to stay, AND there are ways to support yourself during them so that you don’t have to stay in them forever.
In fact, brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor, author of My Stroke Of Insight, found that when a person has a reaction to something in their environment (an emotion), there is “a 90-second chemical process that happens” in the body.
In other words: emotions have the ability to last for only 90 seconds.
Anything painful or uncomfortable outside of those 90-seconds is happening because we are getting stuck in the emotional loop; by either over-identifying with or suppressing an emotion.
When we over-identify with an emotion, we are holding onto it very tightly. It might look like ruminating or replaying events in your head.
Like when you are frustrated that your partner forgot to start the dishwasher, again, even though you reminded them a billion times- you might begin to compile a list of all the other times your partner has frustrated you in the past day, week, or decade.
This can lead to the frustration amplifying, and staying in your body for much longer than 90 seconds.
Suppressing an emotion means we are also holding on tight-by trying our hardest NOT TO FEEL IT. The more we struggle not to feel it, the louder it becomes.
Suppressing is like if I were to tell you not to picture a pink elephant. Most likely, your brain would do just that. The harder we try not to feel something, the more it stays stuck.
The best way for us to meet that 90-second rule is actually to allow for your feelings to be.
Hear me out.
An emotion can be like a wave. It can follow that familiar pattern of rising, reaching a pinnacle, and falling or releasing.
If your partner forgets to start the dishwasher, and you return after a long day at work to a sink full of dirty dishes, AND a dishwasher full of dirty dishes, you might feel frustrated.
Riding the wave of frustration means that you welcome it in. You notice it in your body (without judgement!) and allow it to have the floor for a moment.
You might tell your body it makes sense you are frustrated right now. I hear you. I believe you.
The more you listen to the feeling, the less work it has to do to be heard.
