Chasing Feelings: Stop Running From Your Emotions
When you don’t feel great, sometimes the answer lies in chasing feelings.
Frustration
I busted my butt last week to get an offering together because I wanted to celebrate in an awesome group on the day they celebrated accomplishments.
I love this group because it is supportive and up-lifting. And I wanted them to be the first to see the workshop I was offering.
I pushed and pushed. I fell flat. Then I missed my personal deadline, but I did it – 2 hours later.
I won’t lie, I had expectations, and I wanted the likes and comments. I have learned with social media not to expect. But this time I went in with a lot of expectation.
The posts in this group often get 30-100 comments and sometimes hundreds of likes. I received 4 likes, I felt deflated, and frustrated. I checked to see if I had broken the rules and to see if my post was still there.
It was, with its glorious 4 likes and 0 comments.
Avoidance
My brain put me in an unproductive doing spiral, a sure sign that I was avoiding something.
Ugh!! Feelings I was avoiding feelings! Yuck! I don’t wanna deal with this. But I know, not dealing with it only saves it for later.
Chasing Feelings
I decided to “Chase my Feelings.” (This is a process I use with my clients)
I sat with the disappointment I felt and allowed it to be felt in my body. After some time, the feeling that I did it wrong came up.
My brain immediately started scrambling to figure out what I had done wrong. This is another sign that I was running. So I sat with it and allowed myself to feel “doing it wrong.”
Then, an incident with my ex boyfriend popped into my head, and I still sat with the feeling of doing it wrong.
Here’s a secret, when you are running from a feeling there is almost always another feeling underneath that you have been running from even longer.
This is why I call it chasing feelings.
So I stayed with it.
The Secret
Chasing your feelings aka ‘feeling your feelings’ is hard. But I know another secret.
If you stay with it, you will get to the other side and there is relief there.
My mind flashed back and forth from the incident with my ex to incidents with my mom when I was little.
“Stay with it Genea, don’t run”
Then it came, the anger. And I screamed the thoughts “I did not doing anything wrong you f*&king @%%hole! I did not do anything wrong you f*&king c*#t!” I kicked and punched in my mind. Then I seethed and cried in my body.
I stayed with it. I did not run.
For me anger, was to be avoided. “Hold it in Genea, don’t you dare let it out.” (This is not good for you in the long run).
But this time, I let the anger out, and it cleared. Not only did the past clear but so did the present.
I feel grateful for my 4 likes, because it led me to “Chase my feelings” (frustrating/disappointment -to- getting it wrong -to- anger)
In the end I found laughter in the absurdity of caring about a social media post.
What emotions are you running from? Do you want to learn how to clear them?