In order to heal ourself, we need to feel ourself. And when I say feel ourself, I mean actually be with ourself long enough to feel our feelings and emotions.

Because we all have them. Feelings and emotions are part of the human experience. And when we make friends with how we truely feel, when we let ourself feel our emotions… only then we can release them.

Today on I Love Me The Podcast, I’ll share how repressing our emotions can make us mentally and physically unwell, and then I’ll offer you a way of unpacking your old emotions, so you can learn how to process your feelings in the present moment.

Today we’re going to talk about feelings.

Because we are ‘feeling’ beings.

Yes, us humans have feelings, whether we want to acknowledge them or not.

Feelings and emotions are part of the human experience.

What I’m saying, is that it’s normal and natural to feel things, and the only reason that we might think otherwise, is due to our conditioning.

Generations of modelling have taught us that the expression of certain emotions is not welcome.

We’ve all heard the saying: ‘Big boys don’t cry’.

Well, it’s those boys who don’t cry into adulthood that end up with big issues later on.

We also hear comments around women being ‘hormonal’ if they express their feelings, as if that’s a bad thing.

And so many of us try to stuff down our anger, push aside our hurts, and show a brave face, in a bid to be taken seriously.

There’s a lot of negativity floating around society, when it comes to feelings and emotions.

And so, because we want to fit in, and we want to be seen as sane, we act and behave in a way that, often sees us repress our emotions.

Instead of feeling how we feel, we hide those feelings and emotions away.

We bottle them up, thinking that they’re bad.

Yet the truth is, emotions are not inherently bad.

It’s how we react to our emotions – or how we ‘act out’ due to how we feel – that can be unhealthy.

But the emotion or feeling itself, that is a a natural part of being human.

The important thing to understand here is that:

Feelings arise for a reason.

To be felt.

And once we’re wiling to feel them, they’ve done their job, and will pass.

But if we try to ignore our feelings or suppress them, they don’t just go away.

They get stuck in the body.

Trapped in our cells, waiting for another time to erupt to the surface.

Much like a beach ball that’s pushed under the water, eventually it’s gotta come up.

And the further down it’s pushed, the bigger the splash when it does break through the surface.

So if you’ve gone around much of your childhood and then adulthood squashing down how you feel, you can only imagine how much unexpressed emotion you might be holding onto.

Emotion that, if unable to move, will quite literally start to make you sick.

Yes, feelings that are not felt in the present time can actually hurt us.

Mentally, by way of causing a big emotional outburst later on…

Which can rupture relationships.

And physically.

You see, EMOTION is energy in motion.

It’s energy that needs to move.

If it can’t move then it gets stuck.

Trapped inside the body.

When we have emotions hanging out in our cells and tissues, they send hormonal signals to the body that make it unwell.

Too much suppressed emotion and you end up with a grand sickness or pathology.

So what’s the antidote?

How do we release these emotions and feelings that may have caused an illness in the body? Or may be on the road to some kind of sickness?

We need to feel those emotions.

Give them space to move.

Set them free, so they’re no longer trapped in the body.

The take home is this:

In order to heal, we need to to feel.

And until we feel what is calling for our attention, then we’re not dealing with the root cause of the illness.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve helped my clients release emotions as part of my One-on-One Intensive, and how as a result of this release, chronic conditions heal within weeks, if not days.

That is the power of feeling our feelings.

Now, unexpressed emotions don’t just make us physically sick.

When we carry around repressed emotions, they have a tendency to colour our vision of life.

If we’re holding onto a lot of sadness, then the world will gradually, over time, start to look like a pretty bleak place to be.

And because we’re vibrating on that ‘sadness’ level, we’ll start to attract into our lives, more experiences to make us sad.

For we attract what we are.

How we be, is what we see.

So in this way, our feelings – when left to fester – can become like a filter, only showing us a world that matches what emotion we’re yet to release.

If we’ve taken on pain from something awful we’ve experienced, like rape or physical abuse, if we haven’t found a way to feel that pain, then that stored pain distorts our whole experience of ourself and the world around us.

It changes how we perceive life.

It changes what we attract into our life.

And as a result we see the world through pain-smeared glasses.

When we’re holding onto this much pain, we don’t feel good about ourselves.

We may not feel safe.

We may not feel heard.

We may not feel loved.

And when we feel and believe these kinds of things about ourself, then we minimise who we are.

We try to protect ourselves from being hurt any more.

And maybe that is avoiding the very people who could make beautiful friends or partners.

Or maybe it’s a sabotage pattern that we take on, where we act out, or cut ourselves down, and this leads to failed relationships or careers.

In order to release this pain, we need to be willing to feel it.

Once we feel it, it can leave our body and our being, so we can be free to experience the fullness of who we are.

So we can love ourselves, in our fullness.

So we can live vibrantly and unapologetically.

Being willing to feel our pain is part of the learning to love ourselves journey.

To love ourselves even in our darker moments.

To love the whole of ourself, realising that the light and shade are all part of the human experience.

And we don’t need to judge it, but we do need to love ourself through it.

And the way we do this is by giving ourselves permission to feel the way we feel about a painful experience or situation.

We let that feeling – that true feeling – pour on out of us.

And we continue to let it pour out, until there’s nothing left to feel.

Otherwise – if we don’t feel – we run the risk of becoming hardened by life’s experiences.

I see this often…

People don’t want to feel, so they enter into this cycle of constantly seeking out ways to numb their feelings.

They’re trying to live their lives against this backdrop of fear or guilt or pain.

But holding onto this background noise of pain, doesn’t help anyone.

It only serves to hold us back.

It stops us from feeling joy and happiness fully, because we feel the need to tone down our feeling sense, for fear of feeling the pain.

The pain or emotion simply sits there like a cloud of fog that won’t lift.

Numbing us out, holding us back.

Minimising our experience of ourself and life itself.

Many people are a walking cauldron of anger, fear and misery.

So, yes, we want to feel our feelings.

Make time to be with them.

And once we have, we set them free.

If we instead try to ignore them by telling ourself and others that life’s peachy, when it’s really not…

Then this isn’t healthy.

And neither should you listen to people who tell you to just get on with it.

‘Just be happy’, they might say.

But if you’re not wired to be happy, then trying to be happy will come across as fake, because it just doesn’t match your current program.

You’re not wired for happiness right now.

It doesn’t mean you can’t change that wiring, and I talk about this more in episode 2 – Programmed for Love – but just turning on the happy face, in many situations isn’t helpful.

If you have some deep feelings that need feeling, then to deny yourself that opportunity to feel those feelings, is doing yourself harm.

On the same token, if those feelings hang around for an extended period of time, then you want to seek professional help, because you don’t want to be wallowing around in those feelings for too long.

Otherwise you can end up with depression or some other mental disorder.

And this is where I should touch on the use of antidepressants….

Medications like antidepressants numb out our ability to feel.

They do this as a protection mechanism.

To stop us from feeling too much sadness or depression that could lead to harmful thoughts.

So in this way, antidepressants are protecting us from ourself.

Putting up a shield so we don’t have to feel all our stuff.

But those emotions and feelings don’t just go away, they continue to accumulate.

And as we’ve discussed, this can lead to other issues.

Now I’m not saying to come off your meds.

That’s something I guide people through as part of my One-on-One Intensive – and that’s a process – as many other supports need to be in place, so a person is mentally and physically able to cope with life without the antidepressants.

So, it’s important that you have a professional guiding you on that.

What I am saying however, is that you need to have that awareness of how the antidepressants will be affecting your ability to feel.

So if you’re having trouble tapping into that feeling side of yourself, if you can’t quite access that repressed emotion – that would be behind the depression in the first place – know this is normal, because of the way the meds are affecting your body.

It’s not that you’re immune to your feelings.

It’s just that there is an external source that is essentially switching off – or numbing – your feeling abilities.

Like I keep saying…

The most powerful thing we can do to heal ourself, is to feel ourself.

To be with our feelings.

So… how do you feel your feelings?

How do you sit with them?

You quite literally, take some time out where you won’t be disturbed, sit or lie down in a comfortable position, close your eyes and start to feel yourself.

The easiest way into feeling yourself is through your breath.

Notice the rise and fall of the breath.

And as you do, simply allow the breath to help reconnect you to your bodily sensations.

Scan your body for certain sensations or places that feel tense.

Or uncomfortable.

Emotion loves to create tension in the body, so chances are if you feel tense somewhere, that’s a good place to focus your attention.

And as you start to feel things, anything, just notice.

Be with those feelings and sensations.

Don’t try and ‘think’ about the feeling, don’t judge it or try to get rid of it.

You simply want to experience it.

Sit right in the middle of it and feel it.

You may notice that a particular emotion is sitting in a certain area of your body.

People can store emotion in any part of the body, but common places that emotion likes to hang out is in the belly, in the throat, in the pelvis, in the neck and shoulders and in the forehead.

Some people feel their heart racing or their palms sweating.

So simply bring your attention to where that emotion may be sitting, and let yourself place your attention there for a while.

As you connect with an emotion, breathe into the area of that sensation.

Inhale through your nose deep into your belly, and release out through your mouth.

If you feel drawn to make sound on the exhalation, do.

This can be really therapeutic.

As you’re quite literally sounding out the emotion; giving it a chance to move.

We can think of the breath like a fan in how it’s able to move the air from one place to another.

In this case, to move the emotion out of the body.

Like I mentioned before…

Emotion is Energy in Motion.

Breathing well helps get the energy moving.

Which is what we want!

If we unconsciously hold our breath, which is a common practice for most people when they experience an uncomfortable feeling, this squishes the flow of the energy.

The emotion – the energy that’s trying to move – it can’t move, and that’s how it gets trapped in the body.

Simply focusing on taking slow deep breaths is often enough to start the process of freeing up that stuck emotion, so it can move.

So it can move right on out of the body.

When you feel an emotion rise up within you, breathe into it.

Feel into it.

Let it move through you without judgement, and it will release, and move on out of you.

And that’s the important part…

We feel ourself and our feelings without needing to make them wrong.

We just sit with them, knowing that they’re part of the human experience, and this is a beautiful opportunity to feel ourself in a new way.

A way that is healing to both our mind and our body.

To our whole being.

Now it’s very common, if you haven’t felt yourself in this way before, that when it comes to the big emotions, the ones you’ve held onto for a loooong time, you’ll need to make time to feel them on a regular basis, until they fully empty out.

This is why I suggest creating a regular practice to feel yourself, so that you’re creating the necessary space to empty out what’s no longer serving you.

Think of it like a spring cleaning of your emotions.

You want to get to the bottom of those emotions.

Feel them fully.

What I will say about the emotion of grief however, is that it’s not an emotion you want to rush.

If you’ve lost someone or something dear to you, you may need to sit with the grief many times, before it’s ready to shift.

And that’s ok.

Take your time, but be sure to take the time to sit with the grief regularly.

Feel it fully.

This is so important, because whatever you run away from, runs you.

If you feel that you resist opening up to your feelings, it’s a sign that those feelings are controlling you.

We want to enter into conscious relationship with our feelings, regardless of how scary they may appear.

If you find yourself wallowing in your feelings, this is a sign that you’re not fully opening to feeling them.

It’s like your teetering around the edges, without diving into their fullness.

Let me assure you…  that when feelings are fully felt, they don’t last long.

It’s only when we hold ourselves back from feeling them properly, that the process of feeling and thus, releasing our feelings, can feel like an endless road to nowhere.

What I will say, is don’t fear that if you let yourself cry, you’ll never stop crying.

Once you cry out what needs to be cried out – which may take a few times – you’ll feel done, and you’ll be able to return to life, feeling lighter and freer.

Same goes with emotions like anger.

You don’t need to fear that if you feel your anger, you’ll hurt someone.

If you feel like you physically need to get your anger out, find a way to consciously do it in a safe way.

Bang a drum, punch a boxing bag, scream into an empty field…

Let that anger release right on out of you in a healthy way, until you feel like you have no anger left inside.

You can learn more about releasing the emotion of anger, in episode 6: Powerless to powerful: The gift of anger.

We humans feel a whole range of feelings in one day.

This is normal.

When we’re willing to sit with them and experience them, as opposed to distract ourselves from them through work, or alcohol or being busy…

Then we’re able to move through them easily and feel much lighter in our day-to-day life.

Because carrying around suppressed emotions; that’s heavy work.

It drags us down.

Our emotions, and even our physical body.

Look at the posture of someone carrying a whole lot of emotion…

Their posture will often show signs of weakness or that person will be rigid in their stance from holding onto so much tension.

Tension being the physical manifestation of stuck emotion.

And tension is behind a whole raft of physical issues.

For example, when we’re tense in the face and forehead, this affects our eyesight.

Many people with unresolved emotion will have a really poor posture.

Or a body that easily goes out of alignment, causing pain in various parts of their body, because there are all these tension patterns in the body, where they’re holding onto emotion.

What’s beautiful about taking time to sit with yourself and feel yourself, is that as you release the emotion, not only will you feel lighter, chances are you’ll have a newfound clarity and understanding of yourself.

When we sit with our feelings, our body relaxes.

If we’ve been holding onto emotion around a particular incident or situation, when we take the time to be with that emotion, we usually gain a deep awareness and insight into what that situation was there to teach us.

For emotions are like these roadsigns on our walk through life, letting us know which path to take, where to change direction, when to speak up and when to turn around.

Our feelings and emotions really are talking to us every moment of our day, and the more we consciously choose to listen to them, the more we can let them support us in knowing that something needs our attention.

So instead of dreading our feelings, we can embrace them.

Welcome them.

And know they’re looking out for us in so many ways.

So I invite you this week to take time to sit with your feelings.

And make this a regular practice, because when you sit with yourself regularly, you’ll start to get to know yourself on a whole new level, and access the deeper emotions that have been causing you grief in some way or another.

Then as you go about life, start to notice where you try to push away your feelings.

Turn on the television, to distract you?

Reach for the wine to numb you?

Maybe your child gets sick and you start to feel fear.

Do you squash down that feeling by saying ‘Don’t be silly, there’s nothing to be afraid of?’

Or do you take time to sit with that feeling, and actually experience it?

Notice what sparked it.

Notice where there is healing available.

Maybe your mother-in-law says something to you, that makes you angry.

Do you tell yourself to put on a mask so you don’t ruffle any family feathers, thus suppressing the anger.

Or do you take some time out to sit with the anger and feel into what it’s really about.

As I shared in episode 6, anger serves a very important purpose; to let us know we feel powerless.

When we’re willing to take time to connect into how we might be feeling powerless, then we can take steps to feel powerful.

When we take that kind of approach – sitting with the feeling – it empowers us.

Even sexy feelings.

It’s safe to feel sexy in our body.

Just as it’s safe to feel angry.

The important thing to understand here is that you don’t need to act on your emotions.

You simply need to be willing to feel them in the present moment.

So take this opportunity to feel yourself.

And love yourself for being willing to feel yourself.

Because in today’s world, feeling ourself is radical.

Radical and enlightening.

And while it can feel vulnerable to sit with our feelings, and own our feelings, our willingness to get naked with ourself, emotionally, really is our super-power.

That’s why in next week’s episode we’ll be diving into the act of being ‘vulnerable’ and how cultivating self-love and deepening our relationship with others, really is dependant on how willing we are to get emotionally naked.

May this episode inspire you into a new way of being with yourself.

If you feel called to leave a review or rating, I would love that.

And I’ll be back to share more about the V-word with you, next week.

Thanks for listening, and if you’re loving what I’m sharing on I Love Me The Podcast, and want to dive deeper into self-love, take a peek at my online school gettingnaked.com.au where I teach you how to strip off the layers of childhood conditioning, so you can fall in love with YOU.

Sign up for your free Self-Love Starter’s Kit there, and if you do enrol in any of my programs, know that a percentage of profits go to planting trees, so together we can re-robe Mother Earth.