How I'm Learning to Work With (Rather Than Against) My Feelings.

I've recently been having lots of childhood memories resurface (and young adult memories, for that matter). I believe this is because I recently started incorporating essential oils into my daily routine. Essential oils work with you on a cellular level, so the stuff that’s been sitting around in my cells is now coming up to the surface to clear out.

The stuff that’s been coming up is teaching me how little I let myself experience emotions throughout my life. Up until the last year, I basically accepted ALL my experiences as truth (aka I was constantly being programmed), and I pushed my real emotions aside in the process. And by pushing my emotions aside, I just pushed them down into my cells to be stored until now (when I can gently and effectively process them, because of the angels in the form of essential oils).

A lot of these emotions do not feel positive or fun. They come in the form of jealousy and anger and judgement and shame and impatience and confusion. They feel harder to talk about, because we’ve been taught to appear so positive and happy and fun (that’s the recipe for attractiveness, right?). But they still exist, even after all these years of storage, so I’ve found a way to work WITH them rather than against them (ignoring them didn’t work).

Here’s what I’ve found works really well for me.

STEP 1: I set an intention to sensitize myself, so I can be keenly aware when emotions come up, and so I can pull up more emotional memories that need clearing from my system.

STEP 2: As emotions and emotional memories come up, I sit with them and I locate them. I notice how they feel and where I feel them (this can be any physical location in your body). I feel most of mine in my belly/solar plexus, others in my heart space, and some show up in my groin area.

STEP 3: I use language to name them, but I do not take them on as my truth/identity. The language I use looks like “I feel jealous” as opposed to “I am jealous”. This is important because when you speak “I am”, you are actually claiming the emotion as your truth, and you acclimate to the energy of it. (I learned this in a book I’m currently reading, called I Am the Word by Paul Selig). Depending on what’s currently resonating with me, I’ll either write this down, speak it out loud, or think it in my head.

STEP 4: I stay in a state of wonder. I wonder why that emotion has come up, and what it has to teach me, or what it is trying to show me. For example, jealousy sometimes shows me that I’m noticing things about other people that I wish I had. Whenever I notice a quality about someone that I wish I had, I remind myself that I’m simply seeing that quality reflected through another human because I possess it within myself, or because I need to stop being so hard on myself for being different, or because I need to start shining a little brighter and not worry what anyone else thinks about it. Whenever I notice a status or an accomplishment that someone has, that I wish I had, it teaches me that I can have it, too, I just need to claim it and take responsibility for it.

STEP 5: Speaking of responsibility, that’s the next step. I take responsibility for the emotion that I’m experiencing, and I take responsibility for why it’s come up. Sometimes this involves having a conversation with someone, and it can FEEL scary, but anytime I’ve opened up a conversation and expressed vulnerability, while taking full responsibility for whatever I’m feeling, I’m met with compassion and understanding, and I am heard. On the contrary, anytime I’ve opened up a conversation and blamed another person for making me feel a certain way, or claimed that my emotion is somehow their fault, I am not met with understanding. I am met with a fight.

STEP 6: I remind myself that regardless of how I’m feeling, or how anyone else feels, everyone just wants to be loved MORE. Anything that comes up is just to show me and remind me that I desire more love - from myself and from those around me. (That can feel scary to admit, too. PS - I learned this concept from one of my all-time favorite books: Whatever Arises, Love That by Matt Kahn).

Regardless of what comes up, or how I choose to process it (or not), my biggest takeaway is always that whatever I’m feeling is totally okay. I don’t have to be happy and positive all the time. Experiencing darker emotions doesn’t make me a bad person, and it doesn’t make me unattractive, or unlovable. It makes me human! And to sit with what comes up is to honor myself and to be authentic. And so it is!