FEELINGS 5

I really needed someone to help me and I was told “Your feelings won’t kill you, You don’t have to act on your feelings-you just need to feel them, Feelings come/Feelings go, Feelings pass like a wave; they rise and fall; Feelings are just feelings-they aren’t facts; You have to feel to heal.” All these statements sounded like a foreign language to me! At the time, I had no idea that I didn’t feel. I thought I was feeling, but really what I thought was feeling was just thinking about my feelings. I was using thinking to escape from feeling. I obsessed, to keep from feeling. The most shocking thing I was told was that I couldn’t think and feel at the same time! I put it to the test and found it to be true. So, if I had to feel to heal and I was thinking then I wasn't feeling so I wasn't going to heal, and I wanted to heal! 

It is very common for people to try to escape their feelings. Some of the things we do to escape them are drugs, alcohol, food, sex, work, shop, help others or just stay busy. Some get lost in religious activity. Worry, thinking and obsessing is much more socially acceptable than drugs and alcohol but they are very detrimental to the ones doing it. We try and control the uncontrollable by thinking. We what-if ourselves into torment! I realize that most of the list of things we do to escape feelings can be used for good or bad but we can use these things so much and so destructively that they destroy our lives and the people who love us.

I realized that spending my time trying to figure everything out kept me from feeling. If I was lost in the world of: "what-if" or "I should have", or "what-if I shouldn’t have" or "what-if they should have" or "what-if they shouldn’t have", then I was thinking obsessively and if I was thinking, then I wasn’t feeling. If I wasn’t feeling then I wasn’t healing. Instead, I was being tormented by my own head.

I had deep wounds from experiences in my life, and I needed to heal, but I was thinking about my pain instead of feeling it, so it kept me in bondage and self-pity. Feeling sorry for ourselves in not a feeling, it is a thought, and that thought will keep us stuck and make us sick. Feeling sad is different, it is a feeling and it is grieving, and grieving is necessary to help us heal. Grieving is a lot bigger than when someone dies. Grieving needs to be done whenever we have expectations that were not met; When people let us down. When something we dreamed would happen does not happen! Whenever we lose something no matter how insignificant it might seem, we need to acknowledge that loss and pain to ourselves and to God.

One day I decided that I was done beating myself up, and I finally allowed myself to feel my feelings instead of run from them. I began to heal. No matter how uncomfortable my feelings felt, I got comfortable with the uncomfortableness. I made them my friends. If I had to feel to heal, then feelings were my helpful friends. I allowed myself to grieve my losses instead of denying or running from them. I allowed myself to feel sad. Feeling sad was just a feeling. It didn’t kill me. The feeling would pass after I let myself feel it. My feelings began to come back with much less punch. Certain really painful experiences I had gone through became much easier to remember. The memories didn’t hurt anymore.

The process of making friends with my feelings helped me to get better. It was wonderful to just let myself feel, stay in the moment and not escape. I learned to just feel my feelings inside with the Lord. It was a wonderful thing. I stayed in the moment feeling a feeling, knowing, in that moment, He and I were sharing it together. I breathed a sigh of relief. Peace, healing and intimacy with the Lord came instead of mental torment.
#feelings #healing #thinking #grief #whatif