The Saying, “Feel Better” gets thrown out so naturally when others are upset, I actually caught myself saying it yesterday to a client when I was saying good-bye to her. After I said it, I instantly took it back. I told her the important thing for her to do in order to move forward and heal whatever was coming up for her, was to allow herself to actually FEEL it.
I decided to write about this topic because I had two coaching sessions this past week where the same theme came up in both of them, it was related to sitting with uncomfortable feelings.
Feeling uncomfortable is something that I can confidently say is a state that most people, if not all, do not enjoy being in. Feeling uncomfortable often times leads people to want to escape that feeling through drinking, doing drugs or turning to food for comfort. If overindulged, these escape mechanisms can ultimately lead to unhealthy ways to deal with what is going on inside of ourselves. Though there are healthy ways to deal with uncomfortable feelings, such as exercise, dance, writing or art, focusing on them is not the goal of this blog entry this week.
This week, I am here to challenge you to sit in the discomfort and see what happens.
The reason why I want you to sit in the discomfort is for a few reasons.
(1) INCREASE SELF-AWARENESS:
To realize that this feeling alone may be able to teach you something about yourself that you didn’t already know.
You may ask yourself the following questions to gain awareness.
“How does my body react to these uncomfortable feelings? Where does this feeling situate in my body?”
“What is my mind telling me? Is it begging for me to escape through a means mentioned above? Or something else”
“What is going on in my life right now that this feeling surfaced? Does it have to do with something in my current life? My past? my future?”
(2)BUILD YOUR ARMOUR AND RESILIENCE TO SUSTAINING UNCOMFORTABLE FEELINGS:
To see that even though this feeling may not be pleasant, you are not actually harmed by it.
In order to truly live and create your ideal life, living with uncomfortable feelings is often required, as pushing the boundaries of your everyday behaviours tend to take place.
By sitting with the discomfort, you begin to see that this is just another feeling, like happiness, joy, excitement, anxiety, fear. This alone leads to my next point….
(3)TO SEE THAT THIS FEELING SHALL PASS
Like anything, uncomfortable feelings will eventually go away and pass. Below I posted India Arie’s song titled, “This Too Shall Pass,” which talks just about the whole concept of things passing.
This week I challenge you to sit with any uncomfortable feelings and see what comes up for you.
The more you are able to do this the stronger you awareness; mentally, emotionally, and physically, will begin to take place.
