147: Relearning How to Feel Emotion
So We’ve been going through the Life After Child Loss Program inside of Grieving Moms Haven. I have a framework called C.A.R.R.Y.ing Grief. This is like the best step by step guide through grief I can give you for your own unique journey. We are all going to grieve in our own way. So this is not telling you what to do or how to do it, but helping you get more curious about your own experience, and how to support yourself in your grief.
So the month of July, we will be going through Relearning how to feel your emotions. I want to share a little bit about this here, because this is actually a huge subject.
If you think about children, babies, they know how to express themselves. Their feelings, their emotions, their thoughts, their desires, wants, and needs. They do it naturally.
But, for whatever reason, we are taught to act certain ways. We are taught to not cry. We are taught to not feel. We may have learned that it’s not safe to express your desires. It’s not safe to express your emotions or what you are feeling.
This is something that is incredibly hard to teach your children when you aren’t able to feel your emotions either, so it’s a cycle that continues.
I have to be honest, I’m not perfect at this, but I continually try to do better and move through my emotions, especially surrounding my children.
So- we have a belief it’s not okay to express negative emotions. Maybe we received praise when we were happy or cheerful, so we believed that’s the only way to be. That's the only way we can show up in the world if we want to be loved.
Children are just going through life, making meaning about themselves depending on how others react around them. Making meaning about what emotions are safe or not safe to express. And you did this as a child.
Maybe you had trauma when you were younger, and maybe now your child has died.
For me, after Aria died, I had never felt such deep pain, and a pain that just wouldn’t seem to go away.
I didn’t even know it was possible to feel that way. It’s horrific.
So, if you’ve been numbing or trying to pretend everything is good for many years, it’s going to be a process to almost soften the ice on your body per say. To slowly allow your body to feel, notice sensations, and become comfortable with different sensations and intensities in your body.
When you are suddenly overwhelmed with emotions that you’ve never experienced and it almost forces itself on you, it can put you into shut down. You don’t even want to go there. You try to numb as much as possible. You don’t want to feel anything. It’s all too much.
So how do you begin to relearn how to feel emotions?
This is a practice, and a learning. It’s a learning how to be in your body.
If you listen to this podcast, you’re like, oh yeah, I need to feel my emotions and then you go on with your life, you are filling your head with knowledge, but you are not doing anything about it. You are not learning how to put the knowledge into practice.
Let me share a quick analogy. Say you are wanting to learn how to swim, so you buy a book on swimming. You read the book, you go watch videos on how to swim, you ask people what their best tips are on how to swim, you know the exact best techniques and how to describe it.
And yet, do you know how to swim?
No- you haven’t even stepped foot in the water. You have to get wet. You have to practice. You have to not do it right the first time. You have to mess up, you have to fail.
This is what it’s like learning how to feel your emotions. It’s something you have to be and live in your body, not learn about in your mind. So notice if you are in consuming mode, constantly learning, but not doing anything about it, or with it. It can feel good to consume and learn and maybe you feel like you are making progress, but are you?
First- Everything inside of Grieving Moms haven is to help with you beginning to feel your emotions again. I truly believe guided meditations, tapping meditations, breath work, anything that is beginning to ground yourself inside of your body is how you begin to not be overwhelmed by the sensations of emotions. The intensity of their energy.
So- it’s okay to go slow. You don’t need to turn on the first hose. If you’re having a panic attack while you're noticing what’s going on inside of your body, it’s too much. It’s like a gentle guidance, noticing, getting present, meeting yourself with love and compassion. Faster and stronger doesn’t necessarily mean better.
Sometimes you have to start with things that seem silly and simple. For example, one mediation I recently shared with someone was just taking a shower head and putting it on your arm, and saying, this is my arm, it’s a part of my body. Putting it on your shoulder, this is my shoulder, it is a part of my body. It seems so silly, but it’s worth trying and starting slow.
It’s about gently coming back home to your body.
This doesn’t mean you don’t learn how to feel discomfort. It’s learning how to go to the edge of your discomfort so you can learn to tolerate the sensations in your body, but not going into the overwhelm, shut down, panic state.
It can be uncomfortable. What I’ve also learned about emotions, is we make them bigger in our minds than they actually are. We resist them, and we don’t want to feel them. Like notice when you start to feel a grief wave come. And immediately inside your stomach clenches, your heart races, and you are like, no no not again. I don’t want to go there. Then you might try to keep busy, shove it down, and find something better to do.
By doing that you prolong the emotion, the wave, and the pain. If you can take a moment to meet the pain, the wave, the emotion, it actually is a lot lighter and less painful than you realize.
The other part of this is, meet your pain with compassion and love. Feeling pain for the sake of feeling pain does nothing. That’s just cycling in the pain and retraumatizing. You want to meet the pain with presence, compassion, and love.
That’s why it can be so helpful to have guided meditations that guide you through this. Or working with me where I can help you through these.
I’m hosting a free guided meditation call on June 27th, you can come implement what you’ve learned today in this free call. Come do the work on it. This call is anonymous and nobody can see you.
Click here to register for the free guided meditation call!
If you like this podcast, and found it helpful, I want to invite you come check out Grieving Moms Haven, my monthly community for Grieving moms, where you can learn positive coping mechanisms, find a safe space with others who understand, and learn life long skills that support you as you learn how to carry this weight of grief in your life.
There are group coaching calls where we do guided meditations, tapping meditations, breathwork, and just talk, knowing that everyone in the group is also walking the path of child loss
You can come check out Grieving Moms Haven at www.grievingmomshaven.com
