Lead with vulnerability and empathy
We often feel ashamed of showing certain emotions but getting in touch with them helps create a map we can use to guide ourselves and others better.
We all need to be heard
Our feelings are asking to be felt, to be given room before passing on by. They require a small platform to tell us what they need to. Seems fair. We all need to be heard, don’t we? If we don’t listen to – and allow for – what needs to be felt, our stuck emotions have nowhere to go and are pushed down only to rise up again and erupt with more force another time. This in turn causes stress and impedes personal wellness. Ever heard someone report of someone who has emotionally snapped, “they just kept it all bottled up…”?
Never apologise for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologise for the truth.
Benjamin Disraeli
Rather than hushing and sweeping away, or flattening and muting, or scolding ourselves for having certain feelings at all, might we not rather go a little more softly in the realm of emotions and wonder what they might be telling us? Might we be curious and kind when feelings arise?
Feelings are a map
They might show us what we long for, which environments suit us and which do not, where to attend and nourish, when we need to ask for help. The way to unravel some of our inner knots and conflict is to feel what asks to be felt… and be with it.
Even raw and messy emotions can be understood as a form of light,
crackling and bursting with energy. We can use the light of rage
in a positive way, in order to see into places we cannot usually see.
Dr Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Find the source
Follow the tributary of a strong emotion and you may locate the source, thus increasing your awareness and uncovering potential alternative routes than your most-travelled patterns of thinking and behaviour. By way of personal example, when attending the theatre and at concerts over a number of years, I felt an unmistakable stab of envy and sadness, a surge of intense feeling , quietly longing to perform yet having stifled this instinct for some time internally. Once I allowed myself to explore and acknowledge this recurring feeling, I brought it into the light and admitted that I had been neglecting my creative self and needed to make a change.
Feel vs. distract
Crucially, when we explore the map of our feelings with curiosity and without judgement, we often see with a clarity and an honesty usually obscured by habitual reactions towards feeling uncomfortable and difficult emotions. Instead of distracting, numbing, ignoring or getting busy, we might speak or write down (journaling!) the thoughts associated with said feeling, the meaning we are making and how we might understand and acknowledge what is arising and how.
It takes courage and practice.
Children do it well, tears streaming down their cheeks one moment and often not long after they are all smiles, they feel the feeling and are then set free from it.
This is not to suggest that we all begin bursting into a rage at work or sobbing on the tube (although I have definitely experienced the latter!), rather that we create more space more regularly to notice how we feel and make room for processing those feelings. Look to accept and embrace how we feel rather than battle against the tides of our emotions.
Deny our feelings and deny our humanity
We are sentient beings and to deny our feelings is to deny our humanity and block ourselves from a liberated way of being with ourselves, with others and in the world.
Louise Wellby, Head of Content