Identifying Feelings For The Woman Who Struggles To Feel
Are you a high-achieving, highly anxious, perfectionistic woman who is currently feeling lost, overwhelmed, like a failure at everything, triggered often, and in a constant state of stress?
Are you feeling like you can no longer function the way you have been all these years? Feeling that you can no longer manage it all with a smile on your face while hiding the psychological torture you’re in? That you are buckling from your own internal pressure and want to check out completely? And has this phenomenon led you to cope in ways that are not healthy or in alignment with your higher self?
If so, then you are just like me and we are having a normal human response to living through a collective trauma and crisis.
I see you babe. I really really see you.
Because I am you.
Right now, with the global pandemic, racial justice movement and relentless changes such as all of sudden teaching our kids, taking our businesses online, being with our partners all the time and wearing masks to all. the. things, it feels like we are in a pressure cooker with no way out.
No way to release the steam and pressure to find relief.
When in this position, our stuff is emerging and rising to the surface. Our stuff meaning our stuffed feelings, parts of ourselves that are no longer serving us, patterns that prevent us from realizing our potential and feeling our best, and beliefs that hold us hostage from really living and being our authentic bad-ass-selves.
Those feelings that have been ignored and the ways in which you have kept them at bay; whether it be drinking, spending, cheating, raging, over producing, conflict in relationships, feeling bored with your career, or hating on yourself internally, are all ready to be honored and worked through.
Because when you do, sister, you rid yourself of all the junk weighing you down and holding you back.
This is an invitation to begin to tend to your feelings, your body holding those feelings and to begin to heal so you can navigate this collective transition we are in and perhaps even come out stronger and healthier than before.
One of my favorite ways to acknowledge and explore feelings is to set up a journal practice.
Journaling allows information that can often be outside of our awareness to come forward.
Before you begin your journal practice, I strongly encourage you to set up an uninterrupted sacred space that feels safe and relaxing. Take 10 deep belly breathes and enter into the space of self- compassion and reflection. You may even light a candle and put on some of your favorite music.
Here are some journal prompts to get you started. Don’t overthink these questions, let your gut be your guide:
How am I feeling about everything that is going on right now?
Where am I holding those feelings in my body? (close your eyes and scan your body – no judgment or shaming what is coming up!)
Am I making time to feel and what does that look like
What are the thoughts and beliefs I have about my feelings that are showing up?
What behaviors am I engaging in to avoid feeling?
Let the information flow and do your best to meet it with curiosity and kindness. This is all just information, there is no right or wrong and it is absolutely okay for you to be exactly where you are right now.
Just by doing this, tending to your feelings, and writing them out you are:
Showing up for yourself in meaningful and healing ways
Strengthening the mind-body connection so you can further identify and name feelings
Have moved the feelings, making a shift happen in your body
Now, MOVE YOUR BODY in any way that feels good to complete the process.
This could look like standing up and shaking, dancing, stretching, or going for a walk. Move the feelings through you and notice how you feel after.
Make this a practice you commit to as often as you can and notice shifts after a day, a week, and a month.
Now more than ever we need to tend to our emotional health and wellbeing and this practice can get you well on your way of doing just that.
