Getting uncomfortable.

When was the last time that you felt really uncomfortable? I am talking about the kind of discomfort that you don’t even really want to think about. Maybe you were called out. Maybe you realized after something happened that you didn’t show up in the way you wanted. Maybe you witnessed something that you wish you’d handled differently. In any case, how quickly did you hot potato those uncomfortable feelings to something or someone else? Maybe you blamed someone else. Tried to eat through, distract through, busy through [fill in the blank here] through so that you didn’t have to really own and FEEL the feeling.

We have ALL been there. The problem tends to be, that when you avoid feeling the feeling…it doesn’t go away. In fact, it usually gets bigger. Scarier. Harrier. Maybe it grows an extra set of eyeballs and says mean things to you subconsciously. See when we avoid allowing our feelings, it is like tucking them into a small box and setting it in a random spot in our house. But the boxes stack up. And depending on the depth of the feeling, they may be kind of toxic and make us feel not so great in our bodies. You may wake up one day realizing all of the places in your home (aka mind & body) that you are avoiding based on these scary monster-filled boxes. They may block your view, keep you from sitting on your favorite chair, and before you know it, it's harder and harder to maneuver. Wondering how you can help this hypothetical person buy a new house? Chances are we all have some of those boxes, and it's never too late to refile and reorganize them.

I went to see Yung Pueblo a few years ago, during his book tour. After the event ended, we waited to get his autograph on his Inward book. I told myself that I would intuitively select a page, and the quote I landed on was this:

“giving yourself

the space and time

to respond instead of reacting blindly

is an important way

to reclaim your power”

The time and space to respond instead of reacting blindly…as I let that sink in, I realized that time and space were all about feeling. Processing. Dealing with. Emoting. The more you avoid, the more you react and the bigger the emotion feels. The stacked-up boxes create reactions that then make more stacked-up boxes. You can't fix the emotions until you FEEL them. In my experience, the process goes something like this feel>acknowledge>accept>release>respond>reclaim. Sometimes it's back to accept and release until you can really accept and release. These feelings are teachers, but we can't expect to learn from them if we can sit with them. Hold space for them like we would a friend who was sharing their heart with us.

The quote was signed, “Dear Tory, May you be free.” It took me a little while after really letting that sink to understand the relationship between freedom, the space to respond, and reclaiming my power. For me, allowing space and time to respond looked like a lot of things. First of all stopping the blaming game. Going through a course that helped me understand that places in life that I wished were different, better, or more and what to do about those feelings. Consistency with showing up. Breathwork. Boundaries. Journaling. Having a coach/trusted friend/therapist to process with. Not blindly trusting how I felt when I knew I was in a reactionary place. Allowing myself to say/write the things that my inner gremlin was telling me and allowing them to exist but not allowing them to permeate forever. Meditation specifically for triggers. More journaling. And of course, starting this blog to share the processed stuff, in hopes that maybe some nugget I share will help someone else.