A lovely woman emailed me with her questions about how to stay with emotions in moments when they feel too overwhelming to feel. With her permission, I’m including her email here:

“You said something that hit me.…which is that the story we attach to the energy that is flowing creates more discomfort (or that’s how I’m perceiving it is for me)…. I am finding it a challenge to allow for such discomfort in the moment of the uncomfortable “angry” or “self sabotage” or “beating myself up b/c I’m not perfect” energies, and very aware of the stories I attach during those times. I find I cannot even sit calmly and observe it, I’m so overtaken – (Ex: yesterday I was getting more worked up about something I was doing wrong to the point that I could watch myself, but could not sit and be with the emotion, accept the emotion, and release the story I knew I was creating in that moment. I had to go for a walk. And part of me wonders, what if I could have sat there and released the story – would the energy really flowed through and would the anger go away? Is it the story that creates the anger?

Was there a practice you had that reminded you to do this when that happens when you’re angry, beating yourself up, or noticing self sabotage in the moment – where you could be with it w/out a story? ie: the story as it’s happening and the discomfort partnered with it as it’s perceived?”

Thank you so much for asking me this! First and foremost, the fact that you are AWARE that there is a difference between energies moving through and the story we attach to it is THE major practice. Keep giving your attention to that fact!  That is amazing, and it is what gives you space to do more than ACCEPT and be present with whatever is rolling through.  It helps you understand that the energies are safe and that the mind is just doing its job of loving and protecting you by trying to put you back into a known story.  That understanding makes any need to accept just, well, irrelevant and unnecessary.  Truly, that space between you and the stories will start to expand more and more, which will allow you to be more and more present to the energies rolling through without pigeon-holing them into pre-fab identities of the “angry,” “self-sabotaging,” or self critical” person.

Secondly, you wonder if the energies really would have moved through if you were able to be with them?  In my experience, yes.  In fact, if we give our attention to them, that’s what makes them able to shift – rather than us resisting them, plugging them into a story, and keeping that story going (which keeps the discomfort going).  I’ve heard that it takes about 90 seconds for the biochemical process of an emotion to move through (once we actually feel it). Remember that feeling the physical sensations of the emotion is very different than telling a story about it and stewing about it. Being in the head’s repetitive thoughts is very different than being in the body’s in-the-moment experience.

Remember that our brains are trying to distract us from the raw energy by plugging it into a “known” story.  The brain mistakenly believes it is helping us to avoid threat.  But it keeps the “threatening” sensation going by keeping the threatening story going, which holds the energy in place and doesn’t let it shift.

Okay, so I hear you that you would like some suggestions about what would help you in those red hot moments when you want to run from the seemingly overwhelming energies!!  I can certainly share what helps me in those moments!

First, see if you can STOP. Literally stop moving and be still.  When I feel some energy coming up in me that feels overwhelming, I often get REALLY busy.  I know that I am avoiding, and I’ll often hear my mind say “yeah, I’ll sit down and feel it after I get these things done.”  My mind tells me that the errands, the email, the whatever is WAY more important than me sitting down to attend to the discomfort inside me!  It sounds like you have the same awareness in the back of your mind as you go through these moments. So, if possible STOP. And here’s the thing, eventually, we DO stop.  We can’t keep it up forever.  We naturally come to a more still place where we’re able to go inside and check it out. So whenever you can stop, either then or later, then really be stopped.  Be still.

It helps me to sit in a position I don’t normally sit in. It helps me be present, helps me break the trance of the mental panic  – partly because it literally requires that I step out of the usual neural pathways and into the new ones of that physical position.  I like to sit on my heels on the floor in those moments.  Or, sit perched on a chair I’ve dragged into the middle of the room. Or sit on the floor, a table, or somewhere in a room or part of my house I don’t usually sit in.  Again, it literally gives us a new vantage point and wakes up new neural pathways in the body. It signifies a “specialness,” or that something new is happening. It helps with separating ourselves from the old stories and identities.

It also helps me to set a timer.  When I am feeling overwhelmed by some kind of mounting internal pressure of energy, it can feel like if I actually sat down to attend to it I would be spending DAYS feeling the hugeness of it!  (Which is a story that is designed to help me avoid the energy).  So if I can set a timer, I let my brain know it will just be for this teeny chunk of time. Maybe 5 minutes on the timer. Every single time I’ve done this, by the time the timer goes off, the energy has either completely moved through, or it has shifted enough that I am not only able to stay with it, but want to. I feel engaged and interested in what is rolling through and I actually want to stay with it.

Super importantly, the next thing that helps is to give my attention to my physical body.   To give my attention to the physical sensations I can feel in my body.  Not to change any of them, but to notice whatever is there. I get curious about “how does it feel to be inside my skin right now?”  I catalog what is there. Is there a pressure in my chest? My throat? Do I notice pain anywhere?  Is my breathing fast or slow?  Maybe there is a sense of trembling, or being super cold,  or like there is energy moving so fast through me it is enervating every muscle.  Maybe there are images flooding me.  Maybe there is even something that feels truly like I am PISSED, but I don’t have to have that anger be about anything in particular. Move down out of the head and into the body. Staying with what can actually be felt below the neck IS the process of staying with the energy rather than the story.

Hopefully some of that is helpful to you – especially in terms of growing your wonderful awareness of what the energy is and the difference between that innocent, fresh, spontaneous movement of LIFE, versus the repetitive patterns of a story or identity trying to keep things from shifting so that it keeps you “safe” from feeling and from the unknown!

We’re free. We really are free to experience each moment without trying to make it fit into past stories and identities. 

Thank you for writing me with your question.  It helped me to answer it, and my guess is that it will help others too.

Love,

Chris

I had an experience yesterday that I really wanted to share with you.  I was listening to a podcast, and this podcast really resonated with me.  It really sort of cracked me open. It really contributed to this unfolding that I’ve been doing. I’ve been coming to a lot of shift lately. Seeing the world differently and seeing myself differently. I’m just having lots of expansion. And this podcast was just the right thing at the right time, I guess.  I could feel the resonance of it and it started opening up the world for me in a lot of ways. I started to feel this rush-in of energy and ecstasy, and I was crying….  I sort of watched myself feel overwhelmed by that ecstasy, by the feeling that was coming in.  I watched myself have the impulse to text somebody or call somebody and say “Oh my God, this thing is happening that is so amazing!” Or to get up and do something with this realization, this new vision, this new way of seeing things that was opening up in that moment for me. In other words, it felt like sitting with the energy was too much.  There was something in me that wanted to discharge it, distract myself from it, or tone it down!  Maybe I felt like was going to be overloaded or overwhelmed by what I was perceiving as insight or connection or realization.  And then all of these stories came flooding in about what that means for me to be connected, aligned and in harmony with the way the universe works that I think sort of freaked me out! In retrospect, I realize that I see that over and over again with the people that I work with. We’ll be talking and something will open up in them in a similar way, and so often they will abruptly change the topic or sort of bat what I’m saying aside and move onto this other thing. I can almost see them sticking their fingers in their ears and saying “Don’t!  Let’s not go there!  I can’t handle going there!” And sometimes they refer to it by saying something like “My power scares me.” What does that mean?  Power? I’ve been exploring that phrase, because people say it, myself included, but what does it mean?  I’m starting to feel for myself that that sense of power is being in harmony with the way things naturally flow in life.  Being in harmony with Life.  Feeling the influx of energy, the open channels of that energy of the way things are naturally moving.  That feels like power to me: something that has a harmony and resonance and a truth, and we can sense the truth of what we are beyond our small identities.  That feels like power to me. 

There’s been a lot of conversation about shadow work, and embracing all the parts of ourselves.  All the lost parts of ourselves and the shadow parts of ourselves and letting ourselves feel all of our emotions.  Those of you who know me know that I am a huge fan of that!  Of course!  Of course I support that!  Of course I support us making room, embracing  and welcoming any energy that rolls through us.  Understanding that it is energy that is rolling through. It’s the story that we attach to the energy that maybe starts to freak us out or take us down old roads.  On the other hand, if we just stay with whatever energy happens to be rolling through, it keeps rolling through naturally.  That applies to the uncomfortable feelings that we try not to feel.  And actually, partly we attach stories so that we won’t feel.  Making stories can be a way of defending ourselves – to make sense of the energy that’s coming through.  AND, some of the uncomfortable feelings are not necessarily bad.  Well, none of them are bad. No energy that rolls through is bad. The ones we attach the “negative” story to, or the story about fear or sorrow or anger almost seem easier for us to digest than connecting with the ones that we attach stories of ecstasy, expansion, awareness and insight to. That sense of alignment and power (in the way I’m describing it), seem almost to be scarier to us!  Or at least as scary. And I just want to say “What if we can handle it?!”  What if we can handle all of the emotions running through, including ecstasy!  Including radical joy!  Including the felt sense that we are resonating with something bigger, and we are in harmonics with the way life moves. What if we can handle that too?  What if we can handle that power, that alignment, that ecstasy…..?  What if we can sit with it, feel it, let it roll through and inform our forms? The Formless coming through and informing our forms and depositing all of that richness and light and information, whether we’re attaching a story of anger or whether we’re attaching a story of ecstasy..?  it’s just energy and we can handle it, including the ecstasy.  We can handle it!  We can let it be there and open and relax into it. Without having to do anything about it or with it, without having to hide it, dispel it, tone it down…

Just a thought I wanted to capture for myself and share with you. Thanks you for allowing me to enjoy that moment of expanding ecstasy again – with YOU!   

Love,

Christina