This morning I opened up my laptop to plink away on this weekly note to you, and in my digging, discovered my power cord is two hours away. Damn!!
Not just one damn, but more like 10 or 12. Honestly, I lost count. And more honestly, it was the f word.
Hang in there for a sec, because while this seems like it’s going to be all about me, trust me, it’s not.
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been noticing that my fuse is a lot shorter than it used to be. Things that don’t normally cause me to blink twice are sending me practically into meltdown. I’m crying 4 times a day. I’m frustrated. I kind of hate everyone and everything.
Whoa. That’s pretty serious for a lady like me.
The tiny little things build up over time.
This anger and frustration that has surfaced as an everyday part of me has felt confusing to me. I couldn’t quite figure out where it was coming from or why now and why so extreme. So I started taking an inventory. I wrote about everything that pissed me off over the course of 24 hours. And dang. It was a lot.
And as I reviewed what I wrote, it was clear that it wasn’t just that my kid had a hard time deciding what to have for breakfast one day, or my mom trying to “help” me improve my recipe one time, or my ex-husband being late just today…it is the cumulative effect of brushing off those repeated instances for the last gazillion years.
The cumulative impact of brushing them off like they didn’t effect me.
Sunshine and rainbows has its place.
I’m all for staying positive and high-vibe. Not much bothers me long enough that i keep stewing over it again and again. And positivity has it’s place. But what I’m seeing (both with myself and with the women that I work with) is that we jump straight to positivity and skip noticing how things actually make us feel.
We feel that indulging our feelings is a waste of time, or keeps us from moving forward.
It’s easy to make statements like this:
“That guy that cheated on me? He didn’t deserve me anyway.”
“My ex-husband who worked all the time and didn’t treat our family like we were important? I did everything for him, and he still didn’t appreciate me.”
“That man I lived with who took advantage of my ambition and success, and let me support him while he worked on passion projects that never went anywhere? Lesson learned, I won’t ever do that again.”
But, HELLO! What we are skipping over is the fact that these things made us feel like shit! Angry, sad, abandoned, frustrated, devastated, and whatever other emotions. We just moved right into what we’re going to change or how we’re going to look at it differently next time – without feeling the magnitude of the real, raw emotions.
If you’re still carrying the leftovers of those hurts, chances are you haven’t let yourself feel all the feelings you have about them.
Sure, I understand. You want to feel good, so you keep your head up and keep marching forward. But in doing so, you also skip over the hurts, instead of fully feeling them. That’s why they linger. Because deep down, they still hurt, and as long as they still hurt, they can’t heal.
And then those hurts come along with you as baggage, and the next thing you know, that baggage is holding you back. It keeps you from opening up all the way, from trusting new potential partners, from showing the more tender parts of yourself. Baggage keeps you from love.
The only way to heal is to bring those feelings up and out. This doesn’t have to be done publicly, but boy, is it powerful to have a witness.
Part of why you don’t let yourself heal is because of the judgment you have about you and your feelings.
I shouldn’t still be feeling this. It’s been so long.
I shouldn’t be upset about this – I don’t even want him anymore.
I shouldn’t have let that happen for as long as I did.
I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t, I shouldn’t.
For today, give yourself permission to have whatever comes up be ok.
Your turn. Take one hurt you’ve been holding on to, one thing that you’ve put a positive spin on, one thing that you know is holding you back from relationships, and let yourself explore the realm of what feelings are really underneath. You can write about it, meditate on it, or even just pose a simple question to ask and see what answers come up.
For example, you might have a question like this:
What feelings are left for me to feel about my ex-husband cheating on me?
If you know you’ve got “stuff” that’s holding you back and you are ready to let that shit go, I’d be honored to help. Go here to learn more.