Feel your feelings. One way to decrease anxiety is to acknowledge how you feel. Name the emotion.
For generations, we were taught certain feelings were bad or negative so, we learned to suppress and ignore them. Fear of judgement created situations whereby we didn’t process our stuff – partly because we didn’t want to think anything was wrong with us. And, guess what? The more we felt a certain emotion and didn’t release our feelings, the more magnified and intensified it became.
Identifying emotions helps you understand how you feel. A self-inventory can lead to freedom. Emotions can impact how we remember things. Our understanding of the present can continue to be distorted until we release the emotions from the past.
The meaning we attach to our feelings is also significant. Perhaps feelings are not “good” or “bad”. That would leave us in a place of constant internal conflict. Maybe we should look at our feelings as lessons opposed to problems. What am I learning? What can I resolve?
A simple truth: feeling our feelings leads us to answers. Remember, what we fear, we cover.
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Christine Langley-Obaugh, M.Ed.
Founder of STREST™
strestllc.com
