To Feel or Not to Feel?

 Have you ever been accused of being dramatic or emotional? I certainly have. As if showing emotion is bad. I mean, who made that rule? 

Recently I gave a mini-presentation on fear to a large family consisting of children and adults, ages 10 to 79. During the course of the address, I mentioned how important it is to allow ourselves to feel every emotion, even fear. I explained how sometimes we as human beings decide it's "bad" or "weak" or something to feel negative emotion, such as anger or sadness or disappointment or fear. But reality is, we are here on this planet to encounter as much of the human experience as we possibly can, and that includes every single emotion there is. 

Yep, even fear. 

What's great about feeling negative emotion is that it makes feeling positive emotion even that much sweeter! If I don't understand what it's like to feel painful emotion, how can I really appreciate and understand the blissful, peaceful, overwhelming feeling of joy? But I think there's even more to it than that. I think negative emotion builds resilience inside of us. And we long for that. We yearn for growth. And somehow our brains know that.

But back to my story.

After my presentation, one of the adult men pulled me aside to thank me for what I shared. Then an interesting thing happened. He became emotional (Yes--a guy! Ha!). The truth is, he was so emotional he couldn't speak for a few moments. That's when he told me that the piece of what I shared that really struck him was the part about it being OK to feel fear, that in fact, it's something we even want to do because it's part of the human experience. I don't know why that was so important to him, but isn't it such a great thing to know? 

We can feel our feelings. Every single one of them. In fact, we need to feel our feelings. It's not "bad" to be emotional. Our natural response is to avoid, resist, or react to negative feelings, but what would happen if we didn't? What would happen if we simply allowed them and felt them? 

We would be OK. 

In fact, we would be better than OK. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to avoid our feelings, to react to them, to resist them. But allowing them? Not so much. Then we can use that curiosity we love to utilize to ask ourselves why we feel that way. And before we know it, we've discovered a whole lot about ourselves, and instead of feeling spent, we feel energized, motivated, and empowered. 

So, when faced with the choice to feel or not to feel, the answer my friend is this . . . 

Just do it! You've got this!