Happy Sunday from California! I was thinking about this concept of a beach ball as I was walking pass the pool this morning.
Have you ever tried to hold a beach ball under water in a pool? If you have not it is harder than you think, it keeps wanting to come to the surface and it takes a lot of resistance to hold it under the water.
This is a great metaphor for trying to resist our emotions and hold them in… They just keep coming to the surface and sometimes with a lot of force. They can even manifest into physical symptoms and it can turn into illness.
There are several ways we can handle our feelings:
Avoiding- Using avoidance tactics like disconnecting or buffering to avoid feeling an emotion
Resisting- This is where we keep pushing it down, like the beach ball
Indulging- Staying in an indulgent emotion like self-pity or confusion, not moving forward
Allowing- It is where you take a deep breath and feel the emotion all the way through
Learning to feel any emotion and allowing it takes practice. Start by becoming aware if you are feeling a negative emotion. Look for triggers like buffering and disconnecting.
Then ask yourself these questions:
Where do you feel it in your body?
How would you describe it to someone?
Can you name the feeling?
Try it on, the next time you are reaching for a cupcake or your hand is at the bottom of a chip bag, look to see what emotion you are feeling and allow it instead of trying to avoid it with overeating……
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