Honouring your feelings

I'm having a bad day today. It doesn't really matter why because that's not the point of my post. I might write about the whys and wherefores of it all elsewhere (but it is boy-related - doesn't seem to matter what age you are because they are always problematic :( ).

No, the reason I was moved to put fingers to keys was that when the sad feelings first hit me, of course I naturally felt like going straight for the chocolate/cake/biscuits/chips/unhealthy, unnecessary food. But it occurred to me that the main reason I shouldn't do this is because the only thing that would achieve is squashing the feelings down temporarily. After which time I'd have to eat more and squash them back down again. And so on we'd go around and around. And none of this would do anything to actually make me feel any better in the long term. Quite the opposite, in fact.

It occurs to me that when we do this, eat to suppress our emotions, we're basically telling ourselves that what we are feeling is not valid. It's not important enough to actually let ourselves experience it. It's something to be shoved to one side and put in a corner and ignored. Is it any wonder that the strategy basically never works! Sure, I don't feel great right now. I'm teary and uncomfortable and very mixed-up about things. But if I don't learn to stop stepping all over my emotions, I'll never deal with anything. In fact, I actually believe that what I'm feeling today traces back to other events three years ago. I didn't deal with THAT stuff then and so now, what has happened today has pushed buttons which have connected back to that other undealt-with stuff. So in a way, I'm not surprised I feel so yuck in my mind so often. I probably have spent most of my life running away from things I'm SUPPOSED to feel. I know one thing's for sure - it doesn't work. Not at all.

So today, I'm writing this as a reminder. I am NOT going to handle this by disappearing into a huge vat of ice-cream. I'm going to just experience this horrible wash of sadness and yucky negativity. I don't care if it's hard - it's necessary. Otherwise I may still be having these revelations when I'm 70 but still be in the same mindset. Enough is enough.