Let Your Feelings Flow Like A River ~ Anne McCormack

Feelings are critical to our human experience. Often we find them overwhelming and unbearable. For many, strong feelings evoke a fear of impending crisis.

Sometimes when feelings arise, it is like I am being dragged kicking and screaming toward an outcome I would rather avoid. When my head interconnects with my heart, tales of caution are generated by my ego. The Negative Nelly who resides in the corner of my mind whispers in my ear all of the woeful outcomes that may prevail. It doesn’t always need to be this way though. We don’t need to bury those feelings down either.

Feeling and acknowledging your emotions is crucial to your emotional wellbeing. It vastly improved your capacity for emotional intimacy with others, and most importantly yourself.

“Don’t Be A Crybaby!”

When I was a young child, I was a fearful cry baby. I often felt ridiculed by others who kept telling me, “stop crying”. I listened to these people. One day at the age of seven years I decided I was not going to cry anymore. And I didn’t for eight years. I became a hollow shell emotionally until the flood gates were opened by an amazing high school teacher I met when I was fifteen years old. She held the space for a group of her students when she noticed things were not right with a few of us. She allowed us to completely be with ourselves and each other in complete acceptance. It was the start of a deep healing journey for me.

Let Them Flow

So often I feel people’s emotions are incongruent with the emotion they decree they are feeling. Someone might be saying how happy they feel, yet when I tune in I feel sorrow or anger. I know that the sorrow or anger is not my own. What I have come to realise is that we can feel multiple feelings simultaneously, particularly when we are fluid in our emotions and just allowing them to flow like a river. Today I expressed excitement and sorrow all at the same time. I could see clearly all of the wonderful things that lay ahead for me. However, I remained honouring my feelings, mostly sorrow. I allowed myself to be in that moment feeling. I chose to be gentle with that part of myself and allowed it to grieve for loss. You know what happens when you build a dam without some form of healthy release. Things continuously build until it gets to a point of overflow and overwhelm.

It is possible to get to a point where we are feeling every emotion possible but don’t engage in mental chatter. Totally in the moment, we feel everything, and yet negative mental chatter is not engaged. I had many moments like this today. I was present in my body and yet I had an awareness that was what I can only describe as the higher self of me. Simultaneously I was feeling intensely and yet I was outside of me observing objectively, speaking to myself, being my own best friend. It was very special. In that moment I was feeling sorrow, and yet I was creating love and kindness and a vast amount of compassion and understanding.

How does it get any better than that!

Anne McCormack is author of the book, Lovitude: Trying To Calm The Monkey Mind and the award-winning, Peacock Dreaming: The Wisdom Of Flowers.