When I awoke this morning, I immediately felt a sense of misalignment. My brain was telling me what a bad day it would be while simultaneously emitting a black fog that seemed to be weaving its way throughout the rest of my body.
The primary temptation was to sleep away these feelings, but I chose to do something differently.
Why don’t we learn how to soothe our own emotions?
It isn’t easy to practice a skill you never learned, and most of us were not taught how to self-soothe as children. When feeling overwhelmed, you were most likely told that “you’re too sensitive” or “you shouldn’t react in that way.”
I recall when I started school and would cry every morning when my mum left me. Interestingly, there is only one reaction I remember, and that was when my teacher lost her patience and shouted at me to stop crying.
These experiences lead us to believe that negative emotions are a bad thing, and if we display them, we will be punished in some form or another.
Carrying this into adulthood, we begin to avoid negative emotion, thinking that the cure is to sideline the feeling until it disappears.
Avoidance is not the cure.
I spent five years trying to avoid emotions, waking up in the morning feeling hopelessly despairing and sleeping through the day to make it stop. People use all manner of things from alcohol to drugs, sleep, sex, and gambling. We alleviate our feelings by distracting ourselves from them. The problem is as soon as our triggers arise, we’re back in the same place we began, and our issues remain unresolved.
The answer is to accept how we feel and learn to soothe ourselves.
This morning I repeated the mantra,
“I am here. I’m not going anywhere. You’re safe. You will be okay.”
It may sound silly, but I promise that it will change your life if you learn to love and take care of yourself. And reciting a mantra such as this can be extremely powerful when you find yourself in a challenging headspace.
Negative emotions serve just as important a function as positive ones. Picture it like this: a negative emotion is just a chunk of energy that has become stuck, resulting in spiritual misalignment. To free that energy, we first need to acknowledge it, and when we recognize it, we realize it’s not as bad as we thought.
By practicing this alternative reaction, you will begin to feel safer, and the response to your triggers will become less each time.
Just Do It.
Engage In The Behaviour That Is The Most Effective Not The Easiest.
One of the reasons I felt so miserable this morning was that my sleep had been filled with nightmares where all those closest to me were angry, and we were fighting and arguing. Dreams are a different experience for each individual, but mine carry a lot of weight and deeply affect my morning headspace.
I accepted that I felt this way and thought about how to alleviate the disconnected feeling. I messaged my sister and five of my good friends – some of whom I haven’t spoken to in ages – these conversations were filled with positive stories and good news, which for me was a little ray of sunshine on an otherwise cloudy day.
The misaligned feeling has been with me all day today; I’ve never felt quite right. But I’ve meditated, created content for my clients that I am proud of, and played piano. If I hadn’t acknowledged that I was feeling rubbish, I wouldn’t have achieved half of this.
Extend A Sense Of Connection To Others
They’re referred to as NPCs in the gaming world – non-playing characters – but how often are we beginning to treat the community around us like a haze of irrelevant scenery? Our online world is not conducive for spiritual growth, nor is a society in which we are put into roles that don’t necessarily allow us to live as the person we are.
Spend time every day meditating or praying. Get to know yourself, who you are, and what you want.
Acknowledge your feelings, be they good or bad.
Most importantly, be kind to yourself and others.
Remember, every day may not be good, but there is good in every day.
Donna Daydream 