Photo credit goes to Iulia Mihailon
Thanksgiving is behind us and we have officially begun the holiday season. It is a lot of fun for children, and we enjoy seeing relatives or friends we haven't seen in a while. We enjoy excellent food and time spent together.
But some of us have a sadness inside of us. Maybe we are mourning the loss of a loved one who is not joining us at the table anymore.. Maybe someone in our family or close friend circle is going through a hard time and we feel empathy.
You are not going to like this life coach hack one bit, but I'm going to share it anyway.
It is simple and so hard to do. Here it goes:
Feel the sadness.
What ? I thought you are going to give me 5 feel better tips or something. I don't want to feel sad. And herein lies the problem. We, as a culture, are not used to feeling these uncomfortable emotions. We pursue happiness, right? Well, we can't feel happiness if we never feel sadness. We need the balance, the contrast.
I encourage you to not sweep it under the rug, or numb it. We numb it with lots of things. TV, alcohol, food, exercise, social media, ....fill in the blank. Anything but feeling the sadness.
And yet, even in the Bible it says there is a time to weep, and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. ( Ecclesiastes 3:1-8).
I give some of my clients a permission slip to feel their emotion. They sign it and allow themselves to feel it. Sit with it and let it wash over you. Acknowledge it . Only then can you release it. Otherwise it will consume you.
This holiday season, if you are going through some hard times, you are mourning or just feeling sad, let it be so. The feeling of sadness is just that. A feeling. It does not define you. It is not you. It is a feeling.
As it has been said: Feel it to heal it.
If you need any help feeling those uncomfortable feelings , write to me and I can help you walk through them.
You are loved. Deeply loved. Loved beyond measure.
Isabelle