Recently I had a moment of extreme anger. Like from zero to ten in a matter of seconds.
I was playing cornhole with my husband. He was crushing me. And I snapped. I chucked the 1lb. bean bags as far as I could throw them (luckily no one was standing in that general direction).
I stormed into the house to cool off.
I’m competitive, but not in that way. Something else was underneath the anger. I knew it, but I didn’t know what.
I wandered the house for a moment sorting out what I was going to do and how to process the emotion surging through my body.
I ended up back outside, but everyone had shifted somewhere else.
I sat, busying myself with some flowers my daughter had picked.
I cried. I closed my eyes. I took a few deep belly breaths and breathed them out slowly.
I didn’t judge myself for having feelings.
I didn’t try to "fix" the emotion by talking myself out of them.
I didn’t ignore the emotions by moving onto the next thing.
I allowed them.
I imagined the emotion inside of me and rather than push it away, I welcomed it. I relaxed into the emotion instead of resisted it.
Feeling icky feelings is something I have learned how to do over the last few years.
I wanted to learn it because I found myself avoiding all sorts of things for fear of an icky emotion. Things like:
Asking for help (I feared rejection)
Speaking up (I feared looking stupid)
Putting up firm boundaries (for fear of disappointing others)
Changing careers (I feared failure)
Icky emotions were stopping me from living the life I wanted. A life of ambition and balance.
If I wanted full control over my life, I had to learn how to feel icky emotions.
After the cornhole incident, I was able to feel the icky emotions and they passed quickly. I could engage with my kids and my family calmly and without heaviness.
I also was able to sit and process what was behind all the anger, but not from a place of criticizing or fixing, from a place of curiosity.
The anger was a symptom of something much deeper and I discovered it quickly. Not too much time had passed, and I moved on. That was it.
No lingering emotional weight. No withdrawal from the family. No absentmindedness. I processed the emotions and their source and was done.
I moved through the emotion in minutes instead of days.
Learning to process your icky emotions is just one aspect of what we do in coaching. We learn to never let those emotions get in the way of the balanced life we seek.
Take a moment and think for yourself, what would be different in your life if you allowed yourself to feel icky emotions?
How much of the imbalance you are experiencing in life comes from an avoidance of icky emotions?
Ready to feel ambitious and balanced? Then it’s time to jump into the icky. I can help. Click here to schedule a free call to learn more about the process of feeling your icky emotions and creating balance.
