brain training - healing - Monday Mantra - self help

It’s NOT all Rainbows & Unicorns: What To Do With Those Unpleasant Feelings

The funny thing about being known as a “happy person” or a “positive person” is that when (not IF) something triggers the ugly feelings to come up, or you are having a rough day, or you just want to hide yourself away from the rest of the world for a hot minute- you tell yourself that you can’t do that. Or maybe someone, well-meaning or otherwise, tells you that you can’t do that. Somehow, somewhere along the path you were told or shown that it’s not OK to not be OK.

Somehow, somewhere along the path you were told or shown that it’s not OK to not be OK.

And so there I was, having back-to-back ugly-emotion overloads and not giving myself the permission and the space to feel what I was feeling, because it wasn’t pretty enough.  To be honest, I wasn’t sure how to deal with my feelings. They felt so foreign and unwelcome and inappropriate and a little scary. I WANT MY SUNSHINE AND SPARKLES, not this dark, gloomy, cloudy shitstorm!  But the shitstorm came anyway, and this one was a Category 5, board up the windows, evacuate to higher ground level emotional event.

And so, I sat with my emotions. I let the noise in my head and my heart settle down as each uncomfortable feeling got my attention.  With the help of my amazing coach (who also happens to be my cousin) Nicole Lewis-Keeber, I explored them all, without judgement. I tapped the shit out of that pent up energy, and found a place of calm within the shitstorm.  And once I got there, I found exactly what I needed: Answers. Clarity. Comfort. Relief!  To see a brief video of Nicole explaining the Emotional Freedom Technique (aka Tapping), click here

The thing is, we ALL have a range of emotions that we feel. We ALL have a lifetime of experiences that shape us, that sometimes trigger uncomfortable feelings, that elicit a response from us that we may not know how to handle in the moment.  We are going to have rough days sometimes.  Yes, sadly, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns… And that’s absolutely, perfectly OK.

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