Why all the feels?

“Feeling sucker” or my personal favorite “tear vampire.” We get a lot of creative names in this profession, and hey it makes sense. We do ask a lot of our clients as we are often asking them to do some of the most difficult work anyone could be asked to do. And the feelings- oy vey- all the feelings. We often ask of you to go deep into the corners of your heart and mind, dust off the cobwebs of THAT time or THOSE feelings and not just take a look at them, no, but take them out for an all expenses paid vacation.

Ugh, we know, we know. We understand that instead of Bad Feelings popping up every now and then or have bad episodes that you’ll kinda out of, now it’s here and loudly cracking it’s gum in your ear when you’re just trying to relax. You're probably thinking we have made a wrong turn, the less time we spend with Bad Feelings, the less we have to face them. But listen. While Bad Feelings is eating your leftovers you were saving for tomorrow’s lunch-time ruminations,Bad Feelings is telling you about it’s weaknesses.

The more we can tune into what is creating the anxiety, depressions and dissatisfactions, the more understanding and control we have over them. Before jumping into the mitigating events, it is equally as important to be able to accurately label what the emotion is. Anger, depression and confusion are expressed differently in every person. Our emotional expressions are formed from our environment, parenting, genetics, and learned behaviors.

With that said-the more we can understand about Bad Feelings where it came from, why it’s here and how it came to be, the less it becomes THAT friend who seemingly never leaves your apartment when you want to go to bed and something we can manage with newly acquired tools.Through exploring, challenging and confrontation, we can begin to pick apart the lies Bad Feelings has been telling us throughout our lives. Bad Feelings doesn’t do well with confrontation and it haaaaates reality checks. Bad Feelings lives for “alternative facts” and when confronted with challenging its' faulty belief system, its' deeply planted roots start to wither away one by one.

Through challenging it’s existence and reasons for staying, Bad Feelings will start spending less and less time hanging around. Sure, it’ll come by for a visit, but now you know the ways to challenge it and have the tools to take control these feelings instead of these feelings controlling you.

We often put our emotions on the back burner without giving credit as to how much they drive our decision making, beliefs about our worth, and overall self esteem. I would encourage anyone to take the time to do a self-inventory to ensure you are giving yourself the best chance at happiness; after all you do spend the most time with yourself.