Lesson 4:
I can be myself when I can allow my feelings
This week I was listening to an interview with Dr. Becky Kennedy on Glennon
Doyle’s podcast. Dr. Becky is a psychologist and author of Good Inside and she
was discussing parenting (her specialty) but also how to reparent ourselves as
adults.
This is a gem of an interview (whether or not you are a parent) but one thing she
said stood out to me.
“You can’t learn to regulate feelings you don’t allow yourself to have. If you want
to manage a feeling in your body it has to be allowed to live in your body”.
The word that struck me was allow.
How many of us know how to allow our feelings? Allow ourselves to have them,
experience them, let them exist in our bodies without manipulation?
I know I didn’t for many years and I still work on it today.
As a sensitive, deeply feeling child born to parents who weren’t particularly
skilled at being emotionally open, I learned a lot of ways to judge, push away,
resist what I was feeling.
Maybe you heard things like this as a child when you were feeling something
big. Maybe you say these things to yourself now.
“Its not that bad.”
“Don’t be so dramatic”
“Stop crying”
“There is no reason to feel…sad, angry, scared, ect”
We all do this to some extent because we want to belong, be acceptable, and
know we are loved. We are taught implicitly and often explicitly that our
emotions are a threat to our sense of connection to others and thus our survival.
However these strategies to “manage our feelings” actually leave us feeling lost,
disconnected, and uncertain (and our emotions unmanageable).
Our childhood brains come up with poor emotional coping strategies when the
adults around us can’t teach us what it means to be with our feelings,
acknowledge them as real, and accompany us through the process of
experiencing them.
When we reparent ourselves we learn how to do this. We rewire our hearts to
foster the loving connected presence that it takes to sit with ourselves through
our emotions and say with sincerity,
“I’m here”
“I believe you (and what you are feeling)”
“I can be with and love you through this feeling”
There are of course many ways to do this. Dr. Becky uses the process of Internal
Family Systems. I actually use IFS with my therapist and it has been a wonderful
system to help me reclaim all the di
erent parts of myself and be with them all.
However, I think the key to my rapid progress in therapy has been my self-
compassion practice. My therapist even said to me the other day, “You are so
kind to all the parts of yourself!”
I’m kind because I know how to foster an inner environment where I can show up
as kind. The MSC work has taught me exactly how to allow, honor, and hold
compassionate presence for all my emotions. Through this work, I have a clear
pathway in my mind/body to access this loving connected presence that sits
with me while I feel what I feel.
The result is that I am a much more regulated, happy, authentic version of
myself.
“You can’t learn to regulate feelings that you don’t allow yourself to feel”
Truth.
Two of the most common phrases I hear in my coaching clients is, “I just don’t
want to feel…(regret, disappointment, guilt)”. and “I shouldn’t feel…xyz”
We don’t live our best lives when we are afraid of and “shoulding” our feelings.
If you are tired of stu
ng, feeling worried about, or even afraid of your feelings.
Please consider joining us for the 9 week MSC course.
The skills and loving community in this course will give you all the tools you
need to transform the way you relate to your emotions. So you can start
regulating your emotions instead of your emotions ruling you.
This is such important work that both Sarah and I don’t want the cost to be a
barrier to anyone interested. We are o
ering a coupon code to take 25% o
if you
sign up this weekend. Just put in MSC25 in when you sign up and you’ll receive
25% o
the enrollment fee.
And if you need more
nancial support to make it possible to participate please
reach out to me. I’d love to
nd a way to make it easy for you to join and get all
the bene
ts. Just reply to this email we will
nd a way to make it work!
My invitation to you this week is to consider what feelings are not allowed to live
in your body.
Is it anger, disappointment, grief? Or even a positve emotion like enthusiasm,
passion, or unconditional love?
For now, just acknowledge and name that it isn’t allowed and if it feels right
explore why that might be so.
And if you’d like a safe space to go deeper and allow that feeling to be met with
compassion and understanding consider joining us in class.
With feeling,
❤
Jennifer