What Are Your Feelings Telling You?

 

Pause to Ponder

This “Pause to Ponder” post features wisdom excerpted from Brianna Wiest’s book, “101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think.” It’s from essay #7, “What the Feelings You Most Suppress are Trying to Tell You.”

 

 

Real emotional maturity is how thoroughly you let yourself feel anything. Everything. Whatever comes…

What you have to know is that suffering is just the refusal to accept what is. That’s it. Etymologically, it comes from the Latin word to “from below to bear.” Or, to “resist, endure, put under.” 

So healing is really just letting yourself feel. 

It is unearthing your traumas and embarrassments and losses and allowing yourself the emotions that you could not have in the moment that you were having those experiences. It’s letting yourself filter and process what you had to suppress at the time to keep going, maybe even to survive…

So it’s not about changing how you feel. It’s about listening…[Feelings] are how you communicate with yourself. Every feeling is worthwhile. You miss so much by trying to change every one of them away, or thinking there are some that are right or wrong or good or bad or that you should have or shouldn’t, all because you’re afraid that you’ll tell yourself something you don’t want to hear. The feelings you most suppress are the most important ways you guide yourself…

You either let yourself feel everything or numb yourself into feeling nothing. You cannot select emotions. You are either in accord with their flow or in resistance to their nature. In the end, the choice is yours.

 
 
 

Take a Moment Micro-Meditation

 

Tiny pauses to be right here, right now can have big results. Our Take a Moment series of micro-meditations—all under two minutes long—make taking mindful pauses as easy as possible. We invite you to "Take a Moment" to find the calm that is always within you.