4 Ways I Prepare To Let Myself Feel Hard Emotions

I spent decades not liking who I was, and even longer figuring out how to actually sit with hard feelings instead of drowning in them or shoving them down. In this post, I walk through the four specific things I do to prepare myself to face hard emotions: getting genuinely ready instead of diving in raw, physically self-soothing so I'm never alone with it, pulling in proof of everything I've already survived, and using discernment so old, false thoughts don't get to run the show.

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Did anyone ever talk to you about sitting with your feelings? Maybe you get dragged along by a rip tide of emotions and don't know what to do with yourself, so you shove them aside so you can keep going. Or you fall so deep into them you feel like you might drown ~ in them, or a pint of Häagen-Dazs.

Many of my clients had never thought about it before: that you can make sure you're fully on your own side before you even start, which makes facing your feels easier. I call this Getting "OMOS" ~ On My Own Side. And don't feel weird if you don't know what that looks like, I didn't for decades.

As a kid, you were underparented like me. No one ever showed you that there's always one person who can always show up for you when you're facing the hard stuff. Someone who can cheer you on, hold your hand, whisper, "You got this." If that sounds like something you could use in your life, welcome in to your Daily Dose of Dawn at dawn, videos designed to get you on your own side.

Okay, so you may have figured it out. The someone is you. From the cradle to the grave, you are the only constant. When it comes to feeling your feels, everything is in your hands, although it might not feel like it.

Today, I'm going to give you four easy yet incredibly effective lessons for preparing yourself to sit with hard feelings so that you can Feel Your Feels but Keep Your Feet Out of the Fire. This is the core idea of today's message. If you're new here, I'll explain what it means in just a second. But first, let me give you some context.

It took me 35 years to like myself. When I started on my own personal growth journey 15 years ago, I was 6 feet under okay. I was looking up at okay like it was a vacation. In the time since, I've increased my capacity to face my challenges.

The lifelong challenge of being stuck in a faulty meatsuit with hurdles like Narcolepsy and POTS, being underparented, not knowing what to do or how to make it better, experiencing mistreatment from everyone in my life who was supposed to care for me. To be here now at 56 thriving and loving my life required one massive thing: being fully on my own side.

I can't get you from your own worst enemy to fully on your side in just this one video, but I can put you on the path by giving you the most important tool in my kit for dealing with your emotions. Which brings us back to Feel Your Feels but Keep Your Feet Out of the Fire.

In order to heal, we need to process all the icky things we've experienced through our lives. This is Feeling Your Feels. It's pretty self-explanatory, but sometimes the things we have to confront can be a lot to deal with, even overwhelming. And when your feels get so overwhelming, you feel physically affected, like a stomach ache or crippling anxiety, that's the fire. When we feel the fire, we need to back up, shore up, and try again. So, in order to heal and keep healing, we need to Feel Our Feels, but Keep Our Feet Out of the Fire. Feel your emotions, but don't let them burn down the house in the process. You need YOU.

It sounds simple, but when we get overwhelmed, it can be easy to not have the head space to keep our feet out of the fire. And today's lessons will all help you keep your feet out when you're feeling your feels by increasing your CAPACITY to handle hard things and activating your AGENCY so you have a choice of what you think and how you let it affect you. So with all that out of the way, let's get started.

Number 1: Get ready before sitting with your feels. What does that look like? It looks like you're ready to face the hard stuff. You're rested. You're not hungry or thirsty. And you're in a neutral or positive mood. You're comfortable. You're prepared.

I do this even while I'm browsing support groups that I'm in on social media. Otherwise, I read everybody's stories of dealing with hard things and my not so great mood goes further south or I end up with empathy anxiety and I need a nap. It's one of the biggest reasons I created the Positively Narcolepsy Group, because then I can show up without my armor.

For you, maybe it's not social media. Maybe you're preparing to have a hard conversation with a friend, or even just right now trying to read the news with all of its doom and gloom, or something just happened and you're still processing it. Taking care of yourself with self-care before you deal with that stuff makes it easier for you to face it. And sometimes that's not possible. Sometimes you're dropped right into the thick of it and you have no choice but to sit with some hard feels, and that's when you want to remember lesson number 2.

And number 2 I talk about a lot in a lot of my videos. I have 200 videos help you go deeper into you. Number 2 is Physical Self-Soothing. I also call this holding your own hand through the hard stuff. Since I learned how to self-soothe for myself, I've never felt alone, even when no one else is around.

When I went to the dentist recently, the hygienist did this circular motion on my forehead with her thumb while the dentist was giving me the shot. And it gave me something to focus on instead of the anticipation of being jabbed. When it came time for the drilling, I did the same thing on my own with my fingers. I just made little circles on my leg with my nails and then forced my mind to focus on my leg. So, maybe you hug yourself for self soothing, hold a pillow on your lap, or wear a hat. Whatever soothes you.

Number 3, call on all the things you've learned and overcome along the way. I was bullied for seven long years of my life and I had no idea it would ever change, because that whole time it didn't. So sitting with those feels now, I want to call in some facts like I'm not seven anymore. Like I'd never let that happen to me again. I no longer need anyone to love me for me to like myself. And those are things that give me the strength to explore feeling rejected without falling into despair, which is the fire.

And four decades of sleep deprivation from Narcolepsy plus a lifetime of trauma. It definitely makes me sensitive still. So I choose to lean into that, that I've always ended up bigger than what's come for me and I can also believe in my capacity to face what I have to face now. Also that I'll get through it for sure, just like I have before. I sit with myself as I sit with my hard feels so nothing ever owns me again. That's agency, and that's true freedom.

Number 4, remember that feelings can lie and this is why discernment is critical. When I first started trying to get on the other side of this, my thoughts thought ME. I had other people's voices inside my head being mean all the time. And then I read the quote by Eleanor Roosevelt: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." And I thought, "I never consented to that!" But I had. By believing what the bullies said about me, by dragging around the words of the people who were supposed to take care of me and didn't, by not having the agency to say, at least to myself, "That's not who I am."

Every feeling I've ever had, I made it. Same for you. The good feels, the hard feels, the inferior feels. So if you can make them, you can unmake them. You can make different choices now about how you feel now. I'm everything you say I am to you, but your words don't define me to me.

Thank you for staying here to the end and showing you that you matter. Today's lessons: Preparing yourself for the hard feels, Holding your own hand through the hard stuff, Calling on what you've learned to help you feel stronger, Remembering that not every thought is the truth and it's important to use discernment, all help you face hard feels and get on your own side.

If you master these four lessons, you will become an expert at Feeling Your Feels While Keeping Your Feet Out of the Fire. And you'll be well equipped to handle anything that life throws at you. I'd love to hear if you can see yourself trying any of these; if you feel the strength that doing so would bring. If so, please comment. I'd love to see.

And if you feel like these lessons gave you a bit more capacity and agency to tackle your hard feels, be sure to subscribe to the channel and like this video to see more content like it. It also really helps me out.

So if you like learning like this and you want to go deeper into yourself, today's dose draws on lessons in my book, How to Be on Your Own Side. It's a 14-day guided experience to give you the full toolkit of tools I used to get on my own side. Head over to HowToBeOnYourOwnSide.com and get your copy. Get it on Amazon, or get it in my product store, HappyMatters.guru.

Whatever you do today, do it from your own side.

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