Better OUT than IN

You woke up this morning and you feel crappy. You’re sad, you’re out of sorts, and you don’t feel like going to work (/school/rehearsal/wherever you need to go). What should you do?

Option A: Stay in bed.

Option B: Get up and mope around feeling sad. Stare blankly at the mirror while you brush your teeth. Drag yourself out the door.

Option C: Turn on Kanye and jam it out. Chug some coffee. Bounce out the door.

Answer?

Any of them. All of them. None of them. It doesn’t matter what you do, it’s how you do it. (Though in fairness, if you choose option A too often, most likely your employers will kindly let you know that you no longer need to show up at all.) So let’s talk about how to deal with your emotions. Say this mantra with me:

Better OUT than IN.

Our emotions are meant to move OUT of us. Think about the word emotion itself… there’s literally the word “motion” contained in it! Our emotions are not designed to be stagnant and static. They are experiences with a chemical basis, and they are meant to sequence through us and out of us. (Didn’t I just say this a couple of weeks ago in my blog about how we cope with world events? 😉).

Too often we stay stuck in our emotions. We either wallow in them, grasping onto our sadness for dear life and not letting it go (that’s probably what’s going to happen if you stay in bed all day). Or, we unconsciously shove our experiences down.

We push them down, we push them dow-ow-ownn…

Sing it Sia.

We push our feelings down, trying not to feel them and pretending they’re not happening so we can go about our task at hand (for instance you could easily turn on Kanye and mask your sadness without actually letting it move out of you). The problem when we do this though, is that our emotions get trapped in the tissues of our body. Our body grabs onto our sadness or our anger or our fear and stores it for us… it stores our uneasiness. And as it sits there long enough, the un-ease can turn into dis-ease. In other words, it can make us sick. Not good.

What do we do instead?

The trick is to feel our feelings. It is only when we allow our emotions to be present and in motion, that they can move through us and out of us.

So let’s go back to those scenarios and discuss how you could do each of them in a productive way:

Option A as a solution: If you’re gonna stay in bed, roll around and let yourself feel your sadness. Beat the pillow if you have to. Talk or cry out loud about why you’re sad. Let that stuff OUT of you! If you do this, it’s pretty much guaranteed that it won’t be long before you want to get up and do something else. After all, the only constant in life is change and same goes with our emotions.

Option B as a solution: Moping around the house while you get ready for your day is a totally valid way to behave, as long as you’re letting yourself actually feel your sadness rather than grasping onto it. How will you know the difference? If you’re staring at the mirror brushing your teeth, and the inner monologue in your head is: “I’m so sad. My life sucks. Things will never be good again…” or something along those lines, quit it. You’re feeding the sadness loop and writing yourself a story that will make these things true. However, if your inner monologue is related to your actual feelings in the moment, such as: “Wow! That thing yesterday has make me really sad. I wish it hadn’t happened. I know there’s nothing I can do to change it now, but still I feel sadness in the pit of my stomach…” Great! That’s you feeling your feelings. Good work allowing them, and now trust that they’ll move through you and they’ll change. Listen to your thoughts! They will tell you so much about whether you’re grasping onto a story from the past or allowing yourself to feel what’s happening right now.

Option C as a solution: There’s a subtle but huge difference between turning on Kanye because you’re trying to drown out your feelings, or allowing yourself to feel sad and then using a tool like music to shift your energy. Before you pump up the jams, take just one moment to breathe deeply and acknowledge that you’re sad. Then choose to take an action that will change your experience. (Feel free to substitute Kanye for going to the gym, doing some yoga, spending a few minutes breathing, or sitting in meditation for a bit.)

The difference between pushing your feelings down or allowing yourself to feel them is subtle, but it’s huge. When we acknowledge our feelings they can change. When we don’t they get stuck. So let them flow and let them go, because (say it with me again):

Better OUT than IN!