How Do I Allow The Pain?

One of the most common questions I get is But how do I just allow the pain? Where do I begin to process grief or disappointment?

The best place to start is simply by asking yourself why you’re feeling this way. This will give you the thought creating your feeling. (Because remember? Your thoughts create your feelings – not anything outside of you.)

Then you get to sit with the truth of that statement in that moment.

You feel grief not because this thought is a fact of the universe, but only because you believe it to be true.

This doesn’t mean you need to immediately get rid of that thought or that thought isn’t valid just because it’s a thought. It means you are choosing to believe it, and it causes you to feel grief, and it’s okay to feel grief.

After you recognize the thought creating your feeling, it’s time to drop into your body and see what sensations the feeling of grief is creating for you. Our emotions aren’t meant to be figured out in our head like many of us try to do. This is our body’s job.

For me, grief feels like a dark cavern splitting down the middle of my chest, pulling my ribs apart. It hurts, it makes me want to cry, but when I can just allow it to be there, it can be okay that I’m feeling this way.

If you’re afraid of feeling these feelings because you’ve been feeling them for so long (and you think that if you allow yourself to feel them, you’ll get stuck in them and never get out), my guess is that you’ve mostly been resisting them instead of allowing them.

Resisting your emotions only makes them bigger and last longer.

Resisting sounds like: I shouldn’t be feeling this way. I don’t want to feel this way. And it can often lead to panic.

Instead, try to welcome them in. This may not be your favorite part of your life, but there’s room for them here. Kind of like that uncle that you don’t really like, but you’ll make a spot for him at the table if he comes to visit.

(I don’t know, do you have an uncle that you don’t like? I don’t, but this is the analogy that came to mind. I picture this overweight guy huffing and puffing up the steps to the house, sniffs as he pushes his glasses up his nose, and steps inside. He kind of stinks, like there’s just a bad odor coming out of his pores as he passes you. You groan because Oh man. This is seriously not my favorite visitor. But you don’t try to shove him out the door, and you decide to be loving to him because he also needs love. And at the same time, you’re pretty happy when he decides it’s time to go home again.:)

The better you get at allowing these emotions, the less scary they become and the less they take over your life and your relationships.

An important thing to keep in mind here, is that this is a practice that you’re building, and each day you’re getting stronger at it.

Don’t waste energy telling yourself that you aren’t doing it right or it isn’t working or you’re not going fast enough.

You’re doing it exactly right, and you’re on the way to become the mom that you want to be.

Can’t you feel it?

When you’re ready to pour some gasoline on the fire of the progress that you’re creating in your own life, that’s when it’s time to join my small group: Be Happy Again. This is where we put our brains together – yours and mine – and we create the life that you’ve been dreaming of.

Your dreams and perseverance + My coaching and teaching = Magic.

For those of you that are currently struggling with postpartum depression, our first step for you is to simply feel like yourself again. Once you’re at base level again, then we take it above and beyond, to something that you may not even be able to imagine right now.

And that’s okay, you don’t need to. We work through this together.<3