Colors – Day 3

“I’m trying to deal with my feelings the best that I can,” a woman said. “I don’t force them on anybody or hold anyone responsible for what I feel. I try to be aware of what I’m feeling, feel it, and then release the emotion. Let it go. Sometimes I know what I’m feeling, but sometimes I don’t. A whole bunch of emotions get stuck together and come out in a bunch.”

“What you’re doing sounds right to me,” I said. “And meltdowns are good.”

As hard as we may try to ignore what we’re feeling, sometimes the force of our emotions is more than we can control. The anger, sadness, frustration, hopelessness, and fear that we’ve been trying to wish away spill out all at once.

“My husband is really good about his meltdowns,” one woman said. “He has one every other week or so. If I go in the room with him, he’ll spill emotions on me. But if I leave him alone, at least he won’t follow me around dripping his meltdown on me.”

A frustrating event can trigger a meltdown. Sometimes it’s minor or unrelated to what we’ve been feeling—or trying not to feel. Everything we’ve been working so hard to not express comes out. It’s like we’re a ripe blueberry, plump with emotions, that explodes when it gets poked.

See how much better we feel after we’ve melted down?

Challenge: The most difficult thing about feeling emotions can be connecting with them. It can feel much safer to live in our head. Surprise! The feelings we tried so hard to ignore were exactly what we needed to feel to get our lives on track.

From the book: 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact

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