Sometimes when I’m working a big growth edge in my life, I wake up feeling fear and dread in my stomach, mostly fear. When I feel intense feelings that I don’t like my old pattern is to get rid of it by pushing it away, ignoring it or dissociating from it. This was how I survived some overwhelming felt experiences in my childhood.

The problem is that these strategies may bring some temporary relief but they aren’t very effective in the long-term.

Resisting any unwanted feeling tends to amplify it and can lock it in, especially if the feeling is coming from a young part of you that needs your holding and care and another part of you is pushing it away. Trying to ignore it on the other hand can lead to reactive behavior or disconnecting from the body you are here to inhabit and fully live through.

In this article I will explain:

the role your feelings play in your life and why they matter
what you need to know about tending to your feelings (and what not to do)
and how to become a safe space for you feelings so that you don’t get stuck in them and can discover the wisdom they may hold

The role of feelings and emotions in your life

Feeling and emotions are energy in motion. They have different qualities and sensations. Sometimes they just need to be given space to move through you and you don’t need to know more than “oh grief is here” or “I’m feeling scared.”

Other times they are the bearers of information and even wisdom. They tell you about your needs being met or unmet, what you like or don’t like, what you need more or less of or when a boundary has been crossed. Anger is a great information-bearer of boundary violations although often an edgy emotion for women to feel due to the cultural judgments that have been placed on women being angry and the associated denial and disavowing.

Sometimes our feelings are messages from young child parts deep inside us. They can communicate how they felt about a similar experience from the past or how your current experience is affecting them based on their experience from the past. Feelings from our young parts want to be safely held, cared for and supported to be expressed, known, freed and regulated. This is how they heal. They will often communicate with you about their needs and how they’ve been impacted in the past.

What you need to know about tending to your feelings

Sometimes your feelings don’t want to be healed. Trying to heal them can make them louder, resistant and more uncomfortable. This usually happens when the way we tend to our feelings is more of an attempt to fix them than to be a safe space for them to arise.

Just like when you tell someone how you are feeling, you’re not usually telling them because you want to be fixed but to have a safe space to for your deep and tender feelings to be received and cared for. Depending on the other person’s comfort level with the feeling being expressed and conditioning around feelings, they may try to problem-solve or fix your feeling so they feel more comfortable. We can do this to our own feelings too.

Sometimes you can have big and overwhelming feelings arise from traumatised parts within you that flood your system. When this happens you will feel pretty dreadful, on fire with sensation and emotion that won’t subside. You will need to find a way to ground yourself back in the present and close the trauma door that opened and flooded your system with overwhelming feelings and sensations from the past. You may need the help of a loved one or therapist or to call a support line such as Beyond Blue in Australia (call 1300 22 4636) or Lifeline Australia (call 13 11 14). If you become flooded be very gentle and kind to yourself and find a helpful way to soothe.

Other times you may need to titrate your feelings by feeling them for a breath or two or a minute then when it becomes too uncomfortable moving your attention away to something else for a while – your pet, a tree or flower or cloud outside your window. Take time out and read a book or go for a walk then come back to it later. This can help you to slowly move emotions with difficult sensations through your body and build a tolerance to them too.

Because emotions and feelings are energy, sometimes it can be really helpful to give them expression through dance or movement. It can help them move through you while you notice the sensations.

How to create a safe space for your feelings

Here are 4 steps to creating a safe space for your feelings.

1. Don’t judge your feelings

Unfortunately many of us have been taught to label our feelings as positive or negative. I was taught this in my counselling studies as well. I think it’s better not to judge our feelings at all. I believe we do a disservice to them when we label them as positive or negative.

Not judging your feelings also includes not starting by questioning ‘why am I feeling this way?’ There can be subtle or not so subtle judgement in asking why, premised that if we can understand why then we can fix the problem that is causing the feeling and make it go away.

Feelings are for feeling. Emotions are for energy moving through you.

Sometimes we never know why a feeling is there and we don’t need to – the feeling just is and is passing through.

Later you can be curious about the feeling but the first step as I’ll explain below is to welcome it.

2. Appreciate the role, beauty and vast array of your feelings

Part of our human experience is that we feel. That our bodies can experience all sorts of sensations and feelings is one of the reasons that our souls incarnate. Your soul cannot have the same human feeling experience without your body.

Your feelings communicate your full experience of life. While you may prefer some feelings over others, you cannot really pick or choose or avoid certain feelings as they communicate your experience of life in any given moment.

If you’ve ever seen a list of feelings it’s pretty incredible how many feelings a human being can feel and what they tell us about our life experience. You could think of each feeling as a different colour in an artists paint palette. The more colours there are, the more intricate and colourful the painting that can be created or expressed.

3. Cultivate the metaskills of welcoming, allowing, accepting and curiousity

Metaskills are our feeling attitudes. You can think of them as the feeling way we approach something. Metaskills is a term coined by Amy Mindell, a psychologist and one of the founders of Process-Oriented Psychology.

There are many metaskills that help you become a safe space for your own feelings, including non-judgement, compassion, kindness, tenderness and deep listening. You can probably think of others you would add. I believe that welcoming, allowing, accepting and curiousity are a great foundation to start.

1. Welcoming

The Sufi poet, Rumi, has a beautiful poem that speaks to our human experience of feeling, called The Guesthouse.

Rumi describes being human as “a guest house. Every morning a new arrival” of a different feeling as a momentary visitor.

“Welcome and entertain them all!” encourages Rumi because essentially “each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”

You can read the whole of Rumi's poem The Guesthouse as translated by Coleman Barks here.

Or you can go to https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/guest-house/

Alternatively, you can listen or watch Coleman Barks , who translated it from its Persian form into English, read it here

Welcoming is a practice and an intention and not something you will necessarily immediately be able to do for your most difficult feelings. Learning to welcome them will create ease in your body and nervous system as well as a passageway for feelings to be able to pass through.

2. Allowing

By allowing, you give permission for the feeling to exist. It doesn’t mean you like it or have to like it.

Allowing gives the feeling space to be so that you’re not in resistance to it or against it or in conflict with it, which can exacerbate, heighten and lock in the feeling.

By allowing you come into relationship with the reality of your life experience.

3. Accepting

Accepting can be done very simply just by acknowledging “grief is here” or “sadness is here” or “I have this heavy, burning sensation in my stomach.”

Accepting acknowledges what is here in the moment.

Accepting doesn’t mean you have to like the feeling or experience but works with the reality of your present experience so you’re not fighting against it.

4. Curiousity

An attitude of gentle, loving curiosity shows an interest in your own experience. It is not forceful or prying or problemsolving or fixing.

Curiousity has an openness to learn from your own feelings. It helps you be receptive and willing to learn from your feelings and any young parts that might be sending feeling messages from their deep and hidden places within you. It makes you available to hear and learn from the information and wisdom that your feelings hold.

Conclusion

Emotions and feelings can be really difficult, challenging and overwhelming at times, especially when they are related to old trauma experiences that are surfacing for healing.

By becoming a safe space for your feelings and experience of life, you can not only make those more challenging feelings easier to experience but you can more deeply and vastly experience being the beauty of being human and can be more closely relate and in touch with your own needs, likes, dislikes and desires which can help you navigate your life more fluidly.