Uncomfortable Feelings

“Hope is the feeling that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.” ~Jean Kerr

For most of my life, I was a fugitive from my feelings. I was driven by two connected motivations: to feel pleasure and avoid pain. Instead of being proactive and making choices for our happiness, we react to things that happen in our lives, and fight or flee to minimize our pain.

Instead of deciding to end an unhealthy relationship and open up to a better one, we may stay and either avoid confrontation or initiate one to feel a sense of control. Instead of leaving a horrible job to find one we love, we may stay and complain about it all the time, trying to minimize the pain of accepting the situation as real—and enduring until we change it.

From a very young age, I felt overwhelmed by pain. As a pre-teen, I ate my feelings. As a teen, I starved them away. And in my twenties and even thirties, I felt and cried my eyes red and raw.

And I wished I’d never chosen to feel them, but rather kept pushing them down, pretending everything was fine.

Except when I did that, they didn’t just go away—they compounded on top of each other and built up until eventually I exploded, with no idea why I felt so bad. One time when I was 17, I couldn’t open a jar. After ten minutes of twisting, banging, and fighting, I finally threw it at a wall and broke down.

You may think that was a sure sign I had emotional problems, and assume there was some pill to help take away that sadness.

That’s what a lot of people thought. But the reality was a lot simpler: I simply never dealt with my feelings from events large and small, and eventually they dealt with me.

As unpleasant as it may sound, I needed to learn how to feel bad—but first I needed to understand why I felt bad so often. It’s a whole lot easier to deal with pain when it’s not the default feeling.

Then I met Jesus who taught me to take an honest look at reactions.

·         Do I frequently jump to conclusions without knowing all the facts? Do I need other people’s approval to feel comfortable in your own skin? Do I assume you know what other people feel and take responsibility for that? Do I freak out over stressful situations, blaming other people, getting hard on yourself, and panicking over possible consequences?

·         Simply find the cause and effect.

When I make a decision to change, I do it. My power comes from realizing we don’t need to act on pain; and if I need to diffuse it, I can channel it into something healthy and productive, like writing, baking, or doing something physical.

Pain is sometimes an indication we need to set boundaries, learn to say no more often, or take better care of ourselves; but sometimes it just means that it’s human to hurt, and we need to let ourselves go through it, but we cannot go through it alone. That is where Jesus comes in. He wants us to relate to have, to have a relationship with Him and to allow Him to teach us how to turn the negative into a positive.

I choose to be a source of pleasure, for myself and the people around me.

In His love

Leslene