Happy good day, Reader 💜

My therapist likes to remind me that emotional and mental health isn't never having hard feelings. It's about observing when you're having them and supporting yourself through them with healthy resourcing.

It's not avoiding those feelings or intellectualizing them or analyzing them to ashes or compartmentalizing them.

It's feeling them and processing them.

Which is a REALLY scary thing.

(really scary)

I'm speaking for myself here, but it feels like this absolutely wild and feral process because it's not controllable and neat. Big feelings feel way bigger than my body and for some reason my being has this tendency to try to contain them all in here. Except that's not what's supposed to happen.

Our bodies are not containers for feelings. Our bodies give us the means to move through feelings (literally).

A good part of my work in therapy is steering clear of the avoidance patterns I mention above and instead practicing discernment to identify the time and environment that is supportive for me to work through my feelings, and then to feel them.

Trying to sit still when powerful emotional energy is coursing through me can be the worst. It can feel explosive and like my body is going to burst in one of those 90s cinematic effects where light starts puncture from the inside out and eventually render me a pile of dust to blow away to some sad soundtrack.

But that's not what happens. And I can better support myself by moving while I'm feeling.

The morning that I started writing this, I had a fight with someone in my family and I had all these big feelings just piled up inside me that came out. It wasn't cool that I had let them build up, and yet there I was letting them out. Not good timing, but nonetheless a reality.

And you know what I did? I leaned into all the healthy systems and routines I've built for myself so that I could dispel them — let my body physical feel them in ways that were supportive and constructive. I needed big movement, so I danced and jumped around to two ragers and I did a short sesh of quickly-paced fascia and lymphatic movement intervals to keep my body moving. When I was done, I laid down with my breath to an energy cleansing soundtrack on Insight Timer.

I felt more grounded. The feelings weren't overwhelming or even scary afterward. They felt like a manageable size and unable to ping around my noggin all day consuming my thoughts and dousing my physical body with stress hormones.

That felt (and feels) really good.

It wouldn't be possible if I hadn't spent the last few years exploring supportive resources and routines to see what works for me and sticking to them so they are accessible AND so I keep them in mind during times when I need them most.

I really hope you spend time doing the same.

It takes time and energy investment, and that can really spark procrastination or talking ourselves out of it in the first place. But trust me. It's worth it. And you deserve it. Really.

(PS. You don't need any other justification --- so if anyone out of there is putting you down for self caring and self resourcing, don't listen. That's a bunch of bologna.)

Sending all the tender good energy,

---

If someone forwarded this to you and you're into it, subscribe.

---

---

Zenful Mindings LLC is a proud queer-owned, woman-owned business.

---

---