Feel all the feelings and then let them go.

I am a naturally empathetic person.  It’s one of my INFJ personality type superpowers.  Empathy makes me a great listener, a good friend, a compassionate leader, a solid writer, a generous giver…

But it’s also my kryptonite.  I internalize the mood of the space I’m in, the people I’m around, the news I hear and read.  All of it goes straight to my heart.  When I’m not my healthiest spiritually and/or mentally, I have to create buffers between my soul and the ”real world,” or I can’t watch the news without crying over how broken the world is – how the pandemic is affecting the entire world – how heavy the losses are for families affected by the crime and poverty being reported – how divisive and angry our politics are – how even the good news stories are often colored with shades of loss or hardship, even if it’s a story about a loss restored.

It’s all so oppressive that joy, even the deep and abiding joy of living in Christ, is hard to muster.  I tend to retreat, to build so many buffers that I can hide in comfort food and craft projects.  Sometimes I volunteer too much as a way to compensate and keep my brain too busy with stuff to do to be able to focus on how I feel.  It’s a really dumb way to handle all the feels, but it typically happens on such a subconscious level that I don’t realize it until I’ve taken on too much work to handle and there are abandoned crochet projects all over the house (and the house is a wreck).

As I grow, I get better at spotting the cycle.  I’m certainly better at recognizing the moments when I’m feeling all the feelings, and even knowing when they’re not mine.

But the letting go part, that’s not my strong suit.

I’m great at planning my way out of mess and thinking I can generate just the right to-do list that will fix all my perceived problems.  Overweight and out of shape?  Yes, but if I follow this diet plan and this exercise regimen EXACTLY, then I’ll be at my goal weight and peak physical conditioning in less than a year.  Behind on my quest to be a “real author?”  Absolutely, but if I write this many minutes per day on each writing project, and I send out this many book proposals in the next two weeks, THEN I’ll be on my way.

It’s all malarkey.  Not that I shouldn’t make plans and set goals, but I am still learning the lesson that I’m setting insane goal paces as a way to avoid some of my feelings.  The irony, of course, is that setting unattainable goal deadlines sets me up to disappoint myself and kick off a whole new wave of uncomfortable disappointed feelings.

I’ve been aiming instead to feel the feeling for a bit, and then I have to move on.  Stress is definitely the hardest for me to let go of, and it’s probably the most indicative of where my faith is in any given moment.  It’s also been the most common feeling of the last few weeks.

I’m not a super strict schedule person, because even when I try to be strict, something blows up and pushes all my meticulous plans aside.  To go from a loose schedule to something new entirely with a child home from school who’s definitely used to a routine has turned my brain onto permanent “AAAAGGGHHHH” mode.  It’s not that I have a lot more to do – it’s the same amount of work, although I’m doing more consistent housekeeping and actually clearing out some clutter – but there’s a lot more emotional and mental and spiritual work to do to keep my empathy superpower from killing me.  The unknown and nebulous menace of dealing with a pandemic is also adding a layer of stress that’s harder to identify.

I know that I feel stress less acutely when I am consistently spending time praying and studying the Bible.  I use a prayer app to keep track of requests, and it also has a meditation and preparation prompt that uses Bible verses and devotional writings to direct your time before you begin praying through requests.  Some days, that’s as far as I can get (and very honestly, some days I don’t make it to an intentional time of prayer, and it’s just scattered bits when I remember something or start to lose my mind).  On my best days, I also spend time reading the Bible and taking notes.  You don’t have to take notes to study the Bible, but it’s very much how my brain processes information, so I hand write notes when I’m really studying.  It’s also good to just read without the expectation that I need to do anything deeper.

I know that my diet and water intake will also have a huge effect on how I handle stress, though that knowledge doesn’t always translate into the wisdom of action.  Same story with exercise.  That’s on my list to work on this week.

You may wonder why I started with prayer and Bible study as the best stress buster in my toolbox and spent so much space talking about it.  There are two reasons I think it’s the most effective tool.  First, focusing on God in a way that seeks to learn more about his character and channels my prayers towards others shifts my focus entirely away from myself and towards an infinitely larger subject.  My worries fade in comparison, and I lose the weight of my stress in that time of meditation.  Second, meditation is a highly recommended cognitive behavioral therapy tool because it teaches us to calm our thoughts and shift our perspectives and thought patterns.  Prayer and Bible study is my mode of meditation.

Managing stress and learning how to let go if it is one huge feeling we can practice the “feel the feelings and then let them go” mantra on that we’re all experiencing to some degree right now.  Sometimes just managing stress makes managing other emotions much easier.  When that’s not enough, how do we let go of other feelings that want to linger, like anger and sadness?  I don’t have a perfect answer, but I have model.

Feel the feeling.  Acknowledge that it’s there and know that whatever the feeling is, it’s okay to experience it and that you are not defined by your emotions.  If you’re in a safe and appropriate setting, vent it.  Cry or shake your fist with rage or write down what you’re feeling.  If you’re not in a space that’s conducive to expressing the feeling, note it, and let yourself come back to it when you can.  Realize that expressing emotion doesn’t mean you have a free pass to act any way you want without consequence, so think before you act.  If an emotion is so strong that you’re not going to behave well, give yourself some time and space.

Once you acknowledge the feeling, examine it.  What exactly was the emotion?  What triggered it?  How did you react?  What foundational beliefs affected your reaction?  Was your reaction appropriate to the situation?  What information would change the intensity level of the emotion you experienced?  How could you react differently if you have the same experience again?

Most of the time, taking a moment to examine the feeling lets us take a step back and look more impartially at the situation, and we find that our emotional reaction is less intense than it was in the heat of the moment.  Downgrading the emotional intensity is a big step in letting go.

If you’ve examined the emotion, and nothing seems to take away the edge, decide if it’s a situation you can change or not.  If you can, make some changes.  If you can’t change the situation, you need to change your thought pattern.  Whenever the lingering negative feeling pops up, actively counter it with a positive thought or action.  For example, with depression, I tend to get cranky when I’m not in healthy condition.  When I realize the anger is creeping up, I try to actively avoid confrontations that I know will end ugly, and I remind myself to breathe slowly and remember that whatever it is, it will be okay.  Find something to redirect in a positive way the negative thought/emotion pattern that works for you.  It takes a lot of practice, and it feels a little silly when you first start, but it’s a game changer.

Even with this model and a ton of head knowledge about what I need to put into action to let go of things and feel better, sometimes I suck great wind.  But good mental health is a marathon, not a sprint.  As long as you’re moving forward, or at least not wallowing too long when you fall down, you’re building the endurance you need to be healthy.