Grief can happen when you least expect it

Yesterday I went to a nearby forest preserve for a hike.  I thoroughly enjoyed the feeling of sporadic sunshine on my skin while surrounded by trees who leaves have transitioned from dark green to orange, yellow and lime green that gently rode the wind down from the branches to the ground.    The uneven squishy earth on the trail was a welcome change on my feet from hard cement city sidewalks and sounds of birds and running river water was music to my ears accustomed to sirens and traffic.  I was present and soaking in the yummy.

While on this glorious walk, all of the sudden my thoughts started racing.  I found myself urgently planning my future. Thinking, " If I do this then I can this".  Exploring all of the possible scenarios and choices that I might make in the future.  Then, in a moment that seemed totally out of the blue, I got very sad.  Tears formed in my eyes and a familiar heart ache formed in my chest.  I paused my walk and began to notice the sensations in my body as the emotion came like a wave.  Tears, sound, chest pain, then tingling down my arms and legs.  I let myself ride this wave of emotion for about 60 seconds...then it was gone. 

I began walking again, slow and steady. As I walked,  I started to reflect on what just happened. I noticed that right before I felt that emotion that I am now calling grief, my thoughts were focused on what I'm going to do in the future and they felt urgent.  Interesting.  I don't know what the grief was about and I don't need to know.  What I do know is that that pattern of thoughts is very familiar and its a sign from my body telling me something needs to move through.  Now this is powerful information.  Knowing the signs that your body is telling you, "I need a minute to digest something".  Now I can really listen for that sign, pause and give my system a minute to digest whatever is there.  So powerful.

Healthy nervous system patterns look like riding the wave of emotion and then coming back to being present, just like I did on my hike.  Because what is extremely damaging and dis-ease producing is stuffing emotions or experiences down or feeling too much and getting stuck in them.  It's so common to stuff or ignore what we feel.  It's what we've been taught and it explains a lot of the challenges we face now.

When you've lived a lifetime of not feeling OR feeling too much, you develop low ability to fully feel the full spectrum of emotion.  It may not have felt safe in your family to express how you felt and it certainly isn't well received in our culture. Now, you're anxious, depressed or stuck and you know you need to learn how to feel emotions to completion but it just feels like waaaay tooo much for you to handle.  The fear is you might rage on someone or get lost in depression and never come back.

I intimately know these worries because I lived it for many many decades and my clients talk about it in our work together.

Here's what I know to be true.  Your nervous system wants to come back to regulation and feel safe and at ease.  When you provide it the education and experience of safety in feeling, you can more easily ride out your emotions and then settle in a regulated space.  When you do that you have more energy, feel open and receptive, feel safe, curious, creative and able to listen to your gut.  And when you feel an emotion, you can move through it and get on with your life. 

If you feel ready to learn these skills, go here to book a 30 min consultation to talk about somatic therapy.