difficult emotions

Happy Mother's Day to all of you who are mothers, have mothers and/or are mothering yourself. I get to go to my favorite hot springs and my daughter who is going on a girls' weekend nearby will come vist for Mother's Day. It will be good to have a lovely long weekend in my favorite sanctuary.

Difficult emotions are divine fertilizer enriching and accelerating our spiritual growth. Peter Williams
I just finished an article about handling difficult emotions like fear, anger and grief. In these challenging times these emotions are everywhere.
We usually do everything we can to avoid such states, but when we are running from them, they are running us. How can we skillfully meet these emotions without denial or wallowing? Denial is pretending that everything is fine when it is clearly not fine. Suppressing these states of mind drains energy and can express itself in body ailments or depression or anxiety. Stuffed emotions can also cause insomnia and lack of sleep has its own difficulties. When I am stuffing something and not sleeping well, it is not pretty. Some people handle sleep deprivation better than others. I resemble the wicked witch of the east after two nights of less than enough sleep. Many people stuff their difficult emotions under various addictive substances including over-spending, drugs and alcohol and food. My ego loves stuffed emotions. The ego grows in power the more I am stuffing my feelings. When I am not centered because there is something going on that I don't want to feel, I am much more vulnerable to my inner critic.
The first step , as always, is mindfullness. Noticing I am behaving in a way that seems to indicate I am stuffing feelings is the first step. Compassion is the second step. Validate that you must need some attention from yourself if you are acting out. Say to yourself kindly, "I am here for you with whatever you are feeling." Ask yourself,"What is going on with me if I am acting in the ways I typically act when I am stuffing difficult emotions. Begin to explore your inner sensations both physically and emotionally. Use your breath to breathe into whatever you encounter inside. See if you can give yourself permission to experience what you are experiencing. Stay with yourself even if you are pulled to distract yourself. When we turn toward them, anger, fear and grief can not only be workable but have much wisdom and energy to offer. Showing up for ourselves in the face of these emotions and allowing them to release gives us confidence in our own abilities to use them to deepen our relationship with ourselves. You know how when someone else makes themselves emotionally vulnerable with you in an authentic way the intimacy between you deepens. The same is true internally. The more we can accept anger, fear and grief as natual parts of being human beings the more space we create inside ourselves. There is more room in our hearts for us to be all that we are. It's all one faucet. When we allow the faucet to be open to the so-called difficult feeling states we create more space for joy. My plan is to devote some time over the weekend to be with myself and explore my inner faucet. How about you?