Accepting How You Feel

Hello and welcome to the Calmcast,

A time to feel calm and think clearly.

I'm Claire Downham,

The Queen of Calm,

A transformational life coach.

I was a burnt out head teacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying and I want to prevent you from having to do the same.

The Calmcast is a series of short explorations gently guiding you back to your natural state which is calm and clarity.

Just listen like you would listen to music with an open mind and curiosity.

There's nothing else to do.

Now let's relax into today's episode.

So today I'm talking about accepting how you feel and there's been a bit of a theme around this in my sessions recently.

I've just realised I've got a,

If you'll listen to this you won't be able to see this but if you're watching the video you'll be able to see that I have a light bulb above my head that makes me look like an angel.

I'm going to stay there being an angel.

Marvellous.

So there's been a theme around this idea of accepting how you feel and there's kind of a number of parts to this I think because if you just say to somebody just accept how you feel then they may not be able to do that because it looks like some feelings aren't comfortable or they come with uncomfortable physiological things in our bodies and so we want to get rid of them don't we?

We've been encouraged to prefer some feelings to others.

I remember I worked with a little girl around her fear of bees and wasps and she had already by the age of six,

I think she was only six,

She had already could,

You know if I got a piece of paper and put a line down the middle,

Good feelings and bad feelings,

She could categorise them already by the age of six which were good and which were bad and that's the first thing is that feelings,

All feelings are exactly the same process by which you experience them.

So if you experience a happy feeling it's because you've got happy thinking and if you experience an anxious feeling it's because you've got anxious thinking.

Now that's really helpful when we're not feeling in a way we would like to feel and trust me I have preferences I would prefer not to feel riled up and not to feel anxious and not to feel angry of course but I'm tending to see it more now as information from my system,

My system is letting me know what kind of state of mind I'm in in any moment and that's helpful because it means we can let go a little bit of this categorisation,

Some feelings are okay some are not and then there's less to do and because if we're already feeling off and then there's something to do to try and get rid of the feeling that's more thinking and when you think that your uncomfortable thoughts your uncomfortable feelings come from your thinking then you're putting more thinking onto the table and actually getting in the way of a system that has a natural propensity to flow,

It's a flow and your thought system is a flowing system,

It isn't a static kind of stuck system it's a flowing system it's like the clouds that we all wish would blow faster across the sky but they are moving all the time but always moving there's always clouds moving even when it's thick with clouds they're still moving and the you know the sky the blue sky and the sun are still there all the time and the reason I've come up with this session today is because of an experience I had,

I was in a coaching space a little while ago where a woman came in very very upset about something that happened to her and understandably so when she described what had happened but the additional layer of stress that was being created was because she had been in a spiritual seeking you know conversation around calm and those kind of things she'd been in those kind of conversations she'd been working on herself for a long time she'd had some lovely experiences of you know seeing the calm within herself and actually experiencing it and so the additional big chunk of heaviness around this awful feeling she had was I shouldn't be feeling this way I should know enough now I've done all this work on myself why am I still feeling dreadful and actually that the only thing I needed to say to her was something terrible's happened to you why do you think you shouldn't be feeling that and that sentence allowed her to fall into the place of accepting how she felt about the thing that happened because she had uncomfortable thinking understandably about the thing that happened and that just allowed a great big chunk to fall away and she immediately felt better because yes there was still the underlining underlying underlying I don't know where my teeth are underlying uncomfortable feelings but they were not then layered on top with all the shuds about well I've been on a spiritual journey so I should know better than this I shouldn't be feeling this way I should be able to tackle this so there's kind of two parts to this accepting how you feel the first part is that your feelings are just and when I say just that is not discounting how some feelings can feel pretty awful but your feelings are a system update to let you know about your state of mind that's all they ever are happy thinking happy feelings anxious feelings anxious thinking whichever way around you talk about it the two sides of the same energetic coin it's energy that's got stuck and and and knotted up in your body because of how you're thinking now it's there's something powerful that happens when you see that when you see oh my system is letting me know my thinking's dodgy right now so from the place of seeing that from the place of accepting that you've got this human system that's working well human psycho-spiritual system that's working all the time to create your experience you can almost just take like a step back where you begin to be the observer of it rather than being in the thick of it if you see what I mean you can just say oh yeah okay I can see my system is working perfectly it's doing the thing it always does and then there can be more okayness with that I get upset about some forgot some upset about some I get upset about things all the time but I got upset about something in particular a few weeks ago where somebody was was something my family was upset with me they were sending me quite unpleasant messages or angry with me and I I saw how riled up I was and and from that place of seeing I was riled up well I knew a few things I knew that I had riled up thinking I knew that my system was letting me know that and that that therefore to act in the world to pick up the phone to that person have it out with them which is probably what a big chunk of me that's what that thinking wanted me to do was not a good idea it was not a good idea to do that so I didn't I just distracted myself for a bit and after a bit of time that the feeling kind of passed on because my mind had settled and the thinking you're always there's always a new thought coming in every second every probably less than second um if we're thinking quickly so that's the first thing is that you know your feelings are just a representation of your thinking in the moment you're thinking right now not your long-term damaged rubbish you thinking just in this moment that's what you're caught up with and that's what you're feeling so that's the first thing but that also that means that you're a human being if you're feeling yay you're alive you know you're you're feeling because you're alive because you've got the energy of life flowing through you and isn't that wonderful because the alternative is not being alive it's all being dead that's not that's not the where we want to be is it so there's something to celebrate in a feeling because it's a sign that your system is working perfectly thinking a particular way feeling particular way and and so when we are upset about something or angry or frustrated or whatever then it's it's easier to to be accepting of that when you see that that's just you being human human beings are not supposed to live a life that's like this now over time with coaching and with being in this conversation i would say rather than going in a great big zigzaggy line my my bumps are they don't last as long they're not as up they're not as down there's there's just i'm just more in the middle i would say i'm more like here i still have my moments when i go up there but i come down much faster or i come up much faster i don't know which it is really um and it it doesn't feel as i don't feel as if i'm being pulled about so much excuse me that's a traditional yawn that usually happens in this broadcast at some point which is great nothing wrong with a bit of a yawn um yeah so and and and the other thing is that once we see that that's the system that's playing out and we realize the nature of thought to flow and the nature of our system to reset back to calm it's always trying to get us there we're usually getting in the way but it's usually you know it's always trying to get us there it there's suddenly less to do so for that lady to realize that she was okay she was just being human she why wouldn't she be upset about the thing that had happened wasn't nice it was understandable for her to be upset she could just take a whole lot of thinking off a plate oh i'm okay like seeing that you're okay because you're just doing the human thing god if everybody could see that i i just love to um imagine a world like that i think a mental illness would disappear if we were all in that place of acceptance about our feelings so i'll leave you all with that and with lots of love and hopefully have a lovely day thank you so much for listening there's nothing to do now but bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life listen regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm this has been the calm cast with claire downer queen of carl take care and keep listening you