Beautifully Undone 🌿✨

Feel What You Feel—Just Don’t “Swim in Those Feelings”

By

Brittany Lembke

I’ve been struggling to face my emotions.

When I feel depression creeping back into my life, my instinct is often to look for ways to hide from it—to distract myself, avoid it, or convince myself that if I don’t acknowledge the feeling, maybe it will eventually go away.

But feelings don’t really work that way.

When I spoke with my mentor about this, he reminded me that it’s okay to have bad days. It’s okay to not be happy all the time. It’s okay to feel whatever it is that I’m feeling.

The important part is not to “swim in those feelings.”

He gave me an analogy that stuck with me: imagine trying to hold a beach ball underneath the surface of the water. The harder you push it down, the harder it fights its way back up. You can keep pushing and pushing, but eventually, you’re going to get tired—and that ball is going to come flying back to the surface.

Maybe emotions are the same way.

The more I try to suppress them, the more energy I spend trying not to feel them. And eventually, they find their way back to the surface anyway.

I’m learning that there’s a difference between feeling something and becoming consumed by it.

I can have a bad day without deciding that my entire life is bad.

I can feel sad without believing I’ll always be sad.

I can acknowledge that depression is here without allowing it to define who I am.

Maybe facing my emotions doesn’t mean sitting in them forever.

Maybe it means giving them permission to exist, listening to what they’re trying to tell me, and then allowing them to move through me instead of constantly fighting to push them away.

I don’t have to be happy all the time.

I just have to be honest about what I feel.

And maybe that’s part of learning how to become beautifully undone—allowing myself to come apart for a moment without believing I have to stay that way.

Posted In , ,

5 responses to “Feel What You Feel—Just Don’t “Swim in Those Feelings””

  1. MB Avatar
    MB

    Hi, I’m the mentor that Brittany mentioned in her post!

    Her and I have been emailing about this post, and I am really glad to see the positive responses so far. I am a counselor in New York right now and these have been concepts that I’ve seen come up a lot in my work with clients over the past few months, especially in response to the global pandemic. I’m a huge fan of metaphors, particularly those from Acceptance and Commitment therapy, and so a lot of the above post taps into that. I’ve also really enjoyed this other helpful metaphor I’ve come across over the past year (from Russ Harris – he’s got a great video on “the struggle switch”, which I highly recommend):

    Try to imagine your negative emotions or bad moments as a beach ball on the water – the harder we try to avoid or turn our backs on it, it’s like trying to push that beach ball deeper and deeper under the water, so we don’t have to look at it or deal with it. The problem is, the harder we push, the more likely it might slip out of our grasp and bop us straight in the face! Instead, what if we let the beach ball just float there? We don’t always have to like it, though maybe we can just observe that it’s there. Maybe it’s likely that it might just float on out of sight, and we didn’t have to force it to do anything – doesn’t that sometimes feel a lot easier?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  2. Rose petal Avatar
    Rose petal

    Very well-written post. I struggle a lot with negative feelings sometimes. But writing helps. It’s cathartic. I am glad you can Express yourself this way

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  3. AD Avatar
    AD

    Good post… I often tell people when they ask that I have bad moments, but rarely bad days. One reason is because when I do have those bad moments, I remember two things… (1)Things can always be worst, no matter what I might be going through and (2) Somebody in this world will love to have my bad days and consider that a good day in comparison to their life.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  4. Stuart Danker Avatar
    Stuart Danker

    I like to think that my mind is a separate entity of its own (because try this: imagine something familiar like your phone or TV. Try and hold that image for as long as you can, and you’ll find that your mind will wander and do its own thing).

    Because of that, I get to distance myself from whatever I’m feeling. I know I’m feeling the blues, but it’s not ME me. It’s just another part of me, like my breathing. Kind of woo-woo maybe, but it does help with acknowledging your feelings but not swimming in them.

    Wishing you all the best!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
    1. Brittany Soto Avatar
      Brittany Soto

      Thank you and I absolutely agree! I appreciate you giving me your perspective of that. I think it’s important to remember that just because you’re feeling something, doesn’t mean it will last forever. Another important thing I’m trying to work on.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

Leave a comment