It’s so easy to use the hustle and bustle and busyness of life to avoid our feelings or to avoid looking closely at ourselves.

This pandemic is giving many of us a wonderful opportunity to finally slow down, look within, and actually FEEL our feelings.

If you are experiencing strong or intense feelings and emotions at this time, know that it makes perfect sense that this current collective trauma would bring up lots of feelings for you based on your own past traumas and life experiences.

Anger, sadness, anxiety, fear, etc. are all very natural during this time of Great Change, while we are in the Unknown.

Remember that emotions are ‘energy in motion’ (e-motion). When you ignore them, that energy gets stuck inside of the body and creates things like wrinkles, fatigue and ultimately disease (dis-ease).

So it’s important to address your emotions instead of ignoring them or numbing them with distractions like drugs, alcohol, social media, etc.

Ignoring your feelings can lead to long-term depression, debilitating anxiety, a disruption of healthy functioning and a negative impact on your quality of life.

Here are some tips to feel your feelings & emotions during this time:

It’s helpful to identify and name your feelings to increase your awareness and understanding of yourself. Here's a wonderful and comprehensive list of feelings that you can turn to if you need help naming them: https://www.cnvc.org/training/resource/feelings-inventory

You can have multiple feelings at once. There's nothing wrong about feeling grateful and sad or irritated and quiet. Your feelings complicated and complex, just like Life.

Feelings and emotions don’t always make intellectual sense. While it's helpful to identify where a feeling came from, sometimes emotions just don't make sense. You don't have to always analyze your emotions. Just feeling them in the present moment will transform them.

Feelings are connected to thoughts. Sometimes you might not even be aware of the thought because it arose so quickly. It can be extremely helpful to take the time to slow down when feelings arise and identify what thought caused them to arise. Then ask yourself -- is this thought *definitely* the Truth? Do I want to choose a better-feeling thought?

Emotions are always valid. Emotions that arise can never be 'wrong'. Likewise, feelings are never 'wrong' -- although sometimes they can arise from a story your mind fabricated that isn't necessarily True.

Emotions often ‘live’ somewhere in the body. It's helpful to notice where in the body emotions are arising, so that you can transform and/or release them. *I often use visualizations in my work with others to locate your emotion in the body.

Feelings are like clouds passing over you — the more you resist, the more they persist. However the quicker you acknowledge the 'feeling cloud' as it is hanging above you, the quicker it will pass.

If you are struggling right now (or if you would like to take advantage of this time to really look more deeply at yourself and how your past traumas have impacted you so that you can move beyond the grip of them), reach out: keri@kerisender.com