Some of my thoughts about feeling

There is a whole world inside of us, and only when I started therapy I allowed myself to enter that world. Allowing myself to feel and validate my emotions and experiences has changed my life. Honouring all of my feelings has helped me recover from my struggles with eating disorders. Learning to be vulnerable takes practice. I had to learn to release the shame I felt about myself, my experiences and my emotions. The shame I felt around my body, my thoughts - I felt like I had to hide parts of myself - my shadow side. My heart began to soften and I felt so much pain arising within me, pain that has been suppressed for so many years. Feelings that have been bottled up, out of fear of beeing rejected or seen as “weak”, “too sensitive”. I feel sorry for my younger self, I want to hug her and tell her that it is okay to feel. I want to tell her that there is nothing wrong with her and that her experiences are valid. Therapy was the first time in my life that my feelings were validated. I was allowed to feel and to talk. My feelings weren’t seen as a burden, they were the key to my healing.

I always experienced a lot of shame around my emotions and my body. While being anorexic my emotions have been invalidated and my experience has often been dismissed. Throughout my childhood I experienced emotional abuse and the words that have been said to me by one of the closest people in my life at that time have impacted me and my sense of self worth deeply. I felt like I was a burden my entire childhood and I felt like I had to hide my true self. I never let anyone come close to me and I became so good at building a wall around me, at being on my own, that I didn’t realise how much was missing in my life. I thought not talking or not sharing my emotions was a sign of strength and independence. Vulnerability meant weakness to me and I felt a a lot of shame surrounding it. However when we participate in the human experience we will always feel, we will get hurt and we experience negative emotions. As a human being we need to have emotional support around us, we deeply desire intimacy and emotional connection with each other, that requires us to be vulnerable. It is beautiful to invite another person into your inner world and to let them be a part of your life. It is beautiful to let other people be there for you, to let them help you and to let them see you in your most vulnerable form. That means true strength for me now. That is true connection, love and understanding. It is a gift to feel so deeply in this life and when we try not to feel, it will always catch up with us. Unconsciously suppressed emotions will control our life, our daily decisions and our behaviour. When we don’t validate our own emotions, we are also not able to validate other people’s emotions as well. We feel that something is lacking in our life, but we cannot really tell what. Our relationships are more superficial and we tend to compensate our suppressed emotions through distraction.

Life becomes more meaningful, deeper and beautiful when we honour our emotions, when we share our stories and be vulnerable. We connect with others through our weaknesses, through vulnerability and through our pain. We find a deep fulfilment, connection and true love within ourselves.