Welcome back to our brand new guided interactive series – How to Flourish! 

If you’re joining us for the first time, check out the previous week’s articles on your values and vision, and how to do a mental detox! This week we’re talking about Fears and Feelings. We’ll talk about how to work with your fears, instead of against them. And spoiler alert, they don’t have to be gone for you to make forward progress! Then we will talk about emotional regulation and feeling your feelings. It’s going to be a good one!

How to use this guide:

• For the sections entitled “questions” or “practice,” you can approach these a few different ways. You can just allow your thoughts to flow in a “brain dump” style journaling session, or using voice notes. Feel free to keep these to reflect later or even delete them once the thoughts are out of your head! You can also work through these questions with a friend or partner. 
• It may be helpful to do this work in short sessions daily or a few times per week. Get comfortable, make a cup of tea or coffee. Put on a soothing playlist or enjoy some quiet time. 
• You can also feel grounded by doing some deep breathing before you get started! An easy exercise to begin with is inhaling for 4 and exhaling for 6, pretending like you are blowing out through a straw. This will help you activate your parasympathetic nervous system, aka the “rest, digest, recover” part.

Identifying and Working with Your Fears

Contrary to popular belief, your fears are not the enemy. They don’t have to be gone in order for you to move forward. The problem lies when they keep you from taking action. So, if you don’t take the time to identify them, they can keep you stuck and unhappy.

What your fears want for you

Your fears primarily want to protect you. Your brain wants to keep you safe, aka keep things the same and keep you in your comfort zone to conserve energy. On the surface, they can be overwhelming though usually vague. But the deeper we dig, and the more specific we get, we often realize they are not as scary or even as realistic as we thought! However, if we don’t identify them and work with them, they may continue to run the show.

How your fears can manifest

Your fears may manifest as a younger part of you. And they are often related to things that happened to you in early life, possibly things you haven’t consciously thought about for some time. For example, maybe you experienced feelings of rejection at school as a kid and now as an adult, you’re afraid to put yourself out there. Or maybe you only felt worthy of love from your parents if you got perfect grades, so now as an adult you feel like everything you do still has to be perfect.

Connecting the dots about your fears, where they came from, and what they want for you is a necessary part of getting to know yourself on a deeper level and moving forward. 

Questions to ask yourself:

• If you could have a conversation with them, what would they say? 
• What do they want for you? 
• What would it feel like if this were no longer a problem?
• How can we bring your desires and fears together in what you want to create?

Emotional Regulation and Feeling Your Feelings

As high achievers, we often feel like we have to have it all together, and we might even look like it. Yet this appearance of success we project can actually backfire. Others often notice and think our lives are “perfect.” And then we can feel like we’re totally ungrateful if we aren’t happy and positive all the time. Which leaves us feeling even more alone.

Don’t make this mistake with your feelings

We can also easily make this mistake – thinking that it’s only okay to have certain feelings and not others. For example, you might be working on your mindset. And you’ve learned that what you focus on is important, so you really try to focus on the positive and what’s going well. Now, don’t get us wrong, that’s great! But some of us (*us* included) have made the mistake of further labeling and judging our feelings, and blocking ourselves from feeling the ones we perceive as “negative.” This is where things can go wrong.

Feel it to heal it!

We overwork, allow ourselves to be constantly distracted, or we self sabotage in other ways to prevent ourselves from feeling those uncomfortable or “negative” feelings. But if we were to just let ourselves feel them, they could actually move through us very quickly. Science says the chemical process of feeling a feeling is only about 90 seconds. But when we block them, they stick around for much longer, because we’re “choosing to stay in an emotional loop.” The key here is recognizing that our feelings *can* and will move through us if we let them.

A note about labels and judgment

So, what about the labels and the judgment? Here’s the reframe you need. Normalize and equalize all of your feelings. Let that sink in for a moment because you’re probably very used to doing the opposite. For example, sadness? Don’t push it away. Anger? Don’t judge it.

How to be with your feelings

Be with these feelings instead. Be there for yourself instead. Give yourself some time and space in a nice, comfortable place. Take that 90 seconds to breathe and just focus on you. Turn your inner narrative into one where you tell yourself that it’s okay to feel, and get curious about what’s there. Do a body scan and gently assess what you’re feeling and where. Get really in tune with yourself. And ask your body what it needs next. A snuggle, a walk, a nice comforting drink, some time to journal, to call a trusted friend and talk?

This is all part of loving and accepting yourself as you are and not trying to constantly change and chase. Try the following practice and see what kind of insights you have. Start by slowing down. Reflect, and journal about your feelings. Know that you’re whole and it’s totally okay for all types of feelings to co-exist.

Practice:

• Ask yourself how you’re feeling and see if you can do it without judgment. 
• Acknowledge heavy feelings as they are without trying to change them. 
• Remember that you are not your emotions – think of it like this – You are the sky and your emotions and thoughts are like clouds that come and go
• Become an observer of your emotions. Instead of identifying and saying “I am sad,” you could say, “I’m noticing that I’m feeling sad.” Or, “I’m noticing that I’m having the feeling or thought that…”
• Know that you’re allowed to feel your emotions of all types, and having what some perceive as negative emotions doesn’t mean you’re ungrateful.

And that’s part 3! We hope you enjoy taking time for your own self discovery as well as the homework assignments and the resources.

Next Steps

Feel free to reach out to us via email, instagram (or comment below!) with any insights, questions, or breakthroughs! We would love to hear what you love and what you’d like to see more of.

Come back next week for Part 4 of our interactive Flourishing series! Next week we’re going to dive into Thought and Mindset Work. We’ll share a process for taking control of negative thought patterns and beliefs that you won’t want to miss!

Want to get the series sent straight to your inbox? Sign up for our free email newsletter, Your Well and Whole Week! Each week we share a theme, a question, and a simple wellness practice for your week.

Looking for more personalized support on this journey? Want to go deeper? As we always say, it may be called “the inner work,” but that doesn’t mean you’re meant to do it alone. We would be honored to be your guides! Book a free session with either of us here. It may be the most valuable thing you do to move forward in your personal development journey!