You need to stop running away from your feelings

They are meant to be felt!

When I tell you this statement hits hard...

Please allow me to repeat it out loud for those at the back...

Feelings are not meant to be fixed... they are meant to be felt!!!

Amen!!!

You know, such statements will only make sense when you are ‘ready’ to receive them.

If I’d read or heard it last year, it would have meant absolutely nothing to me. It would have been just another sentence in a book.

Back in January, I decided 2024 was gonna be THE year.

I was determined to heal from whatever needed healing. I decided to commit to working on myself.

I knew for certain that God had big plans for me... but I had to heal first.

Then I met Salma.

You know how you, sometimes, scroll aimlessly on the socials, then you stumble upon a profile. For some reasons, it pulls you in. You start scrolling through the feed. You watch all their reels and read all their posts. But you still don't know why you got hooked in so badly.

That was Salma’s profile.

It might have been her soft voice, or the way her reels were edited. Or maybe the way she told a story with confidence .

Don’t ask me why, but I sent her a DM... I told her I needed her help.

Now that we have a relationship, I realise it was her messages that drew me in. I related to each and every one of them.

That was back in February.

Salma has been my therapist ever since.

And so, as 2024 was gonna be MY year, I knew I had a lot of healing to do and it started with Salma.

Salma led me to Gary Zukav.

He is the author of one of the most powerful and life-changing books I've ever read, The Heart of The Soul.

In his book, he talks about the importance of being emotionally aware. He explains why emotions exist and how they affect us. He teaches the importance of understanding them in order to live a happier, more fulfilled life.

A huge takeaway for me was how to be present with my emotions.

Being present with your emotions simply means feeling them deeply. Sitting with them, not trying to escape them, or finding distractions, but truly feeling them.

If it's pain, sadness, hurt, anger, love, happiness, regret... whatever it is. It’s by sitting with them, accepting how you feel without judgement... and letting them pass.

And yes, I know, it sounds easier said than done!

But remember I was committed!

So I sat with my anger, fear and pain everyday for a month.

I’m not gonna lie to you, at the beginning... the tightness on my chest was unbearable.

But I kept at it daily, twice a day, during my morning and evening meditation sessions.

With time and practice, I started recognising the waves of emotions arriving. Most of the time it was after something triggering. Every time I would feel my chest start to tighten, I knew I was experiencing anger, pain or fear.

According to the book, our thoughts trigger different emotions and the emotions trigger a physical sensation.

So the first thing I do whenever I feel the chest discomfort, I try to be aware of where my mind is. What is it that am thinking about at that particular moment. Often enough, these thoughts are always about the past.

Thankfully, through practicing meditation, I knew what to do... take a deep breath and come back to the present moment. The present moment being the only real thing.

I’d understood the lesson Gary's book was meant to teach me.