si dawson

It can be tricky to put our finger on exactly why we might be feeling crappy.

Feelings come and feelings go. It’s just energy moving through us. Not good, not bad. Just energy.

Our subconscious moves in mysterious ways. Thoughts and memories often jiggle around below the surface, too deeply buried for us to consciously identify what they are.

Sometimes it’s our mind protecting us from something traumatic. Sometimes it’s merely unpleasant and we’d rather not think about it.

Regardless, there’s still an awful lot going on that we can’t get to. At least, not consciously.

The problem is, these icebergs still affect us. We still feel crappy when we’re having crappy thoughts, even if we don’t know exactly what those thoughts are.

What to do, what to do?

Ahh, it’s a sticky one.

Here’s the thing though: it doesn’t matter why we’re having these feelings.

If you don’t know what a feeling is about within a second or two, it’s generally not worth wasting any more time analysing it.

If you don’t know it now? Let it go.

It’s a common trap, to get tied up in knots trying to figure something out.

Letting go of this “figuring it out” is always a huge step forward.

The problem with “figuring it out” is that it keeps us connected to the crappy feeling. All that mental energy keeps us picking away at the crappiness, pulling it closer to us. What you resist, persists.

If you’re feeling crappy, there’s only one thing that really matters, and that’s to stop feeling crappy. To feel good again.

With that in mind, here’s what works super well:

With any feeling, if we pay attention we can feel it in our body. It’s called a feeling for a reason, right? Coz we can feel it. Big duh there.

If you quieten down a bit, you can generally become aware of just where in your body that feeling is. How big it is. Where it’s centred, and so on. Sometimes that feeling might have a colour, a level of tension, a texture, or whatever. It’s not a big deal either way though (remember: don’t try to figure it out).

For me, I typically feel things in my chest or stomach, but sometimes up into my neck and head as well.

You can tune yourself into the specific feeling (help bring it up to the surface) by naming it “This Crappy Feeling About Blah”, “Helplessness About Yadda” or whatever feels most write and obvious. Tapping your karate chop point (squishy side of your hand between little finger and wrist, where you’d karate chop someone) also helps.

So, just like before, imagine a balloon above you. Then just grab the whole feeling and throw it up into the balloon. Finally, check again, see if any of that feeling is still left, grab what remains and flick that up there too.

Once you’re done, send the balloon out somewhere far away and blow it up, same as always.

Alternatively, you can simply choose to just let the feeling go. It’s your intent that’s doing the magic here.

I just find there’s something about that last stage, of sending the balloon off and blowing it up. It’s a very definite “Ok, I’m done with you now. You’re gone. Forever.”

Really though, it’s exactly the same as letting go of physical tension. How hard is it to relax a tensed fist?

Simple.

Same thing here.

It turns out, as much as we love using our brains, and we love to discover what everything is about – what’s this feeling, what’s that feeling – we don’t have to.

All we have to do is connect to this crappy feeling, and choose to let it go.