Step 1: Be Aware

After choosing what you want to let go of, whether trauma, pain, depression, negative feelings or thoughts, relationships, views or mindsets…whatever you want to heal from, the first step is to be aware of your feelings. 

This sounds simpler than it actually is. Especially with feelings that we consider negative, most people will try to find an escape. However, no matter how much we run from them, no matter how far and how fast, they’ll always be with us. They’re inside us and just piggy-back along for the ride. In our flight we might forget them for a moment, because the video game, TV show, film, book, substances (both illegal and legal), socialising, work, mindless scrolling (and you know what else you do to distract yourself from your Self) grab our full attention, giving us a momentary relief from what we’re actually supposed to go through. No one wants to feel pain. But pain is inevitable in life and it’s usually through pain that we experience the most growth, if we allow ourselves to feel it and go through the process of healing. 

Therefore, allow yourself to feel it to its full extent. Allow yourself to be present in this moment and feel whatever it is that you feel, remove the chains that you put around your heart and allow the feeling to flood you for as much as you can bear. You don’t have to do it all at once. And it’s also ok if sometimes you feel overwhelmed and want relief through any of the methods that give it to you. But do it as much as possible. I can’t stress this enough: take it to its limit, until you can’t hold out any longer: the longer you push against that limit, the stronger you become; the more that limit is pushed against, the more it moves out, ever so slowly and incrementally, and you’re able to feel more, for longer. This is important, because any feeling left unfelt simply becomes stored inside you, unable to find release. And those pent up feelings are your prison of unhappiness, lack of freedom and bad habits. 

Something else that makes this stage of the healing process particularly difficult is that you need to try to not engage with those feelings rationally. Reason has its place, but not yet. Reason judges, categorises and labels, but every time it does that it limits the scope and breadth of those exact feelings it is trying to understand. This happens because words are insufficient to describe such subjective experiences. Your mind will constantly try to do this: don’t feel guilty, it’s what it does, and we should be thankful for it, because it’s what has allowed us to survive and thrive as a species; instead, constantly remind it that it needs to be patient, and that right now, all you want to do is feel, not interpret. 

Therefore, step back from your thoughts into your Awareness and let the feelings flow, without judgement and guilt, without labels and descriptions, without blame and shame, to their fullest extent, no matter how long that might take you, no matter how many times you have to run from it and return. 

As a final note, I would like to address fear: it’s natural to have fear of these negative feelings and there’s nothing wrong with that. Courage does not imply the absence of fear, because bravery means facing your fears and thereby overcoming them. That courage can be further bolstered by the certainty that going through this process, although painful, will make you stronger, more self aware and ultimately happier than you will ever be if you don’t face whatever it is you’ve got going on. It will uncover the better version of yourself that has been locked up, maybe for a long time. 

So simply be and simply feel!