Hello and welcome.
My name is John Steen,
And I'm an energy healing practitioner here on Inside Timer.
Today,
I would like to explore a question that so many of us ask at some point in our lives.
Why do these feelings keep coming back?
Maybe it's anxiety or fear,
Guilt,
Shame,
Loneliness,
Grief,
Abandonment,
Or a feeling you can't quite name or put into words.
You think you've worked through it,
You understand where it came from.
And then something happens,
A conversation,
A relationship,
A comment,
A situation at work.
And suddenly those same feelings are back again.
It can feel frustrating,
And you might even wonder,
Why am I still dealing with this?
For many years,
I asked myself that very same question.
I thought if I could just understand myself well enough.
Read enough books.
Learn enough.
Think about it from many different angles.
Eventually I would heal.
Understanding my past helped.
It gave me language.
It gave me context.
But it wasn't bringing me the freedom and the relief I was looking for.
Looking back now,
I can see why.
I was trying to understand my pain.
But I hadn't yet learned how to be with it.
And one of the biggest shifts in my own healing came when I stopped asking,
How do I make this feeling go away?
And began asking,
What is this feeling trying to show me?
And that question didn't heal me overnight,
But it completely changed the direction of my healing.
Instead of trying to think my way out of what I was feeling,
I slowly began learning how to return to myself.
And through my own healing journey and now through my work as an energy healing practitioner,
I've come to understand that many of these repeating feelings aren't simply thoughts.
They're often unfinished emotional experiences that are still being carried by the body.
As children,
Our nervous systems did exactly what they were designed to do.
When something felt overwhelming or frightening or simply too much to process,
The body protected us.
Sometimes we froze.
Sometimes we shut down.
Sometimes we disconnected from what we were feeling.
We didn't choose those responses.
They helped us survive.
But what the body interrupted in order to survive,
The body may still be waiting to complete.
And that's one reason thinking alone wasn't enough for me.
I had spent years understanding my story.
But the body wasn't asking for more understanding.
It was asking for my presence.
Healing began to change when I stopped trying to think my way out of my feelings and started bringing gentle presence to them instead.
I learned to notice where I felt them in my body.
To breathe,
To become curious.
Not how do I get rid of this,
But can I simply be with what I'm feeling right now?
Sometimes nothing happens.
Sometimes tears came.
Sometimes a memory surfaced.
Sometimes the feeling returned days or even weeks later.
I stopped trying to control the process.
I simply continued to return to myself and meeting whatever was ready to emerge.
One layer at a time,
One feeling at a time.
One day at a time.
I didn't learn to do this overnight.
It happened one moment at a time.
Little by little,
I built the capacity to stay with the experiences that once would have overwhelmed me.
Not by forcing them,
But by gently returning to myself again and again.
So if this feels new to you,
You don't have to do it perfectly.
You don't have to force yourself into overwhelming emotions.
And you don't have to go searching for old wounds.
Simply begin by noticing what is here today.
Bring a little curiosity,
A little compassion,
A little presence.
Sometimes that's enough for the body to begin showing you the next step.
So if you find yourself asking.
Why do these feelings keep coming back?
Perhaps there's another question worth exploring.
Not how do I make this stop,
But.
.
.
What if I stopped leaving this feeling?
That question changed my life.
Because I discovered that the feelings I'd spent years trying to escape.
Were often pointing me toward the very places that needed my presence the most.
And not because they wanted to punish me,
But because they were waiting to be completed.
And the beautiful thing is,
The body already knows how to heal.
Sometimes what it has been waiting for is enough safety,
Enough presence,
And enough compassion.
For that healing to begin.
Thank you for joining me.
I hope this reflection offers a different way of understanding the feelings that keep returning.
Not as signs that something is wrong with you,
But as invitations to deepen your relationship with yourself.
Take good care of yourself.
And I'll see you again soon.
