How To Shift Stressful Feelings

Does hearing how you feel really make any difference, or do you need to fix the feeling? Ann Weiser Cornell explains why trying to make feelings go away tends to make them louder, like someone knocking harder on a door. She shares a student who repeated "something in me feels low" several times, slowly, and felt a surprising response inside. You learn to notice how you feel, use the words "something in me," and sense what happens in your body, a simple way to start an inner relationship of listening. This content is educational and is not a substitute for one to one professional care.

Transcript

Hi, It's Anne. Good to be here with you. Say, How are you doing? How are things going for you? For me, It's. . . Been a bit intense lately. We're having extreme weather events where I live. Fires. And that brings up a lot of feelings for me. I feel scared, Tense, Worried. Discouraged because it seems to be getting worse every year. There's a lot. And what do I do when those feelings come up? Remember to pause. And be kind to myself. Did you notice how I put my hand on my heart? I acknowledge my feelings using the three words, Something in me like this. Something in me is feeling scared right now. And then I say to my feelings, I know, I hear you. I know it's scary. And that helps, It really does. I can feel it, You know. We need our feelings. They bring us messages about what matters to us and where we might need to take action. If our feelings take us over, That doesn't help. If I'm nothing but scared, Then there's nobody here to be present to the scared feeling and hear it. Well, You might be thinking that just hearing how you feel doesn't do much. Like, Okay, I heard it. So what? You might be thinking that when you find a feeling, You need to do something to fix it. Solve the problem. Think differently, Make the feeling go away, Right? Well, No, Actually it turns out that trying to make your feelings go away just makes them stronger. If you don't answer and knock at the door and the person knows you're home. They knock louder. I was reminded of this powerful truth when I heard from my student Ken this week. Ken was letting me know how much my work has meant to him. And I love emails like that. I know that Ken is someone who doesn't have an easy life. He's a school teacher and he has kids of his own. Plus. . . He didn't have the easiest of childhoods himself. So sometimes inner peace is a bit elusive for Ken. And Ken told me that one day he was feeling depressed. He didn't even know why. He just felt depressed. Now let me pause the story a moment for a footnote about depression. What I'm talking about here is different from clinical depression. Clinical depression is a serious illness and if you suspect you have it, I recommend consulting a mental health professional. But feeling depressed at the moment. Doesn't mean you have depression. And Ken felt depressed. That was his feeling. He might just as well have felt sad or anxious or discouraged. And here's what happened next. So Ken found himself. Looking out the window and saying, I feel depressed. And this is already an important step, Acknowledging what's true instead of being in denial. Then he said, Something in me feels depressed. He said it again. And then again. Something in me feels depressed. He sensed into his body as he said it. And here's what took him by surprise. There was a response. Something in him. Felt so happy and so relieved. If it could talk, It would have said, Oh, You heard me. I'm so happy that you did. And the depressed feeling was transformed. The very place in him that had felt depressed now felt happy. Now does that, Does that just sound too easy? Well, Let's break it down a bit and see what Ken actually did. First of all, He noticed how he was feeling. And we don't always do that. Did you ever realize you've been walking around under a cloud, Feeling depressed or sad or uneasy, But not actually noticing it? So noticing how you're feeling is really important. Can use the special language of something in me. Something in me feels depressed. This does two things. One, It acknowledges how you feel without needing it to change. And two. It reminds you that the feeling is not all of you. It's something in you. And Ken didn't just do it once. He said something in me feels depressed several more times. Slowly. And then he sensed in his body to feel what happened. If there was a response. Now. In this case, The response was quite dramatic. Depressed went all the way to happy. In many other cases, The response might be smaller, But every response from inside is a step in a positive direction. See, What's going on when you do this? You're creating an inner relationship of listening, Of self-compassion, Of caring, And your feelings don't have to knock you on the head to get your attention. Sometimes they're so grateful that you're listening that your whole mood changes. And that's really beautiful.