Feelings!

Feelings don't have a solution but when we think they do the urge to solve them can be exhausting. We can keep trying to solve our feelings but never get to where we want to be. Maybe there is another way?
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Transcript

Hello,

And welcome to the Calmcast,

A time to feel calm and think clearly.

I'm Claire Downham,

The Queen of Calm,

A Transformational Life Coach.

I was a burnt out headteacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying,

And I want to prevent you from having to do the same.

The Calmcast is a series of short explorations gently guiding you back to your natural state,

Which is calm and clarity.

Just listen like you would listen to music,

With an open mind and curiosity.

There's nothing else to do.

Now let's relax into today's episode.

So today I am going to talk about feelings,

And this is on the back of me hearing something at the weekend whilst I was doing a little online course around this understanding that I share.

I was doing this online course with Michael Neill over the weekend,

And I can't remember exactly what he wrote on the board,

But the general gist of it was there are no solutions to feelings.

And I guess what I'm thinking now as I'm saying this is that yes,

Like I love that,

And partly I love that there's no solutions to feelings because in the first place there would have to be the sense that a feeling was a problem because generally that's where solutions come into play,

Don't they?

They come into play because something is a problem.

And so when we come from the place of realising that feelings are never a problem,

Then of course the first port of call there is that they don't need a solution.

And if you're sitting there not feeling so good right now,

Then you may really desperately want that feeling to go away,

And it may look like that if somebody could give you a solution to that feeling right now you would bite their hands off because you don't want to feel like this right now.

But that's probably partly because you may have a little misunderstanding about what that feeling actually is and what it means.

It may seem that the feeling is coming from something outside of you that does not seem to be okay in your world right now,

And that wouldn't be surprising would it in the world we live in right now.

Or it may be that there's someone,

It can be something or it can definitely more often than not be someone,

Can't it?

Or a group of people not doing what we would like them to be doing.

And if it feels like the feeling is coming from that behaviour,

The thing that someone else is doing,

That too may feel really uncomfortable and like there's a resolution available there,

You can solve it by getting that person to stop doing what they're doing.

Or you may be sitting with a feeling right now that you think is an absolute categorical sign that there is something wrong with you.

And then it looks like,

Well if I don't feel this way anymore,

Then I've not got this thing wrong with me.

Also from Michael Neil,

I heard something the other day which was,

He said,

It's not a problem that we melt down,

It's only a problem if you think that defines who we are.

And for the word meltdown,

You can put in just about any feeling word you like.

It's not a problem that we feel stressed,

It's only a problem if we think that defines who we are.

It's not a problem that we feel anxious,

It's only a problem if we think that defines who we are.

So if you're sitting with a feeling right now and you think that feeling is coming from one of those sources,

I absolutely totally and utterly understand why you would want to make it go away,

Because it looks like that is possible,

Doesn't it?

That you can manipulate something outside or inside you to make that feeling go away.

And I was walking through Leeds yesterday and saw people who were not seeming to be in a particularly good place right now,

I think it was 11 o'clock in the morning,

Drinking bottles of alcohol at that time in the morning.

And my fiance and I spoke about that and how in that moment that looks like a solution to a feeling,

To do something like that.

But it is underpinned by the fact that we think feelings are something that they're not.

We think they're giving us all this information.

Even if it's not any of those things I mentioned,

Your circumstances,

The other people,

The sense that you've got some kind of illness,

A mental illness or something,

Or the other one is to do with your past.

When it looks so complicated,

It can look like the solution is also really complicated and there's a lot to do,

A lot of work to do.

And trust me,

I am sitting here with the honesty to say that that is absolutely what I spent many,

Many years trying to do.

To call myself a control freak is probably a little understatement at the time because I definitely got the sense that if I got everything right in place as it should be and everybody doing what I wanted them to do when I wanted them to do it,

Life would be peachy and I would feel amazing all the time.

So I totally know what that feels like.

And still now I am still seeing my own attempts to manipulate feelings to solve them,

To make them go away.

But the thing is,

All of that drive,

I think where that drive comes from,

It comes from the idea that a feeling is anything other than what it is.

Feelings are part of the energy of life taking form in you in the moment.

They are,

You know,

They come to us as a product of the same thing as thought we feel.

We feel the feeling sometimes more,

We feel the thought sometimes more,

We experience the thought more.

But sometimes we really get a sense of the connection between the two,

It doesn't really matter.

You're always feeling thought in the moment.

You're not feeling those circumstances.

You're not feeling other people's behaviour.

You're not feeling some kind of mental illness that you've got.

You are feeling thought in the moment.

And it's all part of a transient energy that's passing through you.

And you can't solve it because,

I don't know if you've noticed,

But you could get everybody in line,

All the circumstances exactly as you think you want them to be,

Everybody doing as they're told,

You free from any kind of wobbly feelings for about 10 seconds probably.

But you can get all of that,

Seemingly sorted out and then still find that you don't feel the way you want to feel because it's,

And that's because it doesn't work that way.

And for me,

That led to burnout,

Continually trying to make it be a different way,

Continually trying to make it change.

It was exhausting.

And it led to exhaustion of parts of my body that now are still recovering six years later.

The stress of it was immense.

And there is something calming,

There is something peaceful in just realising,

Realising right now that you are feeling thought in the moment.

It's like when you shine a light on that,

It allows some ease to appear,

It allows something to be let go of.

So I hope you found that helpful.

As always,

The invitation here is to just look in this direction and see what you see and notice what you notice in your life and just bring some awareness and some curiosity.

Thank you so much for listening.

There's nothing to do now,

But bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life.

Listen regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm.

This has been the Calmcast with Claire Downham,

Queen of Calm.

Take care and keep listening.