I should really stop eating at my desk.
I had a really nice rice salad for lunch, and I barely tasted it, because I was working and focused on other things.
My grief is catching up with me.
My first impulse is no longer to drown my feelings in sugar, but I am still actively avoiding them.
Which brings me to today’s tool:
Feel the feeling, don’t feed the feeling.
It is so important to allow yourself to feel your feelings and be present with the physical sensations, without feeding the mental narrative.
I’m not very good at this yet. (I am the absolute master of trapping myself in very unhelpful thought spirals, and riling myself up for no reason.) That’s why I try to practice this tool regularly.
Examples:
Feed the feeling:
Feeling: I am angry
Brain: THIS PERSON WAS SO MEAN TO ME!!! And last week, they said something else that was also terrible. And remember that other person who was also kind of a dick?
Brain: *presents 1000 memories of mean things people have said to me + another 1000 hypothetical arguments*
Me: *gets increasingly upset, ruins my own day*
Feel the feeling:
Feeling: I am angry
Me: Alright, let’s do a check-in. Where do I feel this in my body? What does it feel like? Can I be present with the sensations?
Brain: THIS PERSON WAS SO MEAN TO ME!!!
Me: I know, I’m sorry about that. Let’s try to gently guide our attention back to the body though.
(Side note: we’re not going for spiritual bypassing here. You don’t need to pretend that nothing is wrong or force yourself to feel better. We’re just trying to lean into the emotion without escalating it. It can be scary in the beginning, but I’ve found it much more helpful than trying to suppress the feelings or giving in to the spiral and making it worse.)
(I’m considering creating a guided audio for this meditation. Let me know if you’re interested!)
Around 4pm, I started getting really tired. By 5pm, I was ready to go to bed, but I still had multiple hours to go, so I made this superior snack plate:
To be honest, this makes me feel a lot better than the 1000 cookies I used to have as an afternoon pick-me-up. It is energising without making me crash later. Pretty cool.
I’m feeling pretty hopeful today.
With all the feels (and none of the mental chatter),
Flora
Change Your Mind with Flora 