Last week I wrote about feelings. I mentioned that I have read and reread the work of Dr. Anita Johnston, Eating in the Light of the Moon. This week, I want to share how Dr. Johnston’s work and this book have helped me learn how to process my feelings, and use them to better understand myself.
Feelings as Messengers
As someone who has struggled with disordered eating, I didn’t trust my body and its communications with me. My feelings live in my body. When I didn’t trust my body, I didn’t learn to trust and honor my feelings. For years, I didn’t know what I was feeling at any given time because I’d blocked communication from my body.
Rather than live in my body, I lived in my head. I intellectualized and analyzed events in my life and my thoughts. I didn’t feel them. I replaced a life of feeling with a life of work and obligation. A very controlled life.
However, with willingness and practice, I’ve learned to allow and accept my feelings as messengers without judgement. By doing the work as outlined in Eating in the Light of the Moon I have learned to explore my feelings with curiosity and compassion.
I know now that my feelings offer gifts when I allow myself to experience them fully. As Dr. Johnston writes, feelings are pearls of wisdom. They give me insights and clarity into my experiences and thoughts.
Feelings let me know what I need. When I allow myself to feel angry, I can learn that I need to move in a new direction, stand up for myself, or have a difficult conversation. When I allow myself to feel fear, I learn where I need to take care of myself more consciously. When I allow loneliness, I can figure out why I tend to withdraw from others and self-isolate. When I allow myself to feel joy, I learn how to accept and cultivate it, rather than run from it because I think it won’t last or that I don’t deserve it.
By allowing myself to experience my feelings with compassion and curiosity, I grow in self-awareness as well as in the courage to take the next steps toward reaching my goals and my potential.
By allowing my feelings, I’m no longer trying to control them by blocking or resisting or avoiding them, trying to make them smaller or nonexistent.
The Beach Ball Metaphor
I learned the beach ball metaphor for resisting feelings during my coach training, but I love the way Dr. Johnston elaborates on it in her book. The basic metaphor is that the unwanted feeling is a beach ball. Rather than give it space, I submerge the beach ball underwater. But I can only hold it down for so long before it shoots up with more force than it had originally, and it’s bigger and scarier than it was before. Dr. Johnston offers a way to swim with the beach ball. Rather than trying to stuff it down, I allow the beach ball to float alongside me as I swim and play in the water. I gently nudge it along as I move through the water.
When I’m experiencing a feeling I would prefer to ignore, I imagine myself swimming. I put the feeling’s name on a beach ball, and gently move it along with me. For example, if I’m angry, I imagine a beach ball with that word on it. I gently move it along in my mind, in no particular hurry. And I ask myself why the anger is there. What does it have to teach me? By giving myself this space, I can usually answer myself. With this example, I could come to the realization that someone said something to me at work, and I’m stewing over the conversation, angry at the other person, but angrier with myself for what I did or didn’t say. I’m able to look at it all objectively. I can ask myself how the anger is serving me, and if I want to continue feeling it. I decide whether to keep it or let it go. Either is fine. The important thing is that I am consciously choosing which to do.
Feelings Are Not the Problem
For a long, long time, I thought that my eating issues were due to a lack or weakness on my part. Either I just didn’t have what I needed to have, or I lacked the willpower or commitment to change. I didn’t have the grit necessary to persevere in order to overcome my eating issues. I know now that none of this was the case. I ate, overate, binged, purged, restricted, and so on in order not to feel because I was afraid of my emotions. The feelings themselves were not the problem. The problem was my perception that my feelings would overwhelm and overtake me. I convinced myself that burying my feelings was the only option available to me. And I buried them with compulsive eating and thoughts about food. My feelings needed space to be. Space that I didn’t give to them.
I have learned to allow and accept my feelings, giving them space to be. I’ve learned to listen to my feelings without judgment. That has made all of the difference.