Feelings: Stop Obsessing or Suppressing

Welcome back. My name is Danielle Thornton Gianni. I'm an anxiety and OCD recovery coach, helping people recover from anxiety, insecure, attachment, ocd, just like I have, so you can live an amazing life with happy, healthy relationships. If you often struggle with feelings of anxiety, doubt, sadness or hopelessness, and this video is going to teach you how to stop that struggle today. So keep watching.

The reason why you struggle so much with your feelings is the way that you're reacting to them when you get them. There's four different things that you're doing that you're going to want to stop today. And the first one is you're automatically giving every feeling and thought that comes up, meaning you're believing every thought and feeling as it shows up. You're giving it meaning as if it means something really important. And the reality is that we get thousands if not millions of thoughts every single day that then create feelings. And those thoughts often don't mean anything at all. One common example of this is when you get the thought I'm not good enough. Just because you have that thought doesn't mean you are not good enough. The people who automatically believe that thought and make it mean something about themselves are really going to struggle with that thought and with the feelings that follow the people who get that thought and just go, eh, not true, or I'm not giving you attention, that thought's going to fade. They've given no meaning to it, and then the feelings don't follow. It fades away. The second thing that you might be doing is hyper focusing on these feelings. You might be afraid when that feeling comes up, of the feeling itself. Maybe you're afraid that feeling is going to get worse. If you've experienced depression or anxiety in the past, you might worry that this feeling is going to lead to that. You might hyper focus on it by analyzing it or just noticing it all throughout the day. Whereas someone who just lets themselves have a feeling without giving it too much attention, your body's going to process it and that feeling is going to fade a lot quicker. You've probably heard what we focus on grows, and the more you focus on these uncomfortable feelings, the bigger they're going to get. The third thing that you might be doing is judging yourself for having them. When you get a feeling and you get frustrated with yourself for having that feeling, or you get frustrated with life or your situation because of these feelings, you're judging them and making these feelings not okay. And that's going to make you feel less okay. And the fourth reason why you're Getting more and more of these feelings is the opposite of what we've talked about. You're pushing them away. You're not wanting to get them. You're not allowing yourself to get thoughts and feelings and choosing what to do with them by trying to suppress them, avoid them, or push them away. What's going to happen is your brain and your body isn't going to process it. It's going to stay stuck. And your brain is going to try to find other ways and to get your attention. Maybe that's a stronger feeling, maybe it's more physical symptoms or bringing back that feeling more and more. So either hyper focusing on it too much, giving it too much attention, or pushing it away. Neither of those are effective. But let's talk about what is. First, you need to practice never ever judging your feelings. You want to allow feelings to be there, but don't judge them as good or bad. They just are. Don't judge yourself for having them, they just are. They're normal human experiences. Secondly, you want to practice allowing all of your thoughts or feelings to come, pushing these things away. Pushing your thoughts and feelings away is never going to work. It's never going to be effective. So what you're going to do is allow them to come and allow them to be there. But you're going to start to choose a healthier way of responding when they do come up so that they don't stay stuck and your body is able to process through them. You're going to remind yourself that feelings happen for all kinds of reasons. Negative thoughts, stress hormones, they don't always have to mean anything. Now, if there is a real life situation coming along with these feelings, that's one thing. But if this is a pattern of getting stuck in your feeling, obsessing about your feelings, or constantly trying to get rid of them, that's a different story. Remind yourself that feelings are not facts, they're just feelings. They don't have to mean anything. And the way that you respond is either going to make them better or worse. It doesn't mean that you're going to get depressed. It doesn't mean that you're going to get anxious. It's just a feeling in a moment. And then lastly, if you're someone who struggles with depression, anxiety or ocd, even sometimes insecure attachment, you may find that you hyper focus on these feelings too much. And the more you focus on these feelings, the stronger they're going to get. You're just going to let it be there and not give it attention. Now, the next Question I often get is, don't I have to pay attention to some of my feelings? The answer is, sure, there are some feelings that we do need to take action on. If you're somebody who doesn't obsess about your feelings or get stuck in negative thoughts or feelings, and there's a real life situation that's bringing up these feelings, something like, somebody's broken up with you, you've lost a job, you've lost a family member, something really bad is going on in life. Then of course you may need to grieve, you may need to make life changes and if you need help to understand which direction to go and what's really happening. Because when we obsess about our feelings and hyper focus on them, our brain's usually giving us a good reason. So getting help with this can really help you understand which direction to go, which we're here to do. But real life situation that warrants the quantity and quality of your feelings. If someone close to you has passed, of course it is warranted to be very sad, to cry and to grieve. This is a healthy and appropriate amount of emotion in relation to what's actually happened. Another example would be I woke up really anxious today and I don't know why, but it's a very normal day. There's really nothing to be anxious about yet you're feeling those feelings. That's when you know, okay, my feelings are not in line with reality here or what's actually happening, the facts. And so I may need to give them less attention, work on my fear and anxiety responses or stop focusing or letting these feelings mean anything for me. This is going to take awareness and practice and maybe help from somebody like myself or someone else can, who can help coach you through and recognize each individual moment in which direction to go. Hopefully this helps you with learning how to deal with feelings that are very normal, how not to get stuck in them, how to start to bring them up if you're pushing them down, and how to deal with them once they are there so that you can handle them in an appropriate way and your body will process and they will fade away. Let me know what you thought of this video in the comments below. Please subscribe and like if it was helpful. We're here for you if you need continued help and we'll talk to you very soon.