How to Feel Your Feelings and Build a New Reality For Yourself.

The following is adapted from Homecoming by Justine Harrington.

I’m going to be the girl who felt her feelings and died, I thought in between sobs and waves of uncontrollable grief.

I vaguely wondered if that would be a legitimate cause of death. It sure as hell felt like it in the moment.

I had made the decision to start feeling my feelings. The emotions that came up were so intense, so heavy, they felt never ending. I felt certain I would never feel another ounce of happiness again. In that moment, it seemed perfectly reasonable that I might die under the weight of my emotions.

I’m happy to report I didn’t die. In fact, that was the beginning of me actually living.

Turns out, this was the start of my healing journey. As I began, I got to know myself in a deep and meaningful way. I learned to see myself with clarity and compassion. I learned to truly love myself.

I didn’t know any of this when I made the decision to feel my feelings. All I knew was something had to give. I felt stuck. I was living in constant fear of failure and rejection. I felt undeserving of all the good people and things in my life. Deep down, I knew there had to be a different way to live.

I’d been going to therapy for years, and eventually I realized I never allowed myself to feel. I shoved my feelings down inside of myself or I numbed them in a variety of ways. The end result was a lifetime of bottled-up emotions weighing me down.

I knew I needed to start with my feelings so I could let go of the weight that was keeping me feeling stuck and living in fear.

I made the decision to feel the feelings I’d bottled up for most of my life, which is something I will also teach you to do.

I journaled about past experiences, I focused on what my emotions felt like in my body, and I worked toward giving myself permission to feel.

My old bottled-up emotions started to bubble up to the surface on my thirtieth birthday, which in my book will be forever known as The Day I Started to Feel My Feelings.

I woke up to my husband cooking a big birthday breakfast for me. When I sat down at the kitchen counter to eat, I suddenly felt a huge and uncontrollable wave of sadness wash over me. I started to cry. I didn’t just tear up and sniffle. I ugly cried. I felt overwhelmingly sad and lonely, despite the fact that my husband was standing in front of me with a plate full of sizzling bacon and eggs.

I ran from the room in tears and plopped on my bed. I refused to speak to anyone, and I spent most of the day crying and feeling tsunami waves of sadness, despair, and loneliness.

Eventually, as any scared thirty-year-old experiencing her feelings for the first time would do, I called my mom.

Through tears, I asked her, “When is this going to end?”

For most of my life, I wasn’t aware.

I wasn’t aware that my actions and behaviors were driven by fear.

I wasn’t aware that my wounded words and actions hurt the people around me.

I wasn’t aware of all the ways I was hurting myself.

I wasn’t aware of my conditioned behaviors, thoughts, and beliefs — the behaviors, thoughts, and beliefs I picked up from others or learned through my experiences.

I wasn’t aware that these behaviors, thoughts, and beliefs were learned, and that I could also unlearn them and replace them with thoughts and beliefs that served me.

I became aware because others on their own healing journeys shared their stories and experiences with me. They showed me a path of self-exploration and compassion that I didn’t know existed.

You do not have to continue to feel less than, unworthy, or fearful. You can build a new reality for yourself.

To learn more about how you can start your own healing journey, Homecoming is available on Amazon.

Justine is a writer and healer. She provides a process and support for others to get out of their heads and into their hearts so they can release false narratives, shatter limiting beliefs, connect with their most authentic self, and ultimately evolve from living in fear to living from a place of love and compassion. Justine lives in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, with her husband, Tim, and dog, Lulu.