In My Feelings

01 Jul In My Feelings

The rapper Drake, in his song ‘In My Feelings’ raps: “This sh!t got me in my feelings. Gotta be real with it, yup.”

So let’s get real!

How are you feeling right now?

In the past week, think about how often you felt:

• Really Happy
• Happy
• Confused
• Embarrassed
• Angry
• Really Mad
• Overwhelmed
• Unhappy
• Depressed

Most of us will have those days when we wake up and we’re not feeling diamond-dazzling and just want to pull the duvet back over our heads. Or those days when you think “Could anything else possibly go wrong today? Beam me up Scotty!”

Feelings change both suddenly and over time. Often we feel something and don’t know why.

The thing to know is that your feelings sum up your frequency and are the product of your experiences. Thoughts affect feelings and emotions, and feelings in turn affect thoughts, thus creating a ‘thought-feeling’ loop. Hope you’re not feeling too dizzy with these loops!

Think of it like the feedback in a sound system. You’re probably familiar with that high pitch piercing sound when a microphone is placed too close to the speaker and a feedback loop results. This is because the signal from the microphone reaches the speaker, which is then fed back into the microphone through sound waves in the air, which is again fed back to the speaker and so on, until the signal becomes so loud it’s out of control and hurts everyone’s ears. Ouch!

So we simply put greater distance between the microphone and the speaker, so that the microphone can’t pick up the signal from the speaker and feed it back in a loop. This results in a normal working of a sound system that’s pleasing to the ear and functional.

Well, thoughts and feelings work in the same way and can cause a feedback cycle that escalates until it is out of control. Whether it begins with a thought or with a feeling, it’s the loop between thoughts and feelings that feedback on each other that can cause a problem.

There’s a process of judgment that takes place in the mind which causes negative thoughts in response to low feelings. These negative thoughts in turn fire off more low feelings, which then fire off even more negative thoughts and so on until, BOOM, you’re facing great sadness, anxiety, depression, anger and other experiences you’d rather not have.

These negative experiences then cause people to make ill-thought out choices and behave in undesirable ways.

The awesome news is that just like in the sound system example, this problem has a solution by creating a greater gap between thoughts and feelings. This gap between thoughts and feelings limits the power that feelings have on thoughts.

It’s important to understand that when you’re feeling in a low mood, it’s really not the time to beat yourself up about it or to try to wrestle the feeling!

Know that it’s perfectly okay to feel low.

The key thing is to be in your feelings and accept how you feel.

Your mind may be in overdrive, desperate to figure out solutions to feel good, but it’s not the time to over-analyse, self-criticise or self-judge. Feeling guilty about feeling low and cussing, condemning and judging your feeling will only keep it there longer, as what you resist persists.

In that moment, it’s time to “be still.” It’s a bit like watching the news on TV trying to find peace within you, when the news is showing war and suffering. Peace isn’t there. You’ll need to switch the channel to find peace and to “be still.”

In order to “be still,” the first step is to detach from the over-thinking mind, by grabbing the internal remote control and switching channel to the relaxed, calm mind. Meditation, deep breathing and other relaxation techniques can be used to help get you there. When you’re there, simply observe the low feeling and allow it to be. This allowing opens up the space for the low feeling to run its course and naturally scatter away.

You can then begin to mindfully observe and examine your thoughts nonjudgmentally, so that they do not run automatically in your mind. Once you feel relaxed and calm, the negative thoughts will let go of you.

Changing your thoughts helps to create the gap between input (what you are putting in) and output (the response) and breaks the feedback loop. This distancing greatly reduces the pain and uneasiness that’s caused when thoughts and feelings rise to extreme and intense levels. In other words, your experience is less negative and more positive!

When your experiences are more positive, you’re more likely to make healthy choices and good decisions, which will then impact on your relationships, love and life circumstances and outcomes in ways that lead you to feel better!

“Change Your Thoughts And You Change Your World” ~ Norman Vincent Peale

I hope you found this article beneficial. I would love to hear your thoughts on it! Have you found yourself caught in negative thought-feeling feedback loops? Are you having repetitive thoughts that are impacting on your love, life and relationships? Simply click ‘like’ and please do let me know in the comments box below. 

Also, why not consider sharing it with somebody who could benefit from reading this too? After all #SharingIsCaring

Do you need to unravel your spiderweb of thoughts, feelings and emotions? I’d be more than happy to help you. All you have to do is CLICK HERE and we can chat more about this!

With Love

Teresha, The Confidence Restyler™ Xx