the only way out is through
When you’ve suffered a significant loss (and your beyond-human best friend is absolutely within this category), your mind and body are thrown into a state of overwhelm, which looks and feels a lot like numbness. For a little while, shock is your friend. It’s the waxy buffer between you and the current reality—the one you’re not ready to deal with, the one you’re still trying to adjust to. This evolutionary part of your biology has allowed you to survive all kinds of big-T and little-T traumas. And thank god for it—it serves a purpose.
Until that buffer starts turning into a barrier, and instead of operating in a semi-frozen emotional state, you’re (consciously or subconsciously) repressing and suppressing all those tectonic feelings starting to shift and quake under the surface.
Or maybe you’re starting to withdraw and avoid life more and more, continually on the lookout for any possible triggers (e.g., immediately putting away or donating physical reminders of your pet, refusing to watch any movie where an animal’s life is at risk, steering clear of the places you used to go together, etc.). But no matter which way you go, there’s always another tripwire.
Trying not to feel your feelings is a lot like trying not to throw up. You know when your stomach has that familiar queasy sensation, that first hint of nausea, and you can feel it sort of climbing its way up your torso? And then—because you hate being sick—you summon all your will to stay as still as possible, a perfect statue? You try to force the sensation back down, or ignore it, or distract yourself—all the while doing your best to not move one muscle. Like if you could just wait it out long enough, the nausea would go away on its own, and you’d be back to normal.
Sometimes, this non-moving method works. Sometimes the nausea dissipates or finds other (more preferable) exit strategies. But most of the time, it backfires. You can only stay still for so long. And—in every single case—it prolongs your misery. By far.
“The fastest way to freedom is to feel your feelings.”
It’s so much faster to let what wants to move through you, move. To let it all come out. Scarier, yes. Until you’re in the moment, allowing it to happen. And then you’re too busy dealing with what’s coming up and out. (It’s all energy, anyway.)
Let the rampages of grief pass through you. Let yourself be cleared out, emptied. Surrender. For a time, be a shell, a hollow reed, a flute.
You’re meant to be played like this, an instrument of Life. The sound you emit will change; the notes will shift. But the music you make will always, always be beautiful.
This is how it works. This is how it’s always been. From your biggest heartbreak, from your worst pain, comes unspeakable beauty.
“If we don’t feel our feelings all the way through, they never leave us, and then we do all kinds of unusual things to get out from under them. This is the cause of many an addiction.
Though we fear it, feeling our feelings is the only clear and direct way to free our hearts of pain.”
You don’t have to feel your feelings alone—we’re here for you.
