This year gave me some real tummy-churning moments.
Without going into the details (some situations don’t need to be relived publicly to be worth learning from), I found myself in conflicts I didn’t ask for (at least not consciously), situations that felt like a punch to the gut, and along the way, I lost some people I thought were friends. It hurt. It still does.
But this post isn’t really about what happened to me. It’s about what I did with it, and what I’ve learned to do differently, because I know I’m not the only one who has ever felt kicked in the stomach by life, by people, by circumstances that felt like they were outside of my control.
The Old Way: What I Used to Do (And Why It Never Worked)
Years ago, during one of the loneliest periods of my life, I faced situations that felt eerily similar. And back then, here’s what I did instead of feeling my feelings:
-> I desperately tried to reach out to somebody, anybody, just so I wouldn’t feel alone. I wasn’t looking for a real connection, but more like an escape from myself.
-> I suppressed, minimized, and brushed off how I actually felt, and told myself to “look on the bright side.”
-> I overanalyzed everything, using logic to explain away the pain instead of feeling it. I am very, very good at this one.
-> I overdid, and I mean OVERdid it. Doing instead of feeling. Anything to stay busy enough not to face what was underneath.
-> I filled the void with shopping. A quick hit of “happiness” that left me feeling emptier the moment it wore off.
-> I drank to numb what I didn’t want to feel.
-> I wanted to take revenge.
-> I cut people off and put as much distance as I could between myself and whoever I decided was responsible for my misery.
At first, every single one of these looks like a solution. Some of them even feel “good” in the moment. But they’re not solutions. They’re delay tactics. And I can tell you from experience: they don’t work. They just postpone the bill.
Because here’s the thing about suppressing instead of processing: whatever you don’t deal with doesn’t disappear. It waits. And if you don’t learn the lesson the first time, it comes back, maybe wearing a different face, in a different situation, through a different person, but it comes back. And usually, it comes back bigger. Less like a wave and more like a tsunami.
*(Suppressing versus processing deserves its own post entirely. It’s coming.)*
Why We Reach for These Things in the First Place
None of these coping mechanisms make us weak or broken. If anything, they make us human. Every single one of them was, at some point, a genuinely clever way to survive something that felt unbearable. Staying busy really can hold a life together for a while. Logic really can create the illusion of control when everything else feels chaotic. A little distraction, a little distance, a little numbing- none of it is a character flaw. It’s a nervous system doing its best to protect you from more pain than it thinks it can handle.
The problem was never that I reached for these things. The problem was that I stopped there. I mistook the coping mechanism for the cure.
What I Do Differently Now
I still get hard seasons. I wish I could tell you that healing and awareness mean the challenges stop, but it doesn’t work that way.
What’s changed is that now I know I have a choice in how I meet them.
So here is what’s different this time:
-> I don’t rush the process.
I don’t tell myself to “just get through it.” I’m not a masochist, and I don’t get anything out of torturing myself, but I also don’t pretend the pain isn’t there. What I’ve been through hurts. Betrayal, disappointment, and a long list of other heavy emotions have been part of my daily landscape lately.
-> I meet my feelings instead of running from them.
They make me feel alive. They guide me. I’ve started treating them as messengers pointing me toward exactly where I still need to heal. I feel them in my body, and I let them in the way you’d invite someone in for a coffee: “Come in. Sit down. Tell me why you’re here.” I don’t want to live there with them forever, but I’ve stopped slamming the door in their face.
In practice, “meeting a feeling” is much simpler than it sounds. It usually looks like this:
- I pause, even for thirty seconds, instead of immediately reaching for a distraction.
- I name what I’m feeling out loud or on paper, betrayal, disappointment, anger, grief, whatever it actually is, rather than the vaguer, safer “I’m fine” or “I’m just stressed.”
- I notice where I feel it in my body. Tight chest. Churning stomach. Clenched jaw. The body almost always knows before the mind catches up.
- I let it move through me without immediately trying to fix it, explain it, or talk myself out of it.
- Only once I’ve felt it do I ask, “Okay, now what does this want to teach me?”
“That’s it”. It’s not complicated, just uncomfortable (sometimes very uncomfortable), which is exactly why so many of us skip straight past it.
-> I take responsibility for my part.
Not for how the other person acted, reacted, or behaved. That’s theirs to own. But I look honestly at what belongs to me, including my own mistakes, without blame or finger-pointing, because that’s where the learning actually lives and the profound healing can start.
-> And only then do I start healing.
Not before. As a holistic healer, Family Constellation® therapy practitioner, and entity release practitioner, healing is what I do. But I’ve learned, sometimes the hard way, that healing can’t skip the feeling. You have to go through the door before you can close it behind you.
Feeling Has a Time. Healing Has a Time.
If you’re in the middle of something that feels like a punch to the gut right now, whatever it is- a friendship that ended, a betrayal, a conflict you didn’t see coming- I want you to know: you don’t have to rush past the feeling to get to the healing. They’re not the same season, and that’s okay.
Feel it first. Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. The healing will still be there waiting for you.
A Gentle Reflection
The next time something knocks the wind out of you, before you reach for the phone, the wine, the to-do list, or the door marked “block and move on,” maybe pause long enough to ask yourself:
– What am I actually feeling right now, underneath the story I’m telling myself about it?
– What have I usually done to avoid feeling this, and has it ever actually worked?
– What might this feeling be trying to show me about where I still need healing?
You don’t need to have the answers right away. You just need to be willing to ask the question, and to sit with whatever comes up long enough to actually hear it.
There is a time to feel. And when you’ve truly felt it, there will be a time to heal.
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