Ep #171: How You’re Supposed to Feel

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, episode 171: How You’re Supposed to Feel. How often are you telling yourself that you shouldn’t feel the way you do? Or maybe you’re believing that other people should feel differently than they do. How exactly are you supposed to feel? Let’s talk about it in today’s episode.

Welcome to The Widowed Mom Podcast, the only podcast that offers a proven process to help you work through your grief, to grow, evolve, and create a future you can truly look forward to. Here’s your host, Master Certified life coach, grief expert, widow, and mom, Krista St. Germain.

Hey there, welcome to another episode of the podcast. I’m recording this one a little bit early, trying to get a little more margin back in my schedule. So, my daughter has not left at the time I’m recording this, if you’ve been wondering how I’m doing, it hasn’t actually happened yet. So, stay tuned for that. I’ll let you know. It’s going to be fine though because, honestly because of exactly what we’re going to talk about in today’s episode. Alright, so let’s just jump in because it’s already relevant.

How do you feel right now? Check with your body. Don’t ask your brain, ask your body. What’s the emotion I feel right now? Now, how do you think you’re supposed to feel right now? Do you think it’s different than how you currently feel? Are you supposed to feel some other way than how you currently feel? Because this is what we do to ourselves. How you feel right now is how you’re supposed to feel, anything else is resistance. And remember, what we resist, persists.

Now, acknowledging how you feel and allowing yourself to feel it doesn’t mean you’re resigning yourself to only feeling that way. It doesn’t mean it’s how you’ll always feel. It doesn’t mean you’re giving up. It doesn’t mean you’re broken. It doesn’t mean you’re damaged. It is not a sign of bad things to come. It isn’t to say that this is your new normal and that you’d better get used to it. It is not to say that you are stuck. It doesn’t mean that your grief has gone off course. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.

This has come up so many times lately in my coaching, that’s why it’s on my mind. Acknowledging how you feel and allowing yourself to feel it just means you’re no longer resisting what is. It’s freedom. Acknowledging how you feel and allowing yourself to feel just means you’re no longer wasting time and energy trying to argue with reality. You can decide to feel differently in the future because you can decide how you want to think in the future and remember that thoughts cause feelings. So, we’re in charge of those.

But whatever’s going on in our body is already there and telling ourselves it isn’t supposed to be there, that we aren’t supposed to feel this way makes it worse, makes it harder instead of easier. And the truth is that how you feel doesn’t mean anything about you. If you feel jealous it does not mean you are a jealous person. If you feel angry it does not mean you are an angry person. If you feel happy, it does not mean you are a happy person. If you feel sad, it does not mean you are a sad person. You are a person who is feeling something, that is all.

And feeling something is a normal part of being a person. All people feel. All humans feel. So please hear this, how you feel is not a problem. What you make how you feel mean is the problem. I see so many of my clients creating negative emotion on top of negative emotion, instead of just allowing ourselves to have a clean experience of pain. We dirty it all up with our judgment about what it means that we’re feeling that way, with thoughts about why it shouldn’t be happening and how we shouldn’t be feeling how we’re feeling.

We muck it all up by believing the lie that we shouldn’t be feeling how we’re actually feeling. Don’t do this to yourself. If you’ve been doing it, decide you’re not going to do it anymore. Telling yourself that you shouldn’t feel the way you feel would be like me telling myself that my eyes shouldn’t be brown. They are brown. They should be brown, how do I know? Because they’re brown. It does not help me to argue with reality and tell myself that my eyes should be some other color than what they are.

Now, feelings unlike my eye color, change, they’re transitory, they don’t last forever. They’re simply a product of past thoughts. And once we fully allowed ourselves to feel what we’re feeling because we’ve stopped judging ourselves for how we feel, because we’ve stopped telling ourselves we’re supposed to feel some other way. Only then can we create a different emotional experience. Only then can we process what we’re actually feeling. Only then can we let it flow through us in a clean cathartic way. And the same is true for other people.

When we tell ourselves that other people shouldn’t feel the way that they feel, what does that create for us? Definitely doesn’t make them feel any differently, does it? If they’re feeling that way then does it help us to tell ourselves that they shouldn’t be feeling that way, or worse, to tell them that they shouldn’t be feeling that way? No. Do you like it when somebody tells you, you shouldn’t be feeling the way you feel? No. So your feelings aren’t problems and their feelings aren’t problems.

When we make our feelings or their feelings mean something we create problems for ourselves and we waste energy trying to change something that cannot be changed, it can only be allowed. So, this episode is short today but I want you to come back to it. I want it to be one that you just bookmark because I think we need this reminder over, and over, and over. I know I do. Sometimes I’m recording these podcasts as much for myself as I am for you because I need these reminders too.

Next time you notice that little voice and it says, “You’re not supposed to feel this way. You shouldn’t be feeling like this, you should be past this, you should be doing better than this, this makes you weak, something’s wrong with you, you must be broken.” You know that voice, we all have it. Gently remind that voice that you’ve got this, that how you feel is totally okay, that how you feel doesn’t mean anything about you other than you’re a human on the planet who has thoughts.

How you feel is how you’re supposed to be feeling and we know that because it’s how you feel and then once you’ve allowed the feeling to pass through you, then and only then will you be able to create something new for yourself. Alright, that’s what I have for you this week. Remember, I love you, and you’ve got this. Take care and I’ll see you next week. Bye bye.

If you like what you’ve been hearing on this podcast and want to create a future you can truly get excited about after the loss of your spouse, I invite you to join my Mom Goes On coaching program. It’s small group coaching just for widowed moms like you where I’ll help you figure out what’s holding you back and give you the tools and support you need so that you can move forward with confidence.

Please don’t settle for a new normal that’s less than you deserve. Go to coachingwithkrista.com and click work with me for details and the next steps. I can’t wait to meet you.