I don't know about you, but when I don't sleep well, my feelings have nowhere to hide.
About 16 years ago I participated in a weekend "shadow" workshop at the Omega Institute for Holistic Health in Rhinebeck.
It was the first time I'd ever been, and I was trying to work out why I was so triggered by a family member.
What was happening inside of me to cause me to feel so rejected, so confused and so angry when I was around this person?
I suffered in the person's presence.
As a result every family gathering had a kind of dread that not only impacted me, but my husband and my kid too!
I didn't want every holiday for the rest of my life to be impacted by a hidden fear.
At the time, of course, I didn't really understand that it wasn't the person's fault that I was triggered in this way.
But I totally blamed them.
That person was just being themselves.
How they were behaving had nothing to do with me.
So during that Omega weekend "shadow workshop," the late great Debbie Ford asked us to come in the next morning without having caffeine, without taking a run (if we were a runner) without having a smoke (if we were a smoker) etc.
I know what you are thinking, The gall!
She was a genius.
She wanted us to forgo the habits that helped us hide our fears in the shadows because she knew it give our fears an escape route.
Is that deprivation therapy?
IDK, but it worked!
Without the ways we manage our emotions on the regular, the veil over our fear was lifted.
Fear got its air time.
(Sigh.)
When I don't sleep well, and menopause is working my very-last-nerve in that department, the fears that normally hang in the shadow behind my fixing, pleasing and doing - float right on out of that escape hatch.
And that is not a bad thing, really.
I'm suggesting that instead of resisting your big feelings with the little reserves you have given your exhaustion or having just quit your morning Starbucks Mochaccino routine, give them some space.
It's great practice.
Because, as I've said, those feelings are there all the time.
They have little to do with the triggers around us, and more to do with what is going on inside of us.
Every time we allow ourselves to know our own feelings by actually feeling them in our body - we touch a current of truth inside ourselves that would be hanging out in the dark otherwise.
And that's how we grow a little bigger than our fear.
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