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  We blame ourselves, and we blame others. We may blame our parents, our friends, politicians, or life events. We try to change things. We try to find satisfaction, and when that doesn’t work, if we’re not careful, we descend into a negative spiral of despair.

  In an attempt to avoid feeling, we obsess about what might have been and torture ourselves with thoughts of “if only.” We make deals in our head as if we can control reality with our thoughts alone.

  Some of us deny we’re hurting at all. “I’m okay,” we’ll say. “It doesn’t bother me really.” Then, when the pain breaks through our protective wall of denial, we deny it all the more vociferously.

  The problem is that not only does avoidance not work but also it actually makes things worse.

  The Two Types of Emotional Pain

  When it comes to emotional pain, there are no shortcuts. It has to be felt. If we try to duck out of experiencing our natural feelings, we don’t escape them at all; instead, they just mutate into something more damaging.

  Also, what many of us don’t realize is that there are two kinds of emotional pain. One is the legitimate pain of being alive: real pain. The other, synthetic pain, is highly toxic, and yet most of us live with it on a daily basis.

  Real Pain

  Real pain is the price we pay for being members of this extraordinary race. At its most extreme, it is the anguish at the loss of a loved one or the betrayal of a lover. It can sweep over us like a storm. At other times, it’s a prick of disappointment that burrows under our skin like a splinter.

  The only healthy way out is to move through it. But as difficult as that path can be, when we emerge, we find that not only can we endure and survive, but also that we are infinitely stronger for it.

  Synthetic Pain

  Synthetic pain is an impostor. It is real emotional pain’s toxic clone, and while it feels urgent and necessary, there is nothing noble or inevitable about it. Whereas feeling real emotional pain is ultimately healing and leads to growth, compassion, and wisdom, synthetic pain leaves us stuck and riddled with anxiety, resentment, and regret.

  Synthetic pain is what we experience when we try to bargain with or avoid reality by refusing to accept what is. It is to real pain what self-pity is to grief, or resentment is to anger. Think of real pain as being akin to the pain of giving birth: it’s agony but productive. Synthetic pain is what you’d feel if you crossed your legs and tried to prevent yourself going into labor.

  Telling the Difference Between Real and Synthetic Pain

  When we’re in real pain we feel it in our body: our guts, our solar plexus, our hearts. But synthetic pain resides in our heads.

  Obsessive thinking—replaying an event or situation—is a symptom of synthetic pain. Our minds can resemble a tumble dryer, tossing things around and around and around to try to reach a different outcome. We can think we’re trying to solve a problem through the power of our intellect, but usually we’re digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a painful mental rut.

  Obsessive thinking is an attempt to bridge the gap between how we wish things were and how they actually are. We keep a fantasy alive in our thoughts to avoid the feelings that need to be felt and the actions that need to be taken.

  For example, instead of leaving an abusive situation, we may obsess about how we wish it were better. Instead of accepting that something we longed for hasn’t happened, we may replay events over and over again, hoping that we can make the outcome different through the sheer power of our thoughts. Bargaining is a natural part of the grieving process, but if we’re not careful, we can get stuck there, avoiding legitimate sorrow and replacing it with layers of toxic synthetic pain.

  * * *

  THE FIVE STAGES OF GRIEF

  While each of us will find her own unique way to face grief and loss, most of us will go through what are now commonly known as the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and, lastly, acceptance. Often we find ourselves moving back and forth among the first four stages before we finally get to number five. Acceptance won’t reverse our loss, but it does bring us peace.2

  * * *

  A Toxic Legacy

  When we fail to feel our real pain, it remains buried alive inside us. Sometimes we suppress our emotions so effectively that we don’t know they’re there—but our bodies always know. These feelings manifest in our lives as illness, chronic unexplained pains, anxiety, or rage. They lie dormant until they’re suddenly ignited, and we find ourselves losing all perspective and self-control.

  The good news is that when we step out of avoidance and into acceptance, we can begin to defuse the emotional land mines from our past that can trigger distorted emotional reactions in our present. As we release the bottled-up pain gradually and appropriately, we find we are no longer victims of our histories.

  When emotions are functioning healthily, they act as your guide. They’ll tell you when to protect yourself and when to let down your guard and become intimate. When to say yes, when to say no, and when to say you’re not sure.

  NNFR: Notice, Name, Feel, and Release

  Hopefully, you’re starting to get the hang of noticing and naming as initial steps to identifying your feelings. The next steps are to actually feel and then release them, enabling you to access a whole new level of emotional freedom and making it much easier to practice acceptance.

  Notice, Name, Feel, and Release is not an intellectual process, it is physical. To practice it, you need to become present to what is happening in your body so that you can start to expose the truth of who you are. It is a tool we all should have learned at school, but, instead, most of us were encouraged to bury our feelings and pull ourselves together.

  In order to feel and release emotions, you have to allow yourself to experience them without a story—with only the physical sensations in your body as your guide.

  Initially, you can use the following exercise to feel and release. In no time at all, you’ll find yourself incorporating the process into your everyday life. Sometimes you’ll do it in the moment, while at other times you may have to pause and wait until you have the space and safety you need. But from now on, you’ll have a technique that will enable you to feel your emotions and move through them to a place of acceptance of what is.

  * * *

  Exercise 3: Feeling and Releasing

  * * *

  This is a great exercise for any time you need to free yourself from difficult or painful emotions.

  Lie down somewhere quiet and safe. Close your eyes and take five deep breaths in and out. Now imagine that your mind is a laser. Send it down into your body to explore. Allow it to scan, looking for areas of tension. When it finds one, let its light rest there. Try to breathe into it, into the knot of tension that it has found. If that knot were a feeling, what would it be?

  Eastern medicine practitioners would say that if it is in your neck or shoulders, it might be anger, as this emotion often gets trapped there just before the point of release—that is, before it roars out of your mouth. If it’s in your chest, it may be sorrow—that’s how heartbreak got its name. If it’s in your stomach, it’s likely to be fear—no different from having a knot in your tummy before an exam or presentation.

  Breathe into each feeling that you encounter. Let your mind remain silent. If you’re stuck as to what you might be feeling, see if your inner child is around. (See Principle 1: Honesty.) She’s likely to know the answer. Ask her if she’s okay. If not, what is she feeling and why? Trust the first answer you get back; it’s often right.

  When you’ve worked out what feelings your tensions are holding, breathe deeply into every one of them until each knot has started to diminish. You might need to release a few tears as well. Let them flow. There’s no need for thoughts to get involved. Now isn’t the time for words. You’re diving down beneath the narratives you tell yourself. Just feel and release. Feel and release.

  It’s important to take this work at your own pace and pause if you start to
feel overwhelmed. There’s no need to push yourself—take this journey one step at a time.

  * * *

  Pause for a moment to congratulate yourself each time you allow yourself to Notice, Name, Feel, and Release your emotions. You’re doing a beautiful thing, not just for yourself, but also for the people in your life. Imagine how many times you have said or done something hurtful because you haven’t taken the time to address what’s really going on inside. Imagine what it might be like to make this a regular practice so that you can move into your life from a more grounded, connected, and less agitated or distracted place.

  This is an exercise you can come back to whenever you have noticed and named feelings that need to be felt and released. If you have limited time or are worried about being overwhelmed, you can set a timer for five to ten minutes. Or you may choose to take as long as you need to process what surfaces. Either way, release whatever comes up and be gentle with yourself when you’ve finished the exercise.

  This is a journey. Each Principle enables you to take more steps in the direction of wholeness. What you’re learning and practicing is vital to a life of integrity and meaning. This is important work. When you take responsibility for your own emotions, you can be a better parent, partner, daughter, sister, or friend. It also becomes easier to forgive others when they are unable to process their emotions because, in this simple exercise, you have come face-to-face with your humanness and your vulnerability, and shown compassion to yourself.

  When I’m having really strong feelings, I sometimes remind myself that I’ve given birth to children and treat the feelings as I did labor pains. I breathe into the heart of whatever is hurting me. Trying to think my way out of the pain of a contraction never would have worked, and it’s the same for getting through difficult emotions. Thinking just puts off the feeling and stores up masses of synthetic and toxic pain. Of course, I still try to bargain with reality or enter into judgement about what should or shouldn’t be happening, but I increasingly find myself remembering that there’s no point. Until I’ve released whatever feelings need to be felt, I’ll be off center, and my perspective will be distorted.

  —JN

  I’m not sure exactly when low-grade anxiety started in my life. I do recall that waking up with a sense of panic became an everyday occurrence in college, and the full-fledged attacks started when pregnant with my first child. It’s safe to say that getting a handle on this is what initially led me to meditation. But despite the fact that I have lived my adult life with some form of it either in periphery or front and center, the only way I have been able to step into my life as a student, a parent, or an actor who does live stage performances is to feel the fear and do it anyway. To say yes to life in all its complexities and terrifying twists and turns, despite potential paralysis behind every corner.

  —GA

  * * *

  DRAMA QUEEN

  In feeling and releasing, your goal is not to prove to yourself, or to anyone else, how upset you are. It is to allow the feelings to pass through you, just as you would a fever or a bout of physical pain. As described earlier, getting too caught up in the drama of a situation is another way of avoiding real pain or its solutions.

  When we witness friends doing this, it can sometimes feel disloyal not to join in and agree that, yes, things are really awful. But jumping into the maelstrom can destabilize your newfound process. Next time, take a deep breath and see what happens if you don’t participate in feeding the fire of their distress. You can still be there as a calm, loving presence, but you don’t need to costar in their production.

  * * *

  It may be the case that you can’t actually work out what it is you’re feeling. You try noticing and naming, but nothing recognizable comes up to feel and release. If you’ve spent a lot of time trying not to feel, it’s completely natural to have difficulty working out what it is you do feel—all you know is that you feel bad. And if you’re depressed, your feelings may be buried quite deeply.

  Don’t panic. If you create the space, they will start to surface when they are ready.

  Remember that you’ll find your feelings in your body, not in your head. Many of us have grown up thinking that thoughts and feelings are one and the same. Part of this process is learning to distinguish between them. Later on, in the 6th Principle, peace, the focus will be on stilling your mind, but for now, your concern is with feeling what needs to be felt so that you can move into acceptance.

  In the meantime, if your head starts throwing in unhelpful or negative thoughts—that you’ll never feel better, or you’ll always be alone—try to ignore them as you would a noisy neighbor or a loud drill. It is, in fact, just noise.

  * * *

  SHAKE AND RELEASE

  If you’ve ever seen two ducks fight on a lake, you’ll notice that when it’s over, the ducks shake their wings and then swim away. The shaking serves a biological need: it releases the stress chemicals that built up during the fight.3 Similarly, possums play dead when a predator is near, and after the danger passes, they’ll shudder to release the stress chemical.

  Whenever we’ve had an argument or received bad news, we too can experience the feeling and then shake our arms and legs to release the stress. We can go for a walk or a run. We can play music and dance. What we don’t want is for the trauma to stay trapped in our system, so take your lead from the animal kingdom: shake, release, and move on.

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  Changing What We Can (Accept and Thrive)

  If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.

  —ERICA JONG, author

  When you move through your feelings and into acceptance, you’ll discover that you have the space to focus on the things you have the power to change. Or as the Serenity Prayer puts it, you’ll start to be able to “change the things you can.” (See page 85.)

  You can change your outlook, your attitude, your responses to life, and your actions and reactions. You’ll discover that when you practice acceptance, answers exist right alongside the problems you’ve been fixating on; you just haven’t known where to look for them. You’ll notice many doors are open and available to you that you just didn’t see before—often because you were so busy focusing on the one that had closed.

  You may, of course, have to wait to see the answer or the open door before you take further action. Waiting is an action in its own right. As you wait, you get ready. You let go of what you can’t change to make way for a life full of possibility.

  Many of us have spent years wanting our lives to be different. When we release ourselves from that burden and accept ourselves and our lives as they really are, anything becomes possible. Before long, amazing things will come to pass.

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  ENJOY, CHANGE, OR ACCEPT

  Life is not an endurance test, although it can often feel like it—especially at the start of this journey. Over time we discover that there are three options in any situation: enjoy, change, or accept. Notice that endure isn’t one of them! The first choice is always enjoyment, but when that isn’t possible, we either change the situation or practice acceptance.

  * * *

  Many years ago, I was in so much emotional pain that I sought out a spiritual teacher to help me get to the other side of it. This teacher had written a book that, among other things, was about transmuting emotional pain. I discovered he was holding a retreat and, armed with his book, made my way toward it. It took two planes and a long car ride with many others heading to the same place, but I was so focused on my story of loss that I didn’t lift my head out of the book for the entire journey. It was as if somehow the words alone were holding me together and the planes in the air. This “stance” of mine continued for the first couple of days. I absorbed and was moved by the teacher’s talks, but was so locked in my head and my pain that I barely managed to engage with anyone, struggled to make eye contact, and definitely didn’t acknowledge the beauty of the landscape around me. I was supposedly there to release, but I was complet
ely unable to experience the joy that was manifesting for others before my eyes.

  On the third day, I received an invitation to a one-on-one meeting with the teacher. I was very excited, I had so many questions and was sure that he would be able to see the particular “depth” of my story and help me toward understanding why it was so painful. I was led to the teacher’s cabin, and there he was: this little man with bright, smiling eyes—the embodiment of pure love, pure joy, and presence. I sat before him looking deeply into his eyes, gathering my questions, and there in the presence of what many agree is an embodiment of higher consciousness, I suddenly had nothing to say. All the questions melted away and meant nothing. They were all based in ego and my inability to let go and just be with what was.

  In that moment, there was nothing wrong. Nothing was happening to me. I was not ill or being tortured by anyone—except myself by perpetually hashing over and over the wrongs and the misunderstandings, the self-pity and the pain. I left that cabin with the broadest smile on my face and the deepest sense of joy I have ever experienced. Not a word had been spoken. More miraculously, I was then able to face the “painful” circumstances in my life with nothing but love and acceptance. There was no more story left; it had been transformed.

  —GA

  We all notch up losses and heartaches as we walk through life, but when we allow ourselves to feel the necessary pain and learn the accompanying lessons, we grow in dignity, grace, and wisdom. They become part of our journey, and in time we discover that what we’ve suffered can be used to help someone else.