Thoughtful Thursday & The Emotional Flu

ON THE BLOG

THE EMOTIONAL FLU

About a year ago, my colleague Natalie Clay coached me through a difficult situation with my adult children. 

I was struggling to get to peace about it.

Despite repeatedly using the self-coaching model, I couldn't shake my anger and frustration. 

I believed I should forgive them, but my brain wasn't ready for that.

What I learned in that session was life changing.

Natalie's approach helped me to acknowledge and accept my feelings without judgment or shame. 

I wanted to forgive.

I didn’t want to have hard feelings towards my children.

I was telling myself that I should forgive.

And again, I wanted to.

But thinking that I had to get to forgiveness right away set an conditional expectation for myself— in order to accept and love myself I needed to forgive right away. 

I was shaming myself for feeling angry and not forgiving them, causing resentment and disconnection with myself.

As long as I wasn’t being honest with myself, this wouldn’t resolve.

Once I gave myself permission that it was ok to struggle and feel angry, I could the push the pause button on trying to hurry to forgiveness, believing everything was fine.

This brought me so much relief.

I didn't have to spend time analyzing the situation.

I could be honest with myself about where I was in the moment .

This allowed me to take care of myself, heal emotionally, and eventually forgive my children.

Natalie calls this process treating the emotional flu.

Just like when we feel sick with the regular flu, what do we during that time?

We aren’t telling ourselves that we can’t feel the flu.

We know that we just need to wait it out.

It isn’t going to feel great.

It is actually going to feel terrible.

We don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how we got sick or shaming ourselves for getting sick.

We aren’t actually going to try and be overly positive about it either because that isn’t where we are at.

We know it is going to take time to feel better.  

We do whatever is necessary to help us get through that time.

We're optimistic that we are healing emotionally.

We're just navigating ways to pass the time to get through the pain.

Trying to minimize the pain in any way we possibly can in the moment.

Treating your emotional flu helps reinforce that you are your safe and secure place.

Loving yourself to healing so you can show up in the world as who you want to be.

Taking the time to be honest with myself about where I was and how I was feeling in the moment and being ok that I was struggling actually freed me from the weight of shame I was carrying.

I could stop interfering with the process and move to hope, healing, and forgiveness.