The Uncomfortable Emotions

Posted on Instagram on June 22, 2019

When you venture into mindfulness (be it through meditation, yoga, therapy, and all of that) something they tell you is that you have to learn to sit with the uncomfortable emotions.
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We tend to have a resistance to them.
"It doesn't feel good, I don't want it."
We tense, we try to escape them, and this usually hooks us up even more - making the discomfort even bigger.
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The key seems to be to be able to observe these unpleasant emotions, like watching the clouds run through the sky, without trying to get rid of them, give them a "meaning", or stomping our feet because we want them gone.
Because we are the observer, not the clouds. The sky is always there even if there are clouds.
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Easier said than done eh?
I KNOW.
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So in the attempt to find a different relationship with these feelings, I started to make puppets of them.
The long process of needle felting, between the comfort of the wool and the repetitive gesture of stabbing the needle, turned out to be perfect for the task.
Lots of time for inner talk while moving the hands.
And this is the first one of my felted "unpleasant buddies".
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What it taught me is that I can feel anxiety - and I felt a lot of it while making this buddy - and still...well, I can look at him and also feel tenderness. A sort of friendship.
And maybe someday I will get to that point in my relationship with anxiety, too 😜