Really feel how you are? Are you happy, sad? Just pause for a moment and check in with your heart, your stomach, where your emotions reside.
When we have a hectic life with countless demands, it can be difficult to feel ourselves. We become almost numb. The English term for it is that you become "numb."
I have experienced becoming numb, where I couldn't feel how I was or what I wanted. My emotional range was reset to zero, and it made me incredibly sad. I had to invest in myself and transform my life through personal development.
Perhaps you grew up in a family where you weren't allowed to take up too much space. In a family where you had to set aside your own needs for others or were made wrong for showing certain emotions—perhaps feelings that your parents couldn't handle, so they needed to be packed away or swept under the rug.
Such an upbringing may lead to you often being able to sense how other people feel and being accustomed to wanting to fix others. You've become especially sensitive in navigating moods and decoding other people. You may also have an incredibly well-developed people-pleaser gene, always busy pleasing others—everyone except yourself.
When someone asks you how you are, you often say, "I'm okay," but what does that really mean? You may have developed a defense mechanism where you, for example, laugh even in serious situations. You don't know how to react because you are so distant from feeling yourself. If someone gets too close, you may tend to change the conversation so it's not about you or have a desire to escape. Suddenly, it can become too intense and, therefore, dangerous.
Another strategy to avoid feeling yourself is to always keep yourself busy with something, for example, by ensuring you always have plans so you don't risk being alone—alone with emotions that may surface and that you don't know how to handle.
It can be incredibly tough to come to the realization that you have lost yourself and can't feel anything. There is grief associated with discovering that you are not at home in yourself. Perhaps it becomes more and more apparent to you because your boundaries are repeatedly crossed by others.
Acknowledge yourself for realizing that you have become numb. It's the first step in the right direction. That you desire change and want to get to know yourself with all that it entails. Give yourself time and space for this transformation. Take small steps; for example, you can practice saying yes or no.
Imagine a friend calling you and asking if you want to go to the movies. Initially, you don't know. You're used to answering automatically based on what your brain thinks. Maybe after the conversation, you're unsure if you even want to go. Instead, try telling your friend that you'll call back in a bit. Now give yourself time to feel in your stomach. The brain is faster at giving answers than what you register in your emotions - your gut. When you give yourself time to feel, there will be an impulse in your heart or your gut, telling you what to do.
Life is about being able to hold and feel all emotions and knowing yourself so well that you know what you want and what you don't want. Embrace life with all it entails.
So, dare to take the journey, open your heart, and feel all of yourself.
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