The Pool or Pillow Scream

Here is a good exercise to see how, by an act of will, we can move a lot of feelings right out of our body that have been hanging around for a while kind of fermenting and making us sour. Scream into a pillow, or jump into a pool and scream under water. This is wonderful when we feel like jumping out of our skin with tension, anger, frustration, or anguish. Sometimes we make horrible mistakes. We get fired, we make stupid remarks and feel guilty. Sometimes terrible things happen to us or our loved ones. Then we believe we are the feelings that thinking about these terrible things cause, and we grab for something to anesthetize ourselves so we don't hurt. We're not hurting, our feelings are hurting. We need to learn how to distance ourselves from our feelings so we can be more objective about their reality. So we can feel like the guardian of our feelings instead of feeling like their victim. Anxious thoughts are not the same thing as mourning. Truly mourning is quite beautiful. In mourning we have accepted our loss and our sadness about our loss. In anxiety we are still fighting everything.

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