The Fear of Feeling

Underneath our tender protectors we often find a fear of feeling and a fear of pain. I write this not with judgment but awe at what the human heart can feel, hold, and meet. And I write this with the deepest respect to all that can overwhelm us, all the hurt that needs support and care.

Most days, I can’t meet the news on my computer without tears. Likewise, I can’t not meet the day with at least one thread of gratitude – look, the lavender plants are thriving, a miracle after last year’s lavender plants died in the droughty August. And look – did you see the way the store clerk looked at you when you told him about your hard day, the way his eyes were soft, and kind?

To be human means to meet the tenderness, sorrow and beauty of life, over and over. And this takes a brave heart, and often takes companionship – someone who can be with us as our hearts crack open.

There are so many feelings that live underneath the pull for food. We often feel them, lurking around the edges of our dinner plates, or feel their summons at the edge of the day.

They show up when we’re settling into bed or seep into the quiet hours of the evening, when the busyness of the day is no longer there to buffer us from what’s arising in our depths.

Feeling is one antidote to overeating. But to feel, and not flee, we need support and strength. And we need to understand that sadness has wisdom.

When we hurt – when we feel pain, or sadness – we often feel ashamed or panicked, like we’re doing something wrong. We think we must be doing something wrong if it’s painful or hard. We think we should’ve done something to prevent our pain.

These feelings of ‘something’s wrong’ can be amplified if we’re on a spiritual or healing path. As in, look, I’m doing all this meditation and healing work. Shouldn’t I be able to meet everything with more equanimity? Shouldn’t I not get upset or hurt?

There’s a way we blame ourselves or feel ashamed of ourselves when we can’t prevent our pain.

Unraveling this shame about feeling – the shame about being in pain, about feeling worried, about feeling overwhelmed, about being impacted and affected by the world – is the core wound underneath so much of our human suffering.

This week one of my children cried on my bed, and while they were crying about what’s going on in their lives, they were crying more deeply about the impermanence of life, and the vulnerability of growing up, and how nothing stays the same, even while we long to hold on.

They were crying but also feeling scared – is this pain okay? Am I doing something wrong, because this hurts this bad? And can I survive this pain? Is something in me bigger than the pain that’s overwhelming me now?

I could feel the weight of these unspoken questions, and while my mother’s heart yearned to step in and ease their pain, a wise place inside knew there was nothing I could do but be with them in it.

I told my child – we all feel the mix of feelings, all the time – there’s often sadness along with joy, or excitement along with fear. But sometimes one feeling steps up to the forefront, and it’s the one that’s asking for our attention and our care.

And I told my child  – sadness is here to take care of us,* because sadness helps us grieve our losses and move through our pain. But sadness is so vulnerable. So we all need safe places where we can cry our tears.

And that’s our task, as we grow into our fullness and maturity: to bring our loving presence, and our caring to each place of sadness, each place of aliveness, each tendril of feeling as our hearts grow big, and then bigger, able to hold and feel and care for more and more of the world.

This is the big picture journey that holds us as we heal painful patterns with food. This is a journey that holds us. This is the journey of our lifetime.

Sometimes we think we need to control this journey, or take charge.

I smile with compassion when I think about the mental checklists I’ve carried in my head about what I need to do to get from here (here being “eating disordered, or depressed, or anxious”) to there (there being “healed, serene, at peace.”) I’ve forced and pushed and prodded myself up that mountain, trying to make my healing happen, trying to ‘get’ to peace.

Perhaps, like me, you’ve carried shame and fear about being broken, not enough, too sensitive, too overwhelmed, or too worried. Perhaps, like me, that shame and fear has driven you to try and get it right, to want to control your eating disorders and get them tidied up.

In my own life, I was okay with feeling my feelings as long as it was clean and serene, like a little Buddha, like I had it all under control. It’s taken me many, many years to lean into the messiness of life, to bit by bit, welcome my lack of control and my vulnerability.

Love asks us, over and over, to befriend what we like least or fear most about ourselves. It asks us to embrace the parts in us that have not yet known love, the places in us that were hurt, neglected, harmed, or ignored. (Actually love does this – but we do surrender and open to it.)

This is the honor of healing. This is our inherent dignity. We get to meet all that lives inside us, and welcome these places home, again and again and again.

This is what we get to do, every time we crave food, or overeat, or overwork, or when the tender feelings of shame, or anger, or fear, or sadness arise.

There is nothing wrong with our pain, or our fear or our loneliness. It does not ask to be fixed, or controlled, or put in order. It asks to be felt, to be held, and to be known.

And friend, we travel this road home, together.

* With a deep bow of gratitude, I want to thank my mentor, Dr. Gordon Neufeld, for teaching me this truth, ‘that sadness is here to take care of us.’ He first taught me this over 15 years ago. Each year, I gain more understanding and awe for how this is true.