Emotions are like water. They are healthiest when they are in movement. They happily live in seeming contradiction, changing in each moment and yet always there within their banks, along the shore, ever-present. There are times, events, occurences where they act dramatically and create radical change, but for the most part they are simply ever-present.
Emotions come and go. It takes the body 90 seconds to move through an emotional response such as shock, anger, fury, terror, or hurt. Waiting out those 90 seconds and allowing the body to get over the fight or flight response can help us respond more appropriately or at least positively to any given situation. But what about the emotions that just won’t leave? What about sorrow, mourning, depression, heart ache? What about simmering anger? What happens when emotions linger for not only weeks, but months?
Believe it or not, just like water in a landscape, our emotions go through seasons. They can have longer time frames than a commercial or sit com. Grief can take months or years to move through all its stages. Just like the leaves turning color and then dropping, leaving trees barren in winter, just like water receding from the shoreline and then freezing, your process may take you into a very internal place where healing can happen. Rest is necessary and connection needs to be gentle and reassuring. Trying to force healing and change can cause stagnation, can cause water damage. And if you dam up what you are feeling instead of feeling it, the dam can burst from overflow at the very worst time leaving wreckage in its wake.
The best thing to do is allow emotions to chart their own course. Let them exist in their own time frame. Breathe, feel them, let them have their say, then go on to the next thing. Once acknowledged they will float down the stream, bringing new emotions in their wake. The spring thaws will allow you to see things in a new light with a renewed perspective.
