To Feel is to Heal
This 💜
"Through helping others, I learned that I had always had compassion in me, although I hadn't know it and couldn't express it. I learned that if I could feel for others, I might also beging to feel compassion for myself. I was beginning to heal." - Yeonmi Park
I have just finished reading 'In Order to Live' by Yeonmi Park (Yes, I actually finished a book) and 🥹💜😭😱wow what an emotional, inspiring, heart warming and breaking, compassionate story. There is so much that I want to say about her story, her book but it's not mine to tell (go read her book and experience it for yourself)...
What I do want to share is how this quote really resonated deeply about my own compassionate healing journey - learning how to teach myself compassion as like most immigrants I have found the lack of emotional support growing up or emotionally unavailable parents (not their fault - they were coping with the resources they had at the time), it left me with an emptiness, a highly active inner critic, unable to sit with, talks about or express my own emotions, unable to cope or manage with overwhelming feeling in difficult situations. I chose the importance of logic over feelings and still often feel overwhelmed with my emotions when it gets difficult so I try to control everything else but.
What is emotional intelligence? The ability to identify, assess, and manage one’s own emotions, the emotions of others, and those of groups (as described by Daniel Goleman).
It's a journey, which we all our going on at our own pace... Reiki was the beginning of mine - opening up a vulnerable safe space to sit with my emotions. When reading these words of Yeonmi Park - it reminded me of that time. How I kept chasing around trying to fix and solve everyone else problems, oblivious of (too busy to attend to) my own; burning out all the time. Those sessions opened up the biggest part of this journey - Self compassion. I used to shame my emotions, now I invite them in - like I would if my friend was feeling in their feels...
I feel a lot more now, both highs and low not as numb, unsure or unknowing of how I felt. I never used to cry but now I do... at songs, at puppies, at food when it sooo good (it gets emotional haha) but I now understand 'to feel is to heal'...
I invite you to try it :) promise it won't feel great at the time but you will thank yourself (eventually) 💜🙏
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