Reclaim your power over your feelings

May 28

Have you ever been on the phone with Comcast about your internet bill and felt a little… frustrated? Have you ever exhausted your mental and emotional reserves trying to figure out how to file a health insurance claim? Have you been hurt by a conversation with a boss or co-worker? Irritated at someone in traffic who cut you off?

If you answered “no” to these questions, congratulations–you have achieved a level of nirvana that us mortals could only hope to aspire to. You can go now–this article is not for you.

If you answered “yes,” hello. Welcome. You are in good company.

Now you might be wondering… what does Comcast have to do with nutrition? And the answer is… well, nothing. AND, everything.

Because the next question is, have any of these situations put you into a “funk” or made you feel “off” for hours–maybe even days–beyond the event itself? You just couldn’t seem to feel right for a while. You had trouble regaining a rhythm or feeling good.

Maybe multiple events or situations transpired into a “when it rains, it pours” scenario. The world was against you and nothing seemed to go right.

Yep, I’ve been there too.

This is a phenomenon I like to call “stress bleed.” There is the thing that happened, our immediate emotional reaction to the thing, and then the story we tell ourselves about the thing.

Stress bleed is when our story allows the event or emotion to continue to live on past the point when anything meaningful can be gained from it.

Important caveat: we are not talking about major traumas, losses, or formative experiences here. There are some events that may impact us in meaningful ways our entire lives. I’m specifically addressing stressors with a lowercase “s” here.

For example, Comcast is charging me more than I’m contracted to pay. I call them, get put on hold for 30 minutes, and am finally told that I have no choice but to pay it or be denied service. That’s the event. My immediate reaction is frustration, anger, maybe sadness. Perhaps I’d budgeted that money for something else. Maybe I feel taken advantage of.

My story might then go something like this: “This is just another example of how the world is unfair. Plus, now I’m behind on the things I wanted to do today and I have nothing to show for it. What a waste. Now my day is shot.”

Sound familiar? Often, our stories are subconscious! They form along well-worn paths in our brains often without us even realizing we have a choice.

AND, they matter. A lot.

Can you feel the weight, the heaviness, the sense of defeat that this story carries? Can you feel how disempowering it is? Have you ever been here, where things wear on you and you feel like you're at the mercy of the universe conspiring against you?

I know I have been!

Before I understood how to “stop the bleed,” I turned to food as an escape to feel good again. The events and, importantly, my stories which kept them alive, made me feel trapped and bogged down. And I looked to food, to superficial relationships, and to myriad other things over the years to lift me up.

For years, food wasn’t nourishment so much as it was a way for me to exert control over something when life events and my stories about them reinforced my own beliefs that control was something I needed and didn’t have.

Maybe you have experienced this too. Maybe you’ve come home from a bad day at work and escaped the lingering pain–the stress bleed–through the pleasure of indulgent food that later made you feel even worse. If you have, I promise you are not alone! But the important thing to understand is this:

When we allow our stories to keep stressful situations alive, we relinquish power over our feelings to the very things that caused us harm!

When my subconscious Comcast story (“my day is now shot”) bleeds into how I live my life that day–what I do, what I choose to eat, how I feel–I am effectively ceding power over my body to Comcast!

When the driver that cut me off stays on my mind for the next twenty minutes, I have given him (or her!) power over twenty precious minutes of my life!

When things don’t go according to plan and I allow my shame and embarrassment to linger beyond the point of being useful, I cede power over my own body and mind!

Time never stops. And so unless we intentionally push pause, notice our thoughts and feelings, and actively choose the ones that empower us, it is so easy for the stress of one moment to bleed into other moments.

But I’m here to tell you:

You have that power! You can stop the bleed! In fact, you have to!

You have ideas, talents, words, actions, and dreams that the world needs! Your time and energy are way too important to be subverted by Comcast or shitty drivers or wrong orders or delayed flights or any other countless lowercase “s” stressor.

Don’t you dare give them the power for a minute longer than they deserve! Life is short and you are way too brilliant to surrender your precious time and energy to anything less than what brings you up.

When we choose thoughts that nourish us, we are much more likely to choose foods that nourish us. And when we choose foods that nourish us, we are primed to put our best out into the world.

As far as Comcast is concerned, after feeling some frustration, my story could go something like this: “In that grand scheme of things, this is nothing! I’m going to take three slow deep breaths, reconnect to my purpose, and carry on full steam ahead!”

Or, “Frustration… what a perfectly human emotion! To be alive and to GET to feel this. I’m sure on my deathbed, I would give anything for one more Comcast phone call–ha! To feel connected to humanity through the minutiae of daily life… that’s what it’s about! That is the gift of this moment.”

Can you feel the lightness, perhaps even the humor, in these stories? Can you sense the reclamation of power? The focus on perspective, purpose, connection, and compassion?

It’s all there waiting for you.

Claim your power, choose the story that serves you, and watch what happens.

Katie Beechem