At some point in your life you need to accept that your feelings are as credible and important, more so, than those of your loved ones. 

When you ignore your feelings, your desires, they turn into secret rage.

Rage turned inward begets all sorts of nasty things.  Eating disorders, addictive behaviors, passive aggressive outbursts.  When anger turns inward, it poisons everything in its path. Anger turned outward, on the other hand….That’s what shows like Law and Order are all about.

The truth is, it’s scary to face your feelings. It’s scary to admit you’re disappointed. It’s scary to listen to your instincts. The ones that tell you you’ve made a really bad turn.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that people like you more when you set your needs on the back burner and pretend you can live without. People like it when you choose the chicken back instead of that big juicy breast. When you tell them you PREFER gristle and bones.

It sounds so much nobler—this notion of living in the service of others, of steadying the rocking boat, of tamping down conflict before it has the chance to rear it’s ugly head.  After awhile you almost start believing your delusional schtick.

Negative emotions are uncomfortable; they’re inconvenient. Unlived dreams feel crappy when you’ve left them rotting in the dark.  It’s so much easier to pretend. To bury them so deep no one, including you, can hear them whimpering anymore.

But look where that’s got you.

Any third grader can tell you that the resentment and anger and sadness and disappointment you chose to ignore would never go away. That’s the stuff that spews out sideways.

OK

All that’s behind you.  It’s time to be proactive in your own care. It’s time to start listening to that little voice.

And if you won’t do it for yourself, here’s something to consider:  Compassion for others is a byproduct of opening yourself up.  At being honest and forthright with your feelings. 

Stop stuffing feelings and distracting yourself with mindless activity.  Plug into your self.

You have to get quiet.  Really quiet.

It’s  in this space of stillness that truth surfaces, understanding expands, and we discover the answers.

Is it any wonder you’ve become disconnected from yourself.?

Scurrying around, a head full of to-do list, negative self talk blaring like a boom box.  How can you expect to connect with your deepest longings with all that going on?.

Silence is a refuge that restores and rejuvenates.  Silence helps us sort priorities, tutors us in the skill of deep listening, and gives us a place from which to live.  Silence is the path back to the authentic self.

Get quiet and you will find you.

If you’ve got the TV on all the time, or you’re on the phone chatting, or you’re banging around in the kitchen, the music turned on, hanging out with the girlfriends kivetching, there’s no space to think.  It’s an old distracting habit you need to lose.

The idea is not to sedate yourself, but to allow the feelings to surface.

My friend Anne disappears each day into her “oratory”.  A little room she built off the back of her house where she goes to be alone.  She writes, listens to music, journals, meditates, and basically enjoys the sound of her own breath.

Walt is a firm believer in alone time.  Each morning he rises at 4:30 am.  He reads for half an hour in the predawn light, journals, plans his day, and meditates, all before I ever get up. I know.  He’s sick.

Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, suggests clearing the psychic junk from your head each day by writing three pages of thoughts.  Incomplete sentences, random notions, gripes, and observations.  Morning pages help me sort out the feelings I tend to suppress.

My friend Jules got to know herself, faced down her biggest inner demons, by doing a 10-day Vipassana meditation.  10 days of silence.  Of sitting on a cushion connecting with her breath.  She claims it absolutely opened her up. Changed the course of her life. That’s why I’m going to do this in 2013.

So get quiet.

1. Meditate for 10 minutes a day
2. Write morning pages
3. Shut off electronics for half a day
4. Close the bathroom door and take a long,hot bath
5. Sit and stare out a window
6. Be alone
7. Go on a silent retreat
8. Do a 3-day, or a 4-day Vipassana meditation

Don’t you think it’s high time, My Pretty, to hear what it is you feel and want?