The message out there is that strength is going through life getting the job done and not feeling too much.  We are to be unmoved by the joys and sorrows and pain and loss and love of this life.  We are not to be buffetted by the winds of vulnerability.  And it is best then that we keep it all inside.

Yet day after day in my office I work with people, brilliant, talented, beautiful, successful, good people who have lived that way and are suffering.  They have learned to deny the truth of what they feel, contorting themselves so that they fit some old idea of what they must be to win approval or be safe.

Over the long haul that survival strategy weakens us.  Without our emotions we cannot know who we are, can't take a stand for ourselves the way we deserve, can't connect with others the way we deeply long to.  

These wonderful people are living in a way that prevents growth.  In my office I invite them to let themselves matter, to feel what it actually feels like, just to notice themselves in the moment in the body, and to let themselves feel me notice them, in the moment in the body. 

We slow down and do it.  They are shocked or awkward or irritable or embarrassed.  They are inevitably anxious.  They have a strong urge to shut it all down.  They tell me: "This is silly" or "How can this help?" or "If I feel the feeling it will never end and I won't be able to cope", or "I just feel weak when I notice my feelings." 

Far from weakness, feelings are strength.  They are the energy and information that motivates and organizes and directs our lives.  Not only are they the source of our strength, they are the real test of our strength.  Feeling the vulnerable surprise of what emotions actually do to us, in our flesh and blood, takes real courage.  

Compared to actually feeling what it feels like to be moved by the power of emotion, being stoic is nothing.  Sucking it up is for wimps.  The real strength is staying withourselves as our heart races and tears spring to the corners of our eyes and our face flushes pink and our knees feel weak and our jaw clenches...

The urge to run away from ourselves there is fierce.  And the choice to stay with ourselves takes awareness and a capacity for staying on our side when things do not feel good.  It feels hard and looks like love.

We need to remind ourselves in those difficult moments what the choice really is: shut down and stay stuck or feel and grow.  It feels uncomfortable, the arousal in the body seems to speak of danger.  But these are only feelings after all.  Shut down is not a lifesaving choice.  Not feeling only buys you less discomfort, not actual safety.  You can go with the old urge to suppress the vulnerable discomfort of feelings if you want but it does not make you safe. 

Shut down can't save your life, but it can crush it.

I do not mean to make this sound so easy.  It is so very hard.  The pull to move away from the discomfort is powerful. 

When I am moved in my muscles and breath and blood with the chemistry of emotion it feels so humbling.  I am not the boss of that.  All I have is the choice to matter right there and then.  Or not.  And I get to choose in the next breath and the one after that.   

All I ask is that you try to matter.  That you make the choice when you can, as often as you can, to tune in and notice and be with yourself in the vulnerable truth of being you, being human.  You are so worth it.