Next Week: Stormy Weather
There is another comic below, three of ‘em, in fact, should you decide to skip the written stuff.
Something Completely Unrelated, Chapter 003:
Again, the written bit below is completely unrelated to comics, and wholly related to the pursuit of well-being. This is an area in which I have some expertise.
Know What You Feel and Express It
Part 3 of 3
Pretty simple and straight forward, right? Often, though, when someone tells me they feel sad or angry or hurt, and I ask them how they know they feel sad or angry or hurt, they point to their head. To which I’ll say:
“Where do you feel it in your body?”
“I don’t,” is the most common response, followed by another tap on their own temple.
The trick is learning to feel the feeling below our neck, not just think it. Because when we discover, for instance, the anxiety in our gut, rather than just the panic in our head, we can practice learning to sit with and acknowledge the feeling.
And then watch it flow through, feel it flow through.
Feelings just want to be felt.
They don’t need to run our actions, or hurt our relationships, or put holes in your walls, or otherwise hurt ourselves.
The Familiar Paths
The ways to get in deeper touch with our feelings are much-talked-about pathways, but not often taken. Journaling while focusing on the uncomfortable feelings can help.
Learning to sit, while meditating, with whatever comes up in our gut, is a courageous practice.
Intense exercise can help us learn to feel, too.
And talking with a therapist, the right therapist.
The trick is to attend to feelings when they show up. To welcome them. As the 13th century Islamic mystic Rumi states, much better than I:
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honourably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
From The Archive
Three more from my now-dormant Bunny Unsettled account on the Sketch-a-Day app, which turned out to be an awesome resource to ensure daily drawing.
I don’t remember the prompt, but I’m pretty sure you, like I, can guess:
P.S. You, too, are a direct descendant of the Big Bang.
Just one guy at the 23andMe headquarters drinking all the tubes of spit samples.