Is There Love in This Feeling?

I've come to believe that most of what gets in the way of our lives isn't circumstances.

It's emotions.

People don't avoid difficult conversations because conversations are hard.

They avoid them because they don't want to feel rejection.

People don't avoid starting businesses because they don't know how.

They avoid them because they don't want to feel uncertainty, embarrassment, disappointment, or failure.

People don't avoid approaching someone they're attracted to because talking to another person is difficult.

They avoid it because they don't want to feel vulnerable.

People don't avoid speaking their truth because the words are difficult to say, or even because of how others might respond.

They avoid it because they don't want to feel what arises within them when others respond.

The obstacle is often not the thing itself.

The obstacle is the feeling we expect to encounter along the way.

And I've found that the more emotions I make peace with, the more freedom I experience in my life.

The other morning, I woke up from a dream in which I was being chased through a parking lot by people who wanted to kill me.

When I woke up, the feeling lingered.

As I sat in my usual morning practice of meditation, self-inquiry, and resting in awake awareness, I noticed something uncomfortable moving through my body.

At first I called it fear.

But fear wasn't quite the right word.

As I sat with it longer, another word emerged:

Terror.

I recognized immediately that this wasn't a new feeling.

It was something old.

Something that had been occupying space in my nervous system for a long time.

Rather than trying to calm it down or make it go away, I became curious about it.

And then a question arose:

Is there love in this feeling?

That question has transformed my relationship with many emotions over the years.

When I ask it sincerely, I find myself looking beyond my initial assumptions about the emotion.

I begin to look for its purpose.

Its intelligence.

Its loving function.

And when I do, I often discover something surprising.

For example, I can see the love in anger.

Anger helps form healthy boundaries to protect what matters.

I can see the love in fear.

Fear helps preserve life.

I can see the love in sadness.

Sadness helps us process loss and honor what we have loved.

I can even see the love in shame.

Within shame is often the desire to live in alignment with our values, repair harm, belong, and care for our relationships.

I've noticed that when I can see the love within an emotion, making peace with it happens naturally.

The war ends because the emotion is no longer an enemy.

This realization has helped me understand something important.

Much of our suffering comes not from emotions themselves, but from misunderstanding them.

We feel shame and conclude, "I am bad."

We feel fear and conclude, "Something is wrong with me."

We feel sadness and conclude, "I shouldn't feel this way."

The emotion becomes associated with a story.

And then we go to war with the emotion.

But when we understand the loving function beneath the emotion, something changes.

The war begins to end.

As I sat with the terror that morning, I asked again:

Is there love in this feeling?

At first, that seemed like an absurd question.

Terror certainly doesn't feel loving.

But as I stayed with it, I began to recognize what terror was trying to do.

Terror is what emerges when the system perceives overwhelming danger.

It mobilizes every available resource for survival.

It is life protecting life.

It is an extraordinary burst of energy designed to help us survive circumstances that feel overwhelming. It feels as intense as the will to live itself.

Seen this way, the terror was no longer my enemy.

It was a profoundly loving response from a system trying to protect itself.

And something softened.

Not because the terror disappeared.

But because I no longer needed it to.

The feeling itself was no longer a problem.

It felt seen.

Welcomed.

Understood.

And over time, it settled.

Not because I got rid of it.

But because I made peace with it.

I've come to believe that making peace with an emotion is far more valuable than eliminating an emotion.

If I get rid of fear, I'll still be afraid if fear comes back tomorrow.

If I get rid of shame, I'll still be afraid if shame returns next week.

But if I make peace with fear, then I am free whether fear is present or absent.

If I make peace with shame, then I am free whether shame is present or absent.

The same is true of sadness.

The same is true of grief.

The same is true of loneliness.

The same is true of terror.

Freedom doesn't come from controlling our emotions.

Freedom comes from becoming willing to feel them.

When there is nothing within us that we are unwilling to feel, life opens up.

We can have difficult conversations.

We can take meaningful risks.

We can create.

We can love.

We can speak truths that matter. We can choose to disengage from connections that no longer feel aligned.

Not because fear disappears.

But because fear no longer determines what is possible.

This morning, I didn't find peace because the terror went away.

I found peace because I stopped needing it to.

I asked:

"Is there love in this feeling?"

And when I found the love, the war was over.

If you're struggling with emotions that feel overwhelming, and you'd like support learning how to make peace with them rather than fight them, I'd be happy to talk.

You can schedule a free introductory conversation at ifspsychiatrist.com.