“You can’t heal what you can’t feel. ” – Dr. Edith Eva Eger

Feelings are fierce and wild. They don’t take well to anyone trying to domesticate them. They are impetuous. And their sole job is to make themselves heard.

Are you marching through the crisis of the coronavirus pandemic stoically, your heart neatly sealed, hiding beneath an emotional suppression?

You suffocate when you deny your feelings. When you don’t give your feelings air to breathe. When you don’t allow them to get out of your sealed chest.

Denying our feelings drains us.

You feel your energy leaking out of you. Your precious life force replaced by pure sadness and frazzle and an urge to get out.

Get me out of here.

Now our world is a dark place. We are in despair for loss of loved ones. We are in despair – not knowing what to do – for people who are sick with COVID -19. We are in despair for we don’t know whether we are carrying the virus in our system or not. We are in despair for we do not know when this hellish nightmare will leave our planet and we will sigh in gratitude.

But it is also the loss of businesses in this time of corona.

Everyone has an opinion on what we should feel and shouldn’t be feeling. I hear suggestions all day long when I talk to people about their feelings on their loss of businesses.

“How dare you feel sadness for a business lost when loved ones are dying every single day?”

No wonder I lose track of my feelings. What I need to feel.

We must never compare loss of loved ones with loss of a business in million years. But we need to soothe our crippling feelings for any loss.

Just because at the moment it feels like you are buried under the weight of a thousand boulders, helpless, not all your life will be like that.

“You can’t heal what you can’t feel. ” – Dr. Edith Eger

I wish for you to know that things will get better.

You have lost your job. Your business is on the verge of collapse. Your startup is shaking from its foundation.

You feel like you are buried under the weight of boulders, helpless, not knowing what to do. I wish for you to know there is hope.

I wish for you to know that as you pass through these hard times, you become stronger. That the scars of life you fear allow you to be more compassionate and loving with others.

I wish for you to know that dark times are another flavour in the feast that is life. Another instrument in the symphony we live. And that even though the solo they play feel like they last forever, eventually, a different instrument will take its place.

You deserve your full attention. You deserve to listen to your emotions. You deserve to feel whatever you are feeling for the loss of your business.

When your whole body is down because you have lost a job or your business has crumpled to the ground, trying to yank it into not feeling what it is feeling is the equivalent of not listening to yourself.

If you need to mope, mope. If you need to cry, cry. If you need to sit by yourself for hours or days even, sit by yourself.

Sit with what you feel (which, I won’t lie to you, is uncomfortable as hell. )

When you soothe your emotions , do not look at your devices. They are distractions that do not help. Breathe and let your tears flow on your cheeks without inhibition. You are allowed to cry for your loss.

Take time to breathe throughout your day. Now more than ever you need it. Our noisy brain will never stop thinking. Thinking is what it does. But focusing on your breath allows you to sift through the constant, incessant, relentless stream of emotions that your loss creates.

If you sit in silence for a couple of minutes and breathe, your brain sorts things out without your intervention. You don’t need to understand how this happens. No instruction manual exists.

Do what you need to do – when your emotions ask you to feel them. In time, you will process your loss. When you get out on the other side you feel much better than when all you have been trying to do is evade yourself.

My darling, you deserve your full attention. You deserve to be kind to yourself. To give your heart what it needs. To be listened to.

Denying your emotions their right to be felt does not work. Our feelings do not vanish into thin air. They live right there, waiting for us to acknowledge them.

Your feelings keep you hostage. You are their prisoner until you admit to the fear, sadness, and pain you’re feeling. Baring that beating, blood-red heart of yours soothes your crippling emotions.

To your inspiration,

Banchi