When your feelings are too big

Turning overwhelm into gratitude

Do you ever feel like your feelings are too big? Like if you feel anymore, you’ll pop like a balloon?

Some pretty flowers I photographed many years ago that I still like to look at.

I feel this way, often, and I make it a special point to always tell my daughter that her feelings are never too big for me. She’s a big feeler, too—I suspect, a highly sensitive person like myself.

The thing is, it can be really difficult not to get wrapped up in our feelings. Our feelings dictate so much of our thoughts, and our thoughts overflow into actions.

Sometimes I feel like I am doing this thing because my feelings made me do it.

And perhaps I’m not entirely wrong.

My therapist once reminded me that I am not my feelings. My feelings are just feelings. I am just me. In other words:

Don’t do the thing just because your feelings say so.

This has been great advice, especially when things are low, and I feel like quitting and running away. It was much easier to do this when I was younger, responsible to no one and could simply hop off on a new adventure. It’s not such a great idea when you’re a happily married mother of two. There are other lives I don’t want to disrupt.

The other night, I was wallowing in my feelings—rightfully! I was on day six million or so of being sick with something not quite as bad as the flu but much worse than a cold. With every tissue I blew, another dream whisked away into oblivion—the what could have been, should have been.

But as I wallowed in the familiar way I’ve done, I recognized the cycle, and how it never leads to anything. It’s rather pointless, actually. Wallowing in circles instead of recognizing this too shall pass.

So I decided to feel something else, something good, something that made me feel alive as I nursed my sore throat with yet another spoonful of honey.

I thought about the prior evening as I sat in a lawn chair playing the ukulele, the sun on my back and my children before me, each shrieking as they handed a beetle back and forth to one another. It was pure joy shared between a six and two-year-old who don’t always seem to get along. But at that moment, they were entirely occupied in the life of this poor beetle, giggling, screaming, flinging their hands in terror and then searching the pavement below them for where the insect went. It was bliss.

As I replayed this scene, something happened.

My chest began to feel warm.

The joy and delight of recalling this memory swelled inside me until I felt, quite literally, like I might pop.

Only this time, with gratitude.

The next time you feel overwhelmed, take yourself to that joyful memory. You might find your little balloon filled with negative air becomes filled with helium and begins to float.