The Self-Doubt Wave that Topples me from time to time

I wonder if I’ll forever be finding my groove. I sometimes have it, then it slips away, and I don’t even notice until it’s completely all gone. At that point, I am in full blown self-doubt spiral mode. Oh man, self-doubt is probably my least favorite experience this life has offered me so far. It is the most confusing feeling, and I despise it.  

My antipathy for self-doubt makes it even more important that I fully feel it when it arises, rather than suppress and avoid. 

Oh the paradox of feeling your feelings. I read a quote from one of my longest used books for bibliomancy, A Guide for the Advanced Soul by Susan Hayward, taken from my dad (Thank you, Dad). The quote is: “The way to freedom is feeling your feelings.” As I read this, I smiled and shook my head, because Spirit is always so spot on and often tells me the thing I want to hear the least but need to hear most. I asked myself: “what am I avoiding feeling?”  

Tired, confused, lost, annoyed, drained, bothered, inferior, like I’m failing, upset, wanting to give up, stuck, scared.  

I want to let myself feel these feelings and I, like many of my clients, have a fear that if I do, I will get stuck in them. I know that this is not true, and yet I still suppress them out of fear. So what do we do with this? Create the container for the magic to happen, for the feelings to be felt. Give myself the space to fully go there. Through dance, through writing, through slowing down, crying in the shower, improv singing on guitar- those are some of my ways. I get to remember to do those things to actually let myself release it. When I get caught up in the day to day, it is easy to let these feelings pile up and then they often come out sideways. 

I learned this lesson about feelings the hard way many times, and I often think about the time I learned how to swim in the ocean. I grew up in New York, going to the beach with my family in the summer. I loved the ocean and especially when the waves were calm. When the waves got bigger, I would get scared and try to run out of the water. Anyone who swims in the ocean knows you actually need to run towards the waves to avoid getting caught in them and trying to run out against the under-toe is basically a full proof plan for getting knocked down. I did not know this as a kid, so I kept running away and getting caught in the washing machine. One time I got toppled by two waves in a row, flipping underwater, getting scraped by sand, and feeling like I was surely going to die. When I got out, someone told me to go into the waves instead of trying to run out of the water as I had been doing. Oh, okay great so I’m supposed to go towards the danger! No thank you. But I tried it once and realized they were right. The easiest way to avoid getting toppled by a wave is to dive right into it.  

Water symbolizes the unconscious and emotional world. How you would swim in the ocean is how you ought to deal with your feelings, dive right in.  

I want to show up real and authentic. Which means that I expose that even though I guide people through their messes, I too am a mess. Deeply messy, deep in self-doubt, deep in “what the hell do I do now someone please help me because I don’t know if I can anymore.” It is simply part of life, no matter how connected to the other side of these emotions I am. In fact, the deeper I connect with joy and uplift, the deeper I connect with sorrow, weight, and horribly uncomfortable, unbearable feelings. That’s just how it works. Reminding myself of that is so helpful when I am in the middle of the mess. It helps me to remember that this is part of what it is to be fully alive, fully human. I would not trade any piece of this beautiful, messy, then gorgeous, then ugly again life I get to live.