February 2024 Newsletter

In this newsletter: Leaning into emotion, Healing for Healers, Community Meditation gathering happening tomorrow

 “Feeling your feelings” is one of those therapeutic sayings that I notice gets tossed around often, and thought about less so. But what does that actually mean, and why is it important?

Feeling your feelings actually means: allow yourself to experience your emotions rather than push them away. Lean in, get curious, be compassionate with yourself, and then, you’ll begin to develop the capacity to allow your emotions in. You’re human, and experiencing the full range of human emotion can be scary. But, it also is beautiful and essential. Our culture likes to dismiss the “negative” or challenging emotions, while simultaneously tamping down the positive. The messages you receive are things like, “don’t cry, it’ll be okay”, or even “suck it up”. On the other hand, you’re also taught not to be too happy, or too proud of yourself, lest you make someone else feel bad. So despite having a vast range of emotions, you’re actually only allowed to feel and express a small fraction. 

Here’s the thing though: when you can’t feel or express your full range of emotions, you become numb, and a numb world is a dangerous place. Our world needs people who can feel deep grief, who can be outraged, who can feel joy and elation. We need people who can witness suffering and lean in rather than look away. 

So, “feeling your feelings” also means: develop your capacity to witness. To witness yourself, and to witness others, in the full expression of what’s present. Don’t run, don’t look away. Someone else’s joy doesn’t take away from your own, nor does their pain. When you develop your capacity to lean in, the world begins to shift. When you lean in, you give yourself and others permission to feel and express.

There are so many ways to develop this capacity; anything from naming your feelings, to going to therapy, to practicing yoga or breathwork, to working with psychedelics. For me personally, the answer has been all of these things. Developing the capacity to witness and feel is ongoing work, and is work that I’m honestly excited to be doing for my whole lifetime. In my own life, deepening into psychedelic medicine has expanded my ability to feel, to witness, and to hold space. As someone who holds space for others, it feels like a sacred responsibility to do this work for myself so that I can witness my clients and lean in to what they bring, rather than look away or make it about me.

If you’re someone who also holds space for others and you’re interested in exploring psychedelics for healing, I would love to connect with you. I’m offering a Healing for Healers retreat March 9th and 10th, and I wholeheartedly believe this work is essential. We need to be doing our own work while we’re showing up to help our clients. There’s also something so special and comforting about doing healing work in community. We need each other, and we really can’t do this alone.

My intention for this weekend retreat is an embodiment of the spiral path; we’ll start wide: “who am I? Where do I come from?, where have I been?”, go deeper: “what do I value? What’s important to me? How do I want to be showing up as a healer?”, then continue to spiral down into a delicious yoga and rest practice, followed by a group ketamine journey and integration practices. You’ll be held in community, cared for, and given space to connect with yourself and with our group. If you want to read a bit more about the retreat or about KAP, you can check it out here. 

Want to connect but can’t make the retreat? Join me for Community Meditation Gatherings each Wednesday at 8:30am, or connect with me to see if KAP is right for you.

I’m grateful to you for choosing to stay connected with me! The past few years have been full of growth and change, and I know the future will be no different. More growth and change to come - thank you for letting me share it with you. It means more than you know.

If you missed previous newsletters, you can access them here, and can go back to check out the therapy themes and resources I sent in previous months. 

Want more resources? You can check out the Resources page of my website here.

With deep gratitude,

Nicole