Part of my mission in life is to help you to see that dating, with all of it’s ups and downs, can actually be a fun and enriching experience.
That can be hard to imagine when it feels like you are walking through an emotional minefield.
You’re doing a lot of work to put yourself out there.
You’re flirting. You’re on the sites. Your profile is on point. You’re a good person. You’re charming. You’re funny. This is the fifth outfit you tried.
You’re taking a risk.
Aaaaand then you get the ghost. Or the “emotionally unavailable” reveal. Or you get involved with someone who’s not who you thought they were, and it degenerates.
Yes, that’s a pretty dramatic effort to reward imbalance. And YES, a lot of tough emotions are going to come up for you. That is the nature of dating.
There is NO WAY around that reality.
But there is a way through it, and that has its own reward.
Let’s begin.
Take a moment and accept that difficult emotions are going to come up when you are dating.
Got it? Good.
Now, what I want you to do is make the decision to FEEL YOUR FEELINGS.
I know, that sounds awful. Stay with me.
You need to give yourself permission to just feel lousy sometimes. And I mean actively feel it. Cry. Go for a run and cry. Eat Ben n’ Jerry’s while watching Stranger Things and cry. Realize that the mind monster reminds you of your mother. And cry.
Do what you need to do, but get it OUT.
Don’t deny it. Don’t hold onto it. Feel it and let it go.
If you don’t feel your feelings when they arise, they will build up and sabotage you. Without you even knowing it’s happening.
Say you get emotionally triggered by a rejection. What’s important to know is that the emotions coming up aren’t just from that rejection.
It’s bringing up feelings from all of your rejections going all the way back in time.
The time your high school boyfriend kissed your best friend, or the time you didn’t get picked for the cheerleading squad, or your Dad always praising your siblings and not you.
These emotions are still hanging out in the basement because they didn’t get dealt with at the time that they happened.
They want attention, so they hijack you and pull you back into the past and try to convince you that the past is the present.
When you get pulled out of the present moment, you abandon yourself and forget who you are. You feel like you have no control, and spiral into helplessness and hopelessness.
When you can bring yourself back into the present moment and feel your feelings as they arise, you can separate what happened in the past from what’s happening now.
And what’s happening now is that you are a grown woman who is fabulously deserving of love who is having some intense feelings.
At which point you proceed to have the sh*t out of those feelings…and when you’re done, you put on your big girl briefs and charge on.
Here are some ways that you can wrangle the feels when they start to take you over.
Meditate
I use a meditation technique with my clients where I ask them to talk to their Higher Self.
You can think of this as the you that has always been or the future you that you are becoming.
It’s like when people get asked the question, “What would you say to your 8-year-old self?”- only you ask ‘future you’ what she would say to you now.
Take some time and really try to connect with this beautiful, wise part of yourself and let her guide you.
Free Form Writing
You can process some serious emotion with a good, old-fashioned pen-to-paper brain dump. Bitch, rave, rant, moan, go to town. But get it ALL OUT. Then, once you feel an emotional shift where you start to feel better, be done. Finally, now that you’ve gotten all of that nastiness out of your brain, get rid of it! Delete it, burn it, put it in the recycling. DO NOT GO BACK AND READ IT. Ever. It is over and done, do not let it back in your head.
Reach out to Friends
Yaaasss girl. Nothing can help to transmute your crappy feelings faster than an actual pity party. Having someone witness and acknowledge you when you are feeling low is a great way to process. Especially if it’s a person that has what you want because they can remind you that it’s possible. They can encourage you and help you work through your blocks. And a person that knows you well can remind you who you are.
Find a Community of Like-minded Women
In my private coaching group, Emotionally Naked Dating, women of all ages come together to support and inspire each other as they look for love. The power of a group of women beautifully supporting each other on this journey is incredibly healing and transformative.
These are just a few of the things you can do to begin to support yourself through the emotional ups and downs of dating. One thing you don’t want to do is allow your negative feelings to accumulate and cause you to start pushing good men away.
The journey out of anxiety and hurtful patterns in dating takes work. It can be difficult to do on your own.
This free 45-minute webinar explains how my program breaks the cycle of painful dating, gives you back your power, and gets incredible results fast.
If you like what you hear, let’s jump on a call and make a plan for your success.
Book your free call, and let me show you how to make your own reward.
Yours in Nakedness,
