Have you ever found yourself in a life transition that you didn’t expect — or perhaps didn’t  want — to be in?

You’ve been told by your boss that you aren’t going to be promoted, or that your job is being eliminated. A dear loved one is suddenly facing a life-threatening illness, or even worse, has just died. Your spouse has just asked for a divorce, or the person you thought you would spend the rest of your life with has just told you that she doesn’t want to be with you anymore.

Those moments, and the period of time that follows, can feel jarring and disorienting and incredibly confusing. These life-altering experiences can bring with them a tremendous amount of dis-ease, marked by a swirling mix of emotions: grief, sadness, anger, anxiety, and the compulsion to do something — anything — to escape all of these feelings. You fill your calendar, avoid being alone, stay in motion, finding ways to distract yourself from everything that is swirling around inside you. It’s just too unsettling to allow yourself to really feel your feelings, so you focus on something else. You push your emotions down and pretend to others, and perhaps even to yourself, that they don’t exist.

“I’m okay.” “I’ll be fine.” “I know it’s for the best.” “We’ll solve this problem.” “Don’t worry about me.” And yet, deep inside, you are worried or afraid. Worried about your ability to hold it all together, to navigate through this, to make wise decisions, to not lose your self-confidence or your sense of optimism. Afraid that you’ll drop all the balls you are juggling and let down people who count on you or need you.

Maybe you’re blaming someone else for the situation, and completely externalizing it. Maybe you’re stuck in a cycle of trying to figure out what you could have done differently, what you did wrong, how you could have prevented or avoided this situation. Perhaps you’re even wondering what is wrong with you. What do you tell yourself, how do you treat yourself internally, during times like these?

When life brings things to the surface, they come to the surface for us to see and acknowledge and recognize and bring light to and heal them. When we turn away from them instead, these things (our feelings, beliefs, dreams, desires, pain, fears) retreat back into our subconscious to be dealt with another time, when hopefully we will be more open to looking and embracing them.

When you find yourself in the throes of something that has taken all the wind out of your sails, can you find the strength to face your inner world? Can you find the courage to allow yourself to feel what you feel? Can you call forth your own sense of curiosity, and be open to learning how to love yourself through even this?

Ask yourself:

• What is that busyness protecting me from feeling? What am I pushing away or not allowing?
• How am I feeling right now?
• What thoughts or beliefs brought forth this feeling?
• What does that feeling feel like in my body? Is my breathing sharp and shallow? Are my shoulders tense? Is my chest collapsed?
• What does this feeling remind me of? When have I experienced it before?

Give yourself the gift of being compassionately present with yourself and all that you are experiencing. Without wishing anything were different than it is right now in this moment. It’s through embracing and allowing what is that we build emotional resilience — resilience that expands our capacity to be with chaos, ambiguity, pain, anger, grief. And when we expand our capacity to be with our own full range of emotions, we won’t feel so triggered or thrown off balance by other people’s emotions. Because when we learn how to be compassionately present with ourselves, and the fullness of our humanness, we simultaneously expand our ability to accept and embrace and love other people as they are.

Have patience with yourself. Create the space to understand your inner world. Don’t make decisions from a place of chaos or ambiguity or fear. Wait. Just wait. Be with the muddy emotions first, until they settle. Give them a chance to transform in the midst of your own compassionate presence. Then, when they do, you can choose what to move toward rather than what to run away from. Then, you can decide from love rather than fear. Then you can make choices that are in alignment with who you really are.

“Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear? 
Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?” ~ Lao Tzu