The holiday season can bring up a lot of emotions.

So often, we get preoccupied with our long to-do lists + family obligations, that before we know it, we feel overwhelmed, run-down or even get sick.

The radio may tell us “it’s the most wonderful time of the year,” but when we have sadness, anger, frustration or other emotions that we don’t take the time to express, experience and move through to completion, they tend to get stuck in the body.

Years ago, I faced debilitating back pain after a snowboarding incident.  When the pain kept recurring, a friend gave me a book that changed my life.

In his fascinating book, Healing Back Pain, Dr. Sarno talks about the mind’s effort to repress emotions. According to Dr. Sarno, the mind tricks you into not facing repressed emotions by making you focus on pain in the body.

In other words, most humans would rather tend to their physical pain than deal with their emotional pain. That made sense to me, as I was spending most of my time + energy tending to my physical condition.

Once I allowed myself to release the emotional pain that I had been suppressing at that time, there was no need for the physical pain, and it literally disappeared overnight.  I was amazed.

Now, whenever I begin to feel sick or feel stress mounting in my body, I always try to do some emotional release work.  (This doesn’t discount seeing a doctor when you have acute or chronic pain)

Over time, we end up storing our repressed emotions away in our “inner garage” to deal with them later, but often we never get around to it. The boxes of emotions pile up.

When our “inner garage” is cluttered with repressed emotions, it can make our internal home (or body) feel out of balance.

The problem is that with each new experience life presents to us, we add another memory + another feeling to our internal home. Unless we clean out our inner garage of all the stuff we have stored away, it is hard to invite in the new, the joyful and the abundant.

For me, December can be an emotional month of highs and lows.

I love decorating my home for the holidays, enjoying time with my family + warmly welcoming my in-laws when they come to visit.

And yet, without fail, their arrival also stirs up the emotional pain I still feel from having lost both of my own parents. (I lost my father in December ’97 + my mother in May 2010.)

As grateful as I feel watching my in-laws play with my small children, my heart breaks sometimes knowing that my own parents will never walk in the door or watch my kids grow up.

When I take time to honor these difficult emotions and have a good cry about it, I allow myself to release it.  When I do this, I often feel a renewed sense of energy + balance.

I’ve learned over the years, that expressing my emotions and honoring how I feel in the moment, is much better than stuffing the feelings down with distractions like holiday cookies + overspending! (which I’ve done at times too!).

3 Steps to Honoring Your Emotions During The Holidays (and all year long!) 

1) Face It
Awareness is the key. Talking with someone about how you are feeling or writing out what is “really” bothering you can be cathartic.

2) Feel it
Let it out of your body.  Have a good cry. Punch a pillow. Express yourself.  Don’t be afraid to feel difficult emotions.  They won’t harm you.  You are bigger than they are.

3) Heal it
When you can honor all of your emotions, there is no need to push them down + store them away. The healing can begin when you allow yourself the time and space to honor exactly how you are feeling.

Now, even my 3 1/2 year old understands that mommy can be joyful + cry at the same time.  He’ll ask me, “is that your happy-face-cry?”  And I’ll hug him tight and admit, “yes.”

And besides, honoring + expressing your emotions, just might make you a better actor.

As the late, great Mike Nichols noted, ” I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein.  That’s the job.  The key is that I make it safe for them to open a vein.”

So whatever it is you are feeling this month – happy, sad, overjoyed, overwhelmed, grateful, tearful – take time to stop, face it, feel it + heal it.  Your health, your life + maybe even your career will be better for it.

Here’s to a holiday season of rest, release + renewal.

Love + Gratitude,