Once, a client and I were discussing feelings and I told her if she could just stay with the feeling, no matter how bad, it would recede like the tide.
“I know,” she said, “no feeling is ever final.”
“Exactly!” I said. “Who said that?”
“I thought you did.”
“Nope, not me,” I said, “But I’ll be saying it now!”
No feeling is ever final. No matter how bad. No matter how good. Everything changes.
If you don’t like how you are feeling, you can stuff it—literally, with food, or metaphorically, by diving into work or escaping into a book or a movie, by zoning out using cigarettes or other drugs or by pouring yourself a glass of wine (or three).
If you don’t like how you are feeling, you can choose to experience the feeling anyway. You can stay still and allow the feeling to flood you.
Once you do, you will find that the feeling will intensify—and then it will fade. It may come back again, but it will fade again. Ebb and flow.
It’s as certain as the tide.