One of the greatest gifts in life is learning to be at home with yourself. Being willing to be where you are, to feel what you feel, and practice self-compassion.

It is a gift to ourselves when we witness our own life and our own experiences without judgment.

We create safety for ourselves by being kind to ourselves. We practice being with ourselves when things feel overwhelming or chaotic instead of just trying to get ourselves to a different feeling or making ourselves wrong for feeling the way we feel. When life is hard or feels scary, we acknowledge it instead of just thinking it should be different. We accept what is, as it is. We accept ourselves as we are.

I used to beat myself up and think I should not feel “this way” and get all mean to myself for having emotions, but now I realize I can be compassionate and kind to myself as I have the emotions. I can be like, “of course you would feel that this way” or “I understand how you could be frustrated right now” and feel what I feel. I decided to stop making myself wrong for having an emotion.  

I also realized that I could have multiple emotions at one time. I can be joyful, because I know that I am rooted and grounded in God’s Truth and His love for me and at the same time I can be sad because something happened or there was a situation or circumstance or something that caused me to be sad.

When we root ourselves in God’s love and ground ourselves in His truth, then it does not matter what happens in our external circumstances, because we believe and know He is in control, and He loves us, is with us, is for us, and is working all things together for our good. We trust in His love and in the ability He has given us to take care of and be kind to ourselves. We trust that He made us resilient and capable.

As I practiced believing and trusting that God loves me just as I am, it became easier for me to believe in myself and accept myself just as I am.

As we mature and learn to live from emotional adulthood and from our true selves, from a place of love not fear, we learn to regulate our emotions. We take responsibility for managing our internal circumstances. God, in us, expands our capacity to feel what we feel. God, in us, expands our capacity to accept our humanness and the humanness of others. We realize our agency to choose the thoughts we think and generate the feelings we want. We stop playing the victim and blaming others for our experience of our life. We come to realize that it does not matter what is happening in our external circumstances, which we cannot control, because we can control our thoughts about what is happening and thus generate the feeling we want to have regardless of the external things.

If we think that other people should make us feel better, or that the circumstances in our lives are causing us to feel the way we feel, then we feel hopeless because we can never control other people or our external circumstances completely.

When we realize the power we have to choose our thoughts, then we can generate for ourselves the emotions we want to feel, regardless of what other people do or what is happening around us.  

If we blame other people for making us feel insignificant or unworthy or not good enough, it is our thinking about what they are saying or doing that generates our feelings. They can be critical, judgmental, say whatever they want, and we can choose to remember God’s Truth about us. We can choose to remember that He says, we are enough, we are loved, we are accepted. We choose to be a safe, nurturing place for ourselves even if others are not.

If someone judges our performance or does not think we did a good job, we can tell ourselves a better story. We know that we did the best that we could. We know the effort we put forth. We can validate and support ourselves, even if they don’t. When other people are being judgmental or critical or have expectations of us, it says more about who they are than it does about who we are.

We must choose to renew our minds on God’s Truth. We must choose to take our thoughts captive. We must tell ourselves a different story, God’s story about us not someone else’s story.

Our emotions are not a straight line, that would make life quite boring. Our emotions go up and down. It is part of being human. Emotions are part of life. God gave us emotions, and He gives us the ability to regulate our emotions. Sadly, few of us these days seem to have learned how to regulate our emotions as children so now we are trying to figure it out as adults. Some people do not seem to be trying to figure it out, they just think they are the way they are, and this is how it is. Since people do not know how to regulate their emotions and since some people have this idea that emotions are bad, they avoid them or try to buffer or numb them away.

Part of learning to be at home with ourselves is accepting ourselves as we are. Part of learning to be at home with ourselves is taking responsibility for ourselves and what we are creating.

When we eat or drink or shop or mindlessly scroll social media or binge a show in an attempt to feel better, we are “numbing” or “buffering.” We’re trying to flatline our emotions basically, avoid them, stop them, escape them, usually because we are afraid to feel them because no one taught us how. When we “numb” or “buffer” to deal with our emotions, we are basically attempting to flatline them instead of acknowledging, accepting, regulating, and processing our emotions, which is an ability God has given us.

When we accept that we have emotions, they’re part of how God made us and they’re going to go up and down because that is our human experience, then we can learn to move through, to process, our emotions as they arise. We do not have to be afraid of feeling a feeling. I like to think of it this way, we can learn to ride the waves of our emotion instead of beating ourselves up for having them. Being kind to ourselves as we feel what we feel and having our human experience is building safety with ourselves.

We are going to have emotional experiences. We can be kind to ourselves in whatever emotions we are having. We can be with ourselves and treat ourselves the way we would a loved one or friend going through whatever we are going through. We can choose to be present to ourselves and our experience of our life without making ourselves wrong for whatever we feel. We practice awareness of our emotions and processing through our emotions. It will take time to learn to regulate our emotions. We must be patient with ourselves in the process.

For example, maybe I had plans with someone and at the last minute they cancel, and this causes me to feel frustrated, annoyed, upset. I am not going to stay in that frustration forever. I am not going to make the fact that they canceled mean something bad about me. I am not going to beat myself up for being frustrated in that moment.  I will acknowledge my emotions and be like, “yeah I’m kind of frustrated right now that things didn’t work out the way I thought they would” and then go “oh yeah, I am putting expectations on how things should have gone instead of just accepting that this is where we are right now, and this is what happened.” I can acknowledge, this is how I feel about it and practice self-compassion for where I am. I can choose to be a kind trusted presence to myself.

Be willing to be where you are, to feel what you feel, and practice self-compassion.

Practice believing and trusting that God loves you just as you are, and then love and accept yourself just as you are.

Believe in the power of the Holy Spirit in you helping you regulate and process your emotions.

Keep seeking and discovering God’s goodness and grace for you!