Feeling emotionally drained is a theme that has recently come up in my own life and in this post, I want to share with you some of the practices I use to support me when this happens.
Looking back at 2020, nobody expected it would be such a very hard, demanding, and ruthless year in so many aspects.
We have to really dig deep and stay true to who we are to be able to ride this wave but this is not always easy. These are then some of the practices that I use in my own life to help me ride the wave and help me deal with feeling emotionally drained.
Recently, I was doing research on holiday stress, as a blog topic.
It’s nearing the end of the year and typically this is the time of year when most of us are experiencing even more stress than usual.
While doing this, I realized that I was feeling many different emotions about the past year.
Most notably, I was feeling a lot of resentment and anger.
I was also feeling exhausted and emotionally drained from connecting to what is going on in the outside world.
The problem with this is when you are so connected into the story of what is happening out there you’re leaving yourself powerless.
Watch this video on Feeling Emotionally Drained on my YouTube channel.
An insight from my past
I want to tell you a story to put this into perspective.
Many years ago I was going through quite a difficult patch in my life.
On this one particular evening I was lying in the bath and had a cry-fest.
I remember being very sad and sobbing my heart out.
I was just crying about the world, I was crying about my own life and I was crying about the people in my life.
I then had a very interesting and illuminating experience.
While crying one part of me started observing myself as I was lying there, in the bath, sobbing.
This observer did not have any emotional feelings or any attachments to what I was seeing. It was merely being very curious.
I curiously looked at what I was crying over and observed how I was crying. I also noticed the emotions I was feeling.
Looking back, there were 3 aspects or timelines at play here.
The first was the present reality where I was in the bath. The second was that I was crying over something that I was thinking and feeling about and the third aspect was that I was observing myself doing this.
This was a pivotal turning point in my life as I realized that I was not the crier.
I was the crier and the observer.
What became very clear for me while I was observing myself crying like this is that I was completely stuck in the story of my life.
The reality was that I was in a bath that was very comfortable and warm but in my mind and in my emotions I was in a completely different place.
I had completely bought into the belief that I am powerless and that there were not many options. I felt exhausted, helpless, like a victim, and that nobody understood me.
I felt I needed to control my world in order to feel safe.
I wonder if you took a look at your life, if you would find any places where you too are stuck in story? Where you are feeling emotionally drained?
Are there areas where you believe you have no power, where you feel victimized, and without any choices?
Getting out of story when you’re feeling emotionally drained
Connecting to your breath is one of the things that will bring you into the present moment.
When we are stuck in story it holds us either in the past or it holds us in the future.
Your breath is in the present moment because our body lives in the present moment!
So, one of the fastest most effective ways that I know of to connect to your body and into the present moment, to become mindful of the present moment, is to connect with your breath.
In my experience, a very good time to do this is the first thing when you wake up in the morning.
Usually, as soon as we wake up we tend to engage with the story of who and by connection with the breath as a conscious practice you can loosen the threads of the story.
How to consciously connect to your breath
The way that you connect with your breath is very easy.
Try this, tomorrow morning while you’re lying in bed still with your eyes closed.
Lay one hand on your heart and simply focus on the sound and the sensation of your breath as you inhale and exhale.
This is a powerful technique to disengage you from the story that you have running in your mind.
Start to do this regularly every morning when you wake up before you do anything else before you begin to think about who you are and where you fit into the world.
Use meditation to become mindful of the present
I talk about meditation quite often in my videos and here on my blog.
I believe that it is an incredibly helpful tool to get you centered and grounded.
However, here is the thing. When I try to meditate when I’m feeling emotionally drained, I end up feeling more anxious.
I seem to have all of the anxiety driven thoughts and fears flooding my brain and body.
I kept on trying out different things and then I discovered that if I give my mind something to do then it allows those thoughts to calm down.
The meditation technique that I use that helps me the most is a body scan meditation.
We are more powerful than we think
We are so much more powerful than we give ourselves credit for.
We let ourselves become emotionally drained and mentally drained by all of the stories that we buy into.
The moment that your thinking mind or your story mind begins to run the show is the moment where you lose your power.
These practices to help you when you’re feeling emotionally drained will begin to restore your personal power, one day at a time.