Uprooted. I think that’s the word. What do you think? Will it describe how we’re all feeling?

Life coach Baeth Davis says humans weren’t designed for change that happens this quickly and chaotically. You’d think that the remedy would be to sweep your fearful feelings under the rug, but no, says Baeth, you have to feel your feelings – all of your feelings, even the scary ones.

“So, I invite you to give yourself a little bit of space to truly acknowledge all that has changed, what you have lost, what you have gained and the kind of person you are becoming,” Baeth says.

Most of us are terrified of facing loss. Adam Schomer says that instead of just facing it, we immediately start looking at what we might do next or how to fix it or what we should have done. The mind can get addicted to solving things. It’s a reaction to fear and not wanting to have to feel the feeling.

He says that when we understand what we are feeling, then we might actually transcend it, rather than fix it. So, the goal isn’t, for example, to “not be afraid”; it is firstly to observe how you relate to fear.

Christy Whitman says that you have to bring your emotions into attention. You won’t be able to rise above your emotions if you’re not aware that you’re feeling them. Acknowledge them and bring them into awareness without putting any meaning behind the emotions – the emotions as is, without the ‘why’.

She says that when you understand that emotions are simply energy in motion, you can allow that energy to move. The idea is to grant your full range of emotions the right to exist, not just those at the good-feeling end of the range. This is going to take a bit of un-learning, since we’ve all been conditioned to resist bad-feeling emotions.

“Emotions are energy, and energy must be allowed to flow. If you try to repress or numb a painful emotion, its energy doesn’t just go away. Instead, it can manifest as excessive weight, as a headache, a skin eruption, anxiety, or chronic low energy. It’s much wiser to simply allow your emotions to move through you, in real-time, at the moment they arise,” Christy says.

How to do that? The next time you notice an unpleasant feeling welling up within you, take a moment to sit with it. Lean into the feeling rather than recoil from it. Can you simply be with this energy without getting caught up in the mental dialog of what provoked the feeling or whose fault it is?

Christy says that you don’t need to attach a story to it, or use anyone else’s behavior to justify the way you’re feeling. Just be with the emotion as an energy, then you’ll start understanding that every emotion you allow to move through you will benefit you, if you’re open to receiving its message.

Actually, this only works in the beginning. Christy says that you have to be sensitive to the early, subtle fluctuations in energy. Don’t wait until you’re enraged with anger or paralyzed by anxiety. In fact, once the momentum of these emotions is moving at that rate, you’ll agree with Paulo Coelho that “Life moves very fast. It rushes from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds.”

You have to understand that your emotions always follow your focus. If you’re focused on frustration, adversity, betrayals or regret, your emotions will let you know. All the more reason to feel them. Welcome them, says Christy, so that you can receive their wisdom in the early stages.

It really is as straightforward as “energy flows where your attention goes”. We all know that, yet I, for one, have to be reminded of this on a daily basis. How? By focusing on feelings of awe, amazement, appreciation and acknowledging the good things I already have in my life.

Can you direct your attention to those kind of feelings, girlfriend? Then you’ll know how to go from hell to heaven. It’s as Omar Khayyam says: “I sent my Soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that After-life to spell: And by and by my Soul return’d to me, And answer’d: I Myself am Heav’n and Hell.”