She was busy driving the other day, says life coach Amy Ahlers, when something unexpected happened. “The sun was shining, the music was right, and I felt an unfamiliar feeling. It crept in through the sunroof like the rays of sunshine and seemed to take hold of me. I thought to myself, what is this feeling?”

“Then it hit me . . . joy. I was feeling true, unabashed joy!” In the medical world they talk about breakthrough pain, but Amy says that these days we need to focus on breakthrough joy. Or at least try to recognize it when it manages to break through. So, why is it that joy has become such an unfamiliar feeling to us? Are we not allowing ourselves to feel any of our feelings because we’re scared that the bad ones will overwhelm us?

Holistic psychiatrist, dr Kelly Brogan, writes that feelings need to be felt. They will keep rattling in the cage until they are finally let out. She says that, as children, most of us were told to stop crying. Few of us had someone who could “hold space for your experience of your own upset, so that you could learn that emotions are alchemical, crying has an arc, and that the energy of feeling comes to its own resolution if it is permitted to do so”.

“Emotions are energy in the body. And, in order to stay centered while that energy is moving, we have to grow our capacity to feel. We have to learn how to feel feelings and practice staying open and approving of them,” Kelly says.

“First, we must send a signal of safety to the nervous system so that there is a prayer of being able to explore hidden feelings, unlock caverns of parts, and begin to engage identity plasticity and shifts that would otherwise threaten to annihilate.”

How much of a threat would it be to your identity to realize that you might not really want what you say you want? Maybe that is why breakthrough joy feels so unfamiliar. We say we want to feel joy, but we might unconsciously relish that which we’re getting out of not feeling it.

“Whenever we feel stuck in loops of suffering, there’s an inner agent funding both sides of the outside war,” says Kelly. She says that when we identify with chronic illness, we get something very big out of it. Please note, not when you’re chronically ill, but when it becomes your identity.

“We get to feel comfortably constrained by the limitations of a sick person. We get boundaries. And we don’t have to learn to say no, because if we are sick, we just can’t. We get ongoing or immediate care and attention. We get pity and compassion. Most of all, we get to feel right about how messed up and broken we always suspected we were,” Kelly says.

Her next example concerns activists. “What I started to recognize is the pleasure we take in the world being as messed up as we said it is. The huge I told you so enjoyment that comes with being right about how wronged we are by the powers that be. In this plandemic window, I’ve noted how many activists visibly enjoy their own fear states and relish their own victim stories about how we are being oppressed and suppressed. They enjoy their power to induce the same sensation in others. Do they really want a better world or do they actually get off on things exactly as they are?”

Also, there’s the joy of victimhood, Kelly says. “When I feel victimized by someone else, I enjoy feeling the deliciousness of righteous anger. I get the compassion of my friends and the exhilarating energy field of groupthink finger pointing. I get attention. And I get to feel innocent, vulnerable, and feminine . . . The victim field can be blissful. To fail to recognize that is to hide from our already fulfilled desires,” Kelly says.

Isn’t it time to stop hiding? To admit the fulfillments we refuse to acknowledge? Girlfriend, if you stare the so-called monster in the eye you’ll see it alchemizing before your awareness and you’ll understand why Kelly asks: “What if everything is already okay . . . more than okay? What if everything is already exactly how we actually want it to be?”