I am known in my circles for my love of farts.
Yep. The part of me that is *clearly* 12 years old LOVES farts and thinks they are HILARIOUS (also butts are hilarious in a Tina Belcher way, and also poop, but(t) primarily emojis).
One of my friends sent me the reel below about – you guessed it – FARTS! But it’s EVEN BETTER, because the video is about how emotions are like farts, and I got SUPER inspired.
So let’s talk about it!
A Farty Design
The thing about our bodies and our brains is that they are designed to process efficiently and effectively. We eat, digest to use the stuff we need to survive and thrive, and we get rid of waste materials in the form of going #1, #2, and the non-numbered fart mechanism.
Emotions are similar. WE ARE DESIGNED TO FEEL EMOTIONS AND ASSIGN MEANING TO THEM, AND THAT’S HOW EMOTIONS BECOME FEELINGS.
Our bodies are very good at sensing what’s going on around us and inside us in very efficient and effective ways. Our culture has taught us to ignore those signals.
One of the jobs of trauma, ptsd, and grief recovery is learning how to sense, acknowledge, identify, name, process, express, and communicate our emotions and feelings in healthy (and non-stinky) ways. (Does this sound overwhelming? No worries, I can help, and a Discovery Call is free).
Letting Them Rip Feels Good
When it comes to farting AND expressing emotions, it feels good to let them out (whether we like it or not).
We spend a lot of time and energy and effort trying to ignore, deny, and *not* express our emotions.
To put it simply, farts are air that needs to move, and emotions are energy that needs to move.
When I frame emotions as simply energy communicating important information, it takes the judgement out of the process.
Ignore at Your Own Risk
The thing about farts and feelings is that the more you ignore them, the more painful they get.
You know how it feels. The energy gathers and we become bloated with pent up air, which then become cramps, and there’s really no good medicine for stuck farts or emotions.
You just gotta let them out. One of the tricks to trauma, PTSD, and grief recovery is learning how to allow emotions to move through us in healthy ways.
Farts are Temporary
One of my favorite quotes that I use with PTSD Recovery Basics is:
“Let everything happen to you
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”
We have thousands of emotions and feelings a day. It only takes about 90 seconds to process a feeling, and it also takes this short amount of time to get helpful hormones through crying.
It takes even less time than that to let ‘er rip. Mere seconds will have you feeling relief.
Be Careful Which Ones You Trust
When you’ve lived as long as I have (I’m currently 49), then you probably have had that UH-OH experience when letting a fart loose. In fact, I would be hard-pressed to find a single person I know who hasn’t pooped their pants a lil bit. Simply put:
You can’t always trust a fart. Or, for that matter, a feeling, which is giving meaning to those sensations.
When it comes to emotions, the tricky part is between sensing that something is going on and assigning meaning to those emotions. In short, you can trust yourself when it comes to sensing what’s going on and using your intuition, but feelings – the meaning part – you can’t always trust as truth.
Sometimes we assign meaning to emotions and that meaning isn’t true. It’s an UH-OH experience, based on previous programming and conditioning.
That’s when we can use Wise Mind to analyze and balance our beliefs and thoughts around emotions. One of the primary questions I like to ask about beliefs, thoughts, and feelings is: “Is that true?”
One example is during my bouts of depression, when my brain tells me and I “feel” like “my life doesn’t matter.” Is that true? Absolutely not. It’s old programming that I’m working with and slowly allowing to move through me.
Beware of Explosions
Have you ever held in a fart? Plane rides do it to me every time. Nothing builds up fart bubbles in my system like getting on a plane for several hours.
Sure, I try to let them leak out over the course of the flight, but sometimes I just know that they’re going to be TOO loud or stinky or whatever.
(And side note: everyone farts on airplanes. They are literal metal tubes of farts. I STILL wear masks on planes for this very reason.)
So by the time I can get off the plane, the air fairly EXPLODES from my innards in whooshes of relief. My southern cheeks are like hands clapping in delight and relief.
Same with emotions. If you don’t let them out, they will gather up and then – you guessed it – explode. This was once a way of life for me before I went through PTSD Remediation.
The Inspirational Fart Video
Yes, I AM this hilarious in real life. Want help? Let’s chat, it’s free.
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Been one of those days. Tomorrow will be better. (says here in fine print somewhere.) 😂
LOLOL YES