When a client starts to see results – the symptoms clearing up, the body shifting, the energy and focus returning – it’s typical for new questions to emerge:

Who am I, in this new body?
Who am I, with all this energy?
Who am I, with nothing that’s holding me back?
No more reasons why I can’t do X?
Will I wind up self-sabotaging?

One client felt vain for liking her new, smaller body, and found herself on the precipice of self-sabotage.

She had what I call the fear of feeling good.

How do we navigate the fear of feeling good so we can enjoy all the work we’ve done to feel and look great?

First, remember that feeling and looking great is the opposite of vain or self-serving.

Healing your food and body struggles frees up so much energy that your vitality becomes contagious and uplifts everyone around you.

Choosing what you eat, how you move, who you engage with, and how you seek out and receive support is not selfish, it’s in-service.

When you’re not locked in struggle, you can connect with and serve others from your overflow.

Why do we develop the fear of feeling good?

The human brain developed to identify and prepare for danger, creating a built-in negativity bias.¹

We’ve come to expect a certain level of struggle – whether it’s work struggles or chronic health issues.

We’ve normalized these struggles, or we’ve been gaslighted into normalizing them:

For example, by doctors who say our labs are fine, even though we feel far from fine.

As much as we want to overcome our struggles on an intellectual level, the subconscious grips onto what’s familiar… even if what’s familiar sucks.

When we start to feel our struggles melt away, the primal brain hangs on for dear life, because struggle is what we’re used to.

When left unchecked, that primal part of us will go as far as to recreate the same, sucky conditions, without us consciously realizing what’s going on.

That can look like:

• Eating foods you know don’t work for you, right when you start feeling really good in your body. 
• Defaulting to caffeine or alcohol right when you feel your native energy return.
• Finding yourself in the same amount of debt after paying it off. 
• Becoming paralyzed in your career right after a big success. 
• Starting a fight just when your relationship is finally feeling fun and easy. 

When these things happen, it’s your job to remind your primal brain that it’s safe to feel good.

How can you do this?

By creating safety in the body regardless of your circumstances, and regardless of your struggles.

You can create safety through…

• Breathing
• Moving
• Meditating
• Journaling
• Affirmations
• Talking to a friend

… and much more.

What makes you feel safe in your body, even when your life feels stressful or scary?

When you create safety in your body – regardless of the external circumstances – your body remembers that it’s safe to stop struggling.

It’s safe to feel great in your body.

It’s safe to be your brightest self.

“Brightest” looks different for everyone.

It’s not necessarily about changing your physical body or getting your energy back so you can achieve a specific goal – but it can be about those things.

I do recommend shifting your primary focus to how you want to FEEL and who you want to BE versus how you want to look and what outcomes you want to create.

It’s not bad to love how you look and to love being successful, but you don’t want to develop an over-attachment to those things, because they’re transitory.

They could change or go away in an instant, and what matters most is who you are without them.

If you can stay grounded and self-loving without them…

… you can create something new (and more aligned) with a lot more ease than if you were stuck in struggle and self-deprecation.

It’s not wrong to enjoy your human experience in your human body in every single way.

It’s the overattachment and fear that you want to drop.

Loving what you see in the mirror is great, and being proud of your achievements is healthy…

… but if you’re fixated on these things, you’re giving your personal power away.

You’re giving your magic away.

If you’re making yourself better or worse than other people based on your body or success, first acknowledge those thoughts.

Don’t make them wrong – you’re human.

Then surrender those thoughts fully.

Let them go.

Imagine them melting off your body and into the earth, to be transmuted for good.

Return to the most important things: How you want to feel, and the person you want to be.

This clears and honors your channel, and helps you develop unconditional self-love and self-reverence, regardless of how you look or what you achieve.

The physical follows the energetic:

The deeper your self-love, the easier it is to relax into your best health and most aligned life.

Have you ever experienced the fear of feeling good?

Is self-sabotage familiar to you?

I’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

With love,
Lula

Reference

1. Not all emotions are created equal: The negativity bias in social-emotional development