Finding Joy When Life Feels Heavy

We explore the radical act of emotional integration—feeling everything without shame in a world that tells you to 'stay positive.' Your tears are not a sign you're doing life wrong, your anger is not evidence you're broken, and your grief doesn't mean you lack faith.

• Joy can exist alongside pain—it's not about bypassing darkness but learning to dance with it
• Emotions are not binary—you can hold multiple feelings simultaneously
• When you cut yourself off from sadness, you also cut yourself off from joy
• Unexpressed emotions transform: sadness becomes depression, anger becomes resentment
• Generational healing begins with feeling what our ancestors couldn't process
• Your body physically holds emotions—notice where they live in your body
• A mindful practice for acknowledging emotions you've been avoiding
• Your emotional depth isn't a burden—it's your medicine, your navigation system, and your revolution
• A person who feels everything is dangerous to systems that need you numb
• Your wholeness challenges systems that require your numbness

Share this with someone who's been told their emotions are 'too much'—you're not just sharing a podcast, you're normalizing emotional depth in our communities. Leave a review sharing what emotions you're learning to welcome back home. For more information about the work I do, visit liftoneselfcom.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Emotional Wholeness
• 1:41 Joy as Companion to Grief
• 3:16 Emotional Flow and Generational Healing
• 4:57 Mindful Moment Practice
• 7:01 Your Wholeness is Revolution
• 10:06 Closing and Call to Action

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Lift One Self podcast. I'm your host, nat Nat, and this is a space where we remember that feeling all of it the joy and the grief, the light and the shadow is what makes us fully human. If you've been told to stay positive when your heart is breaking, if you've been shamed for crying and for laughing, if you're exhausted from pretending you're only feeling the quote unquote acceptable emotions, this one's for you. Are you tired of the spiritual bypassing the good vibes, only being told sadness is a low vibration and joy is enlightened. Your tears are not a sign you're doing life wrong. Your anger is not evidence you're broken. Your grief is not proof you lack faith and your joy is not betraying anyone by existing alongside the pain. Your joy is not to be diminished or watered down. Real joy, the kind that sustains you, doesn't come from avoiding the darkness. It comes from walking through it and still choosing to believe in beauty. It comes from feeling it all and still saying yes to what lights you up. You were never meant to feel one thing at a time. You're vast enough to hold contradictions. Let me tell you about the day I laughed until my stomach hurt. Yet the same day, I got devastating news about someone I loved. For hours I felt guilty. How dare I feel joy when something so painful was happening? Then I realized my laughter wasn't taking away from the sadness. My ability to feel both was what made me human. When people see me dancing like really dancing, like you know, really, oddly and awkwardly, as if I'm high, which I am I'm high on life Some might think I'm bypassing the pain, think I'm bypassing the pain.

Speaker 1: 2:08

Some ask how do you do it? Sober? Because I feel, and I no longer run from emotions and if you're around me you can feel it. The depth, the weight of what I carry, you can hear it in how I speak, in how I hold space, in how I show up. I'm not pretending, the heaviness isn't there. Many guys see me zoned out in silence and will ask me what's wrong. And it's just that I'm processing. There will be moments in the day where tears just hit me At the grocery store, folding laundry, driving somewhere, heck, even at parties. I let them fall, I don't apologize to my body for feeling. Then I come back into the present moment and choose to be alive, to keep moving. I'm choosing to embrace and integrate it. I'm choosing joy as a companion to my grief, not a replacement for it. My dancing isn't denial, it's integration. It's my body saying I can hold sorrow and still move to the rhythm of life. Yet what you're seeing is a decade of inner work that many are not willing to engage with, and that's okay. Yet I'm living proof of what's possible, and I have so much more to experience.

Speaker 1: 3:23

We've been sold this lie that emotions are binary, that you're either happy or sad, grateful or angry, at peace or in chaos. Your nervous system knows better. You can hold it all. You're feeling more than one emotion at many times. When you cut yourself off from sadness, you cut yourself off from joy. When you numb the pain, you numb the pleasure.

Speaker 1: 3:51

Emotions flow together. They're not separate territories. Your sadness tells what matters. Your anger tells you where your boundaries were crossed. Your fear tells you what needs protection. Your joy tells you what's worth living for. The unexpressed sadness becomes depression. The unfelt anger becomes resentment. The unprocessed fear becomes anxiety and joy. Joy gets buried underneath everything when we refuse to feel. Your grandmother's unprocessed grief it's sitting in your chest. Your mother's swallowed rage it's living in your shoulders and possibly hips. Your father's silent fear it's running through your nervous system.

Speaker 1: 4:44

Generational healing starts with feeling what they couldn't. It starts with saying I will not pass this down. So, to make this a practice, let's pause for a mindful moment Now. Put your hand on your heart, take a breath that reaches all the way down to your belly. If you need to take the other hand and place it on your belly, feeling it expand, allowing your breath to reach down to that hand and fill up that belly with oxygen.

Speaker 1: 5:17

Now I want you to think of one emotion you've been avoiding. Maybe grief, you think you should be over. Maybe anger, you've been told, is unspiritual. Maybe joy, you feel guilty for having. Whatever it is. Can you make space for it right now, not to fix it or understand it or make it prettier, just to let it exist? Notice where that emotion sits in your body right now. Is it tight in your chest, heavy in your stomach, buzzing in your throat? Possibly you're trying to swallow it back down? Your body is holding this for you. It's been your faithful keeper. Your body has been working so hard to contain what you wouldn't let. What if you gave it permission to just be?

Speaker 1: 6:30

This is where real joy lives, not in the absence of pain, but in the presence of truth and your willingness to feel it all and still choose what lights you up. Take another deep breath in, hold it Gently, release. Here's what I've learned Real joy doesn't come from avoiding darkness. It comes from dancing with it. You are allowed to grieve and celebrate. You are allowed to feel heartbroken and hopeful. You're allowed to carry sorrow and choose what brings you alive. Your joy isn't betraying your pain. It's honoring your wholeness, and I get it. Some of us have been in a really joyful moment and then bang. Have been in a really joyful moment and then bang, we're hit with a life experiences that just shatters everything inside. So then we're hesitant to open up our heart and feel that joy again, feel that elevation, because we feel like we're going to get hit and knocked down again. But here's the truth. They don't want you to know.

Speaker 1: 7:46

A person who feels everything is dangerous to systems that require your numbness, your full emotional range threatens anything that needs you small. Your integrated wholeness is rebellion against a world that profits from your disconnection. You are your nervous system, learning it's safe to feel. You are your body, remembering it can hold contradictions. You are your heart, choosing to stay open even when it hurts. So, yes, I get it. Why would I open myself up again to feel pain?

Speaker 1: 8:33

However, when you aren't, you're not feeling life, you're not alive. You're not allowing yourself to feel the delights in the small things. The world doesn't need you to suffer to prove you care. The world needs you to feel it all and still believe in beauty. So feel it all. Cry the tears, feel the rage, honor the grief and dance to what moves you. Your emotions are not your enemies, they're your navigation system. Your depth is not your burden, it's your medicine. Your wholeness is not confusion, it it's revolution. Feel everything, process everything. Then choose what you want to amplify. The world needs your full spectrum of human experiences, not your performance of happiness. It needs your integrated, messy, beautiful wholeness. If this permission to feel landed where you needed it, share it with someone who's been told their emotions are too much. When you share episodes like this, you're not just supporting the show, you're normalizing emotional depth in our communities. You're creating space for others to feel fully human.

Speaker 1: 9:57

Hit, subscribe for more conversations that honor the full human experience. No spiritual bypassing, no toxic positivity, just real talk about what it means to be alive. Leave a review sharing what emotions you're learning to welcome back home. Your story helps create a community where feeling everything is celebrated, not pathologized. Here we practice emotional integration without apologizing for any of it. Your emotions are not your enemies, they're your allies. Hey, you made it all the way here. I appreciate you and your time.

Speaker 1: 10:38

If you found value in this conversation, please share it out. If there was somebody that popped into your mind, take action and share it out with them. It possibly may not be them that will benefit. It's that they know somebody that will benefit from listening to this conversation. So please take action and share out the podcast. You can find us on social media, on Facebook, instagram and TikTok under Lift One Self, and if you want to inquire about the work that I do and the services that I provide to people, come over on my website, come into a discovery, call liftoneselfcom. Until next time, please remember to be kind and gentle with yourself. You matter.