Feel Your Feelings

Feel my feelings? For real? Even the painful ones? 

Several months ago, I wrote about how I’ve been trying to accept my negative emotions and bad moods as a part of my human experience rather than a sign that anything is wrong with me. As I do the work, I realize that there is an important next question that also needs to be answered. 

That question is: If negative emotions and bad moods are part of the human experience, how do we move through them in a healthy way? 

Or put another way:

How exactly do we go about feeling those difficult feelings?

And that is what I want to talk about today.

Now first, I realize this isn’t exactly a catchy subject, it’s not something most people are excited to read and learn about. But the truth is that this information can be life changing. It will help you to manage every-day emotions like worry, frustration, and overwhelm. It can help you get through the bigger emotions like sadness and grief.  And learning how to process your emotions will help you to become a better parent, partner, employee, and friend.

Being able to experience and move through difficult emotions is a skill, and dare I say it is not a skill that very many of us do well. It is a skill that must be learned and then practiced.

Let’s break this process down into 3 steps:

Step 1 – Become aware of the feeling.

Step 2 – Accept the emotion with kindness and compassion.

Step 3 – Allow the emotion to move through you.

Step 1 – Awareness

Step one is to become mindfully aware of what you are feeling.

What does that mean, exactly? Well, sometimes this is simple and just involves taking a deep breath, checking in with yourself and giving yourself some space to notice and recognize what it is that you are feeling. 

Other times it can be more difficult. This is because mindful awareness involves turning inward. And when things are painful, our natural response is generally not to turn towards the pain. Rather, our natural response is more often to turn away, avoid, go into problem solving mode, or try to blame someone or something for what we are experiencing.

Sound familiar?

Or sometimes our natural response is the opposite – we might turn towards the emotion, but we allow ourselves to be completely consumed by it, and get so lost in our pain that we lose perspective. 

To become mindfully aware, we need to step outside of the experience and recognize that our initial response to this difficult emotion might not be serving us.

For example, let’s say that you had a bad day at work. Your co-worker got the promotion that you were hoping to get, and the project idea that you were really excited about got turned down. Now you’re home and find yourself being irritable, grumpy, and continuously snapping at your husband and kids over silly things. They then become irritated at you and the evening starts to unravel. 

You remember reading something about becoming aware of your emotions so you pause and make an attempt to become mindfully aware. That pause creates enough space for you to realize that your husband and kids have nothing to do with your irritability. You are now able to recognize that you are feeling awful because you were passed over for the promotion at work. Taking it out on your family and walking around being irritable does not help you move through what happened at work, it just creates a crummy evening for you and your family.

The next part of Step one is to name and acknowledge the true feeling that you are experiencing, rather than just allowing vague irritability and grumpiness to ruin your evening.

So you close your eyes again, take a breath, and when you turn inward you recognize that you feel a few emotions in relation to what happened today. You recognize that you feel hurt that you weren’t chosen, you feel a little embarrassed, and you feel anxious about what this means about your future at the company (and your future in general). 

The pause is important here, because to become mindfully aware requires you to untangle yourself from the experience just enough to be able to see it from a different perspective. It allows you to step outside of the feeling for long enough to be able to see it more clearly.

Step 2 – Accept the feeling with kindness and compassion

The second step – now that you are aware of what you are feeling – is to accept the emotion with kindness and compassion. Maybe that sounds odd, but this emotion is going to be with you until it has successfully moved through you, whether you like that or not. If you accept it rather than fight against it, the feeling doesn’t usually last as long or cause as much suffering.

Back to our above example. You recognized that you were feeling hurt, embarrassed, and anxious in relation to being passed over for the promotion at work. You like your job and you have envisioned yourself excelling within the company. You felt excited about the possibility of this promotion, had gotten your hopes up, and had told your family and friends about it.

Of course you’re hurt that you were passed over!

Of course you feel a little embarrassed!

And of course you feel anxious about your future with the company!

It makes sense to feel these emotions. And you deserve gentle compassion as you experience them.

How would you treat and respond to a loved one who was in your same position? Would you verbally beat them up for not trying hard enough? Would you tell them that they are not good enough and don’t deserve the promotion? Of course not! You would love them and you would respond to them with kindness and compassion. 

Step 2 is asking you to treat yourself the same way that you would treat a loved one. Easier said than done, I know.

It’s important to distinguish something here before we move on. There is a huge difference between accepting an emotion and perseverating on an emotion.

Feeling anxious about your future in the company after not getting the promotion is normal and natural. Your vision for your future was disrupted and anxiety is an understandable emotion to feel. However, our typical response to feeling anxiety is to worry (which would fall under the category of perseverating on an emotion).

Worry is the thinking part of anxiety – and it is not helpful. Period.  Allowing your mind to spin with worried thoughts about your future in the company is not at all the same thing as accepting the feeling of anxious. The idea at this point (when you are still in the middle of the tough emotion) is to feel rather than to think.

Eventually, of course, you will want to use your brain to think about how you can move forward at work. You’ll want to use the intentional thinking part of your brain to brainstorm and to plan, which is very different from spending time obsessing and worrying about your future at the company.

It’s also important to understand that productive thinking is very difficult to do while your emotions are still running high. It’s tough to engage the part of the brain we need for productive and planful thinking during a heightened state of emotion. Planning tends to be most beneficial after you have moved through all 3 steps, so let’s move on to Step 3. 

Step 3 – Allow the feeling

At this point, you have become aware of what you are feeling and you’ve taken time to kindly and compassionately accept that emotion. Now it’s time to allow the feeling.

Allowing the feeling can be tough at first, but can be so powerful once you learn and practice it.

Allowing an emotion does not mean that you wallow in self pity or spend time perseverating on or thinking about whatever it is that is upsetting you. And if you are not someone who is practiced at feeling your feelings, this step can feel intense and difficult. Be patient with yourself. Remember, this is a skill and learning any skill does take practice.

How do I allow the feeling?

The best way to allow an emotion is to spend a few moments paying attention to how this current emotion feels in your body. Doing so will ground you and will help you to move from thinking (your mind) into feeling (your body); to really move into the physical and tangible sensations of what you are experiencing. 

To do this – pause, breathe, and scan your body for sensation. Breathe again, and notice where you are feeling the emotion. In your jaw? Your chest? Your abdomen? Your shoulders or neck? Behind your eyes? What does it feel like? Pressure? Tension? Warmth? Tightness?

Take your time. 

Can you breathe, sit with the emotion, and  just notice each of the sensations? Your mind will wander, that is normal – and when you notice that it has wandered, just bring your focus back to the area of your body where you notice sensation. And then say to yourself “I am experiencing the feeling of hurt. (name your own emotion here). I am experiencing the feeling of hurt. I am experiencing the feeling of hurt…” It might not be pleasant, but remind yourself that this is just a feeling – just an emotion, and it will not last forever.

Now that you have given your body time to experience the emotions, chances are that you will be somewhat more calm, more rational, and able to see things with a clearer mind. Or you might not be there yet, and that’s ok. This takes time and practice and the process is different depending on the strength and depth of the emotion you are experiencing. Be patient and kind with yourself. 

If you do feel more calm and clear-minded, now is a much better time to investigate the circumstances that led to your difficult emotion. From the above example, this might be the time to calmly think about how you would like to move forward with your career.

Of course, the process of experiencing a tough emotion is rarely linear or simple.  It is not as easy as “Do these 3 simple steps and everything will be perfect!”

Life tends to be a little more complicated than that. But I do hope that this framework gives you a guide that will help you to move through your next difficult emotion with more ease and less resistance.   

Will you try it the next time you’re faced with a tough emotion? I hope so.