Learning To Sit With Our Feelings
Some of the most helpful insight I’ve gained over the years is learning to sit with my feelings. Most of us naturally try to cling to the emotions we enjoy and avoid the ones we don’t. It sets up a reactionary pattern in our lives and can cause us to feel chronically anxious, sad, or unhappy.
The fact is, life will bring both good and bad no matter what you do. It’s pointless even wasting energy trying to change it. You might as well focus on doing the best you can and get through the ups and downs as they come. This is where mindfulness and meditation come in handy (Here’s an introductory blog post I wrote about the topic.)
My mindfulness practice has significantly improved my ability to be aware of my feelings but not reactionary to them. Impulsive emotional reactions stop us from seeing clearly which lead to poor decisions. Poor decisions then lead to more emotional reactions and the cycle starts back over. Mindfulness of feelings frees us from these reactionary cycles and allows us to make wise decisions.
Many people struggle with their feelings whether it’s expressing them, not feeling them, feeling them too much, etc. Most people develop habits to protect themselves from uncomfortable emotions and it’s these mental habits and resulting behaviors that can cause us the most grief. Gaining perspective and mindfulness of these, often unconscious, factors can free us up to live our best life.
Despite the fact that all of us develop mental habits, that most habits become maladaptive at some point, we all still feel bad about ourselves for having them. It’s a commonality with almost all of my patients. A lot of us can’t even get started on changing them because we get stuck on feeling guilty about them in the first place. Remember, we all struggle with this type of stuff in one way or another.
Learning to sit with your feelings (including those about yourself) with love and non-judgment will free you up to make better choices and see the results that you’re looking for. It can be scary at first but eventually those feelings won’t seem so intense or scary. Just sit with them as long as you can. Then do it again and again.
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