The power of sitting with your emotions

In the early months of my pregnancy I started to feel anxious about how present I’ll be able to be for my child.

Will I be able to show up for my kid with my whole heart? Or will I feel trapped? And will this feeling rub off on them? And will they start to sense they have a mother that doesn’t want to be with them?

As the weeks went by, I talked (and talked and talked!) with other people about the anxiousness I was feeling about the kind of mom I’ll be.

Everyone I talked with was kind. Everyone reassured me about my ability to be a present, loving parent. They told me it was natural to be scared, and so on and so forth. As grateful as I was for their feedback, it didn’t make me feel any less anxious.

Then, in the middle of a workday, I met with a meditation teacher and shared my fears with him.

His response? Sit with the feeling. Be with the anxiousness.

That’s it? I thought. I just poured out my heart to you, and that’s your answer? Where were the insights? Where was the reassurance?

Little did I know how wise my teacher’s words were: Sit with the feeling. Be with the anxiousness. It sounded simple. Too simple.

The challenge of sitting with our emotions

 Why is it so challenging to sit with our emotions?

Basically, it comes down to the gap between how we think we should feel and how we actually feel about a given situation.

In other words, we tend to judge ourselves for what we’re feeling. Where does this judgment come from? It has three main roots:

• Our self-awareness: We know our childhoods—the unspoken/spoken rules, beliefs, and values we’ve inherited from our families and culture—have impacted us. And because we have this intellectual understanding, we assume that should immediately translate to our emotional experience.

• Our high expectations for ourselves: Considering our high emotional intelligence (EQ), we assume we shouldn’t have to work at being compassionate, non-judgmental, enlightened, and calm.

• Our ideals and aspirations for our lives: We want lives full of meaning, fulfillment, deep relationships, and joy—and we want them right now. We often bypass our emotions in search of the quickest, easiest path to our “ideal life.”

Don’t get me wrong: I think it’s fabulous that so many of us are deeply self-aware and expect great things from our lives.

But oftentimes we underestimate the emotional work there is to do—and the emotional injuries that need to heal—before we can manifest our deepest desires.

When things get challenging, we tell ourselves intellectually how we want to feel, how we should feel, given all we know and all we aspire to. The result?

We push away, dismiss, and judge our emotions instead of allowing ourselves to feel them.

But the only way to change the way we feel about something is to feel our feelings.

And how do we do that?

How to sit with your emotions

When I work with clients who need support sitting with their emotions, they’re sometimes afraid that feeling their feelings means giving them permission to beat up on themselves (or someone else).

Other times, they think we’re secretly searching for an answer.

Instead, the process of sitting with their emotions consists of three things:

-       noticing where the feelings are in the body

-       listening to what the feelings are saying

-       meeting these feeling-driven statements with acceptance and love

The process goes like this:

First, where is the feeling/energy manifesting in your body? In your heart? Your stomach? Your throat? (It can be coming up in multiple places.)

Now describe the feeling. Is it hot or cold? Is it swirling or fluttering? Is it heavy, light, empty? Does it have a color?

Once you can locate and describe the feeling, spend a minute or two breathing into it.

Now ask the feeling what it has to say. Sometimes it’s a statement like, “I don’t want to sit with this.” Or “This is uncomfortable.” This is natural. This is okay. Just try to keep breathing and noticing what’s happening in your body.

Sit for a few more minutes. Every time you get lost or stuck in judgment, come back to the body. Come back to the body and keep describing the actual visceral feeling(s). Try to accept what the feeling has to say without judgment.

What’s the impact of sitting with your emotions?

Though the results aren’t usually instantaneous or obvious, the effects of sitting with your emotions tend to show up in powerful ways.

For example, when the session with my meditation teacher was over, I didn’t feel any less anxious about motherhood than when I arrived.

Feeling let down, I went on with my workday.

A few hours went by. I got absorbed in other things. When I had a moment to pause, I thought about the fear around not being present for my kid.

It was obvious that something in me had shifted.

Instead of the familiar negative thought loop [“What if I signed up for something that isn’t good for me or my kid?”], I caught myself thinking: “There are no perfect caregivers. And I’m sure things will come up, and whatever comes up, I’ll figure it out.”

Where there was once anxiousness was now a sense of peace.

The fear wasn’t gone, but there was acceptance and trust alongside it.

In that moment, I saw the wisdom in my meditation teacher’s approach. That peace I was feeling? It wouldn’t have been possible without taking the time and space to sit with my emotions.

So here’s my invitation for you: The next time you’re feeling stuck, the next time you’re longing to change the way you’re responding to a certain situation in your life, try to sit with your emotions. To claim some time and space to go into your body. To ask it what it wants you to know. To be gentle with what comes up. And to observe how your feelings shift, maybe not immediately, but over time. 

Do you want to learn more about how to create a healthy relationship with your emotions? In my book, Life Launch, I write about how to cope with big emotions like anxiety, anger, and depression—and how to cultivate calm and fulfillment in your life. Download a sample chapter here.