How to Sit with Your Feelings, Instead of Avoiding Them

In therapy, we typically teach resources to better cope with emotions. What I’ve noticed is that people often end up suppressing emotions rather than coping with them. This can easily be done when using coping strategies like compartmentalizing and distraction. People will distract from the issue and then never come back to deal with it. The issue with this is that suppressing emotions can lead to increased shame, mental health symptoms, and physical stress on your body.

I’ve had many clients come to me after practicing coping resources and saying that they were able to distract or compartmentalize, but they don’t know now how to go back and deal with the emotion. This is when I like to guide them through this exercise:

1.       Where does this emotion sit in your body?

E.g., Anxiety sits in my stomach

Identifying the physical location of emotions can be helpful in gaining insight into what body sensations align with specific emotions.

2.       Describe what this emotion looks like: size, shape, color, texture, movement

E.g., My anxiety looks like a pencil scribble in the shape of a ball, with no beginning or end, moving but staying in place.

Being able to describe and/or visualize emotions can help give you some power over being able to get this emotion in your control.

3.       Take this image of the emotion and “place” it somewhere in the physical space around you where you can “see” it.

E.g., I’m holding the ball of anxiety in my hands in front of me.

Being able to take this emotion and view it objectively can take some of the power this emotion has away by allowing you to see it as a part of something other than yourself.

4.       How old is this emotion? (At what age did this emotion first develop/what is the earliest memory you have of feeling this?)

E.g.,  I remember feeling this when I was taking swimming lessons when I was 5.

Identifying the age that this emotion developed could help develop some compassion for yourself in feeling this.

5.       If this emotion had a positive purpose when you were five years old, what might it be?

E.g., It was trying to warn me that jumping into a deep pool could be dangerous.

Identifying the purpose of emotions can help you develop a sense of gratitude in knowing that in the early development of emotions, they would be adaptive if given the proper environment to process.

6.       With this knowledge, does this emotion look any different now?

E.g., It’s moving more slowly and it’s more of a wavy looking line rather than a jumbled ball.

Sometimes being able to develop compassion for yourself and gratitude for the original purpose of emotions can make the strength of the emotion lessen in the moment.

7.       Bring this emotion back to where it is typically stored in your body and utilize another coping resource if the emotion is still too strong.

E.g., I’m no longer visualizing the emotion in my hands, and it is now sitting back in my stomach.

Many times, you will notice that sitting with your emotions can help lessen the strength of them in the moment. It’s often difficult to allow yourself to feel emotions, as many of us are taught to “suck it up” and move on. You’ll soon realize that when you allow yourself to feel instead of suppress, emotions will hold less power over you.

Written by: Olivia Clark, LPC, BCN