We all want to feel better don’t we? But here’s the thing: we can’t just choose to feel the “good” emotions and ignore the difficult ones. Feeling calmer, happier, and more at peace comes from feeling all our emotions, even the ones we’d rather avoid.

Why Avoiding Emotions Creates More Anxiety

It might seem like avoiding painful emotions would make life easier, but the opposite is true. When we suppress or ignore our emotions, they don’t disappear—they show up in other ways, like tension, stress, or anxiety.

True calm comes from learning to sit with all our emotions, but we mostly likely all need to get better at allowing ourselves to do that. Creating space for emotions to move through us rather than getting stuck within us will help to reduce anxiety rather than making it worse.

Why We Avoid Our Feelings

We all avoid feeling our feelings at times, especially the difficult ones like anger, sadness, and fear. Usually because they don’t feel nice, or we feel overwhelmed and out of control. But when we push the bad ones away, we also push the good ones away as well! And that means we numb our ability to fully experience our joy, happiness, and peace.

I’ve also found that most people, when asked to feel their feelings, don’t really know how to give an answer. I certainly didn’t when I first started my own counselling and then training to be a counsellor. And often, when I ask my clients: what’s going on for you? What’s coming up? What emotion is there? They kind of look at me with this confused expression on their faces and they say, I don’t know what you mean.

We tend to feel our feelings in our head, we tend to overthink them and over analyse them. So we’re not really feeling the emotion in our body, which is where it’s meant to show up. And it’s only when we can do that, that we can really start to become aware of what feelings are showing up for us.

How to Start Feeling Your Feelings

• Pause and notice – When a feeling arises, take a deep breath and acknowledge it without judgment.
• Bring your attention to your body – Come out of your head and thoughts and move your attention down into your physical body.  See if you can tune into any physical sensations that are happening. 
• Describe the physical sensation – Is there a shape to it?  What size is it?  Is there a colour to it?  Is there tightness or tension?  Coolness or warmth?  Is it sharp or dull?  Is it jagged or smooth?  Is there movement or stillness?  Describe as much as you can.
• Breathe and let it be – I know it’s uncomfortable, but instead of pushing the feeling away, allow yourself to sit with it for at least 90 seconds.  Remember we are meant to have these emotions; they are trying to tell us something.
• Name the emotion – Give some words to your feeling (e.g., “It feels like sadness” or “It feels like frustration, anger, fear etc. 
• Journal or express it – Writing or talking about your emotions will help you understand them better. You can do my short course on how to journal if you want to improve your mental health through writing. 👉 Learn How to Journal for Your Mental Health

True calm and happiness can only come when we make space for every emotion—because when we stop fighting our feelings, we finally find peace. Give this it go and let me know how you get on.

👉 Read more about creating calm in your everyday life.

👉 Read more on 10 easy tips for emotional regulation

👉 Read more on regulating your nervous system

#therapy #anxiety #emotionalregulation #permissiontofeel #feelingyourfeelings