Sitting with emotions
(Nimue)
This isn’t about mindfulness practice, because that isn’t something I do. My approach to emotions is not about observing them and letting them pass through, but one of engaging with them. I’m not interested in being unattached to my emotions. I see authentic living as coming from a place of feeling your feelings and being self aware and I embrace my feelings as part of who I am. I haven’t always had space to express or act on how I feel and I’ve sometimes had to crush my own feelings to a damaging degree, but they are who I am.
When life is busy we can just end up bouncing from one experience to the next with no time to process things. When life brings intense experiences, it takes a lot longer than normal to make sense of them. Taking time to sit with your feelings is really effective either way. It doesn’t need a lot of time normally. A few minutes at the start or the end of the day can do a lot to help you process what you’re feeling and to know what’s going on in your life.
It’s a simple enough thing – just taking some quiet time and noticing what you’re feeling and making space for other things to come up. The thing about emotions is that to understand them you do have to let yourself feel them. I don’t think it works to try and observe them as though you are somehow on the outside of them. It makes no sense in terms of what emotions are – these are physical events in your body occurring at a chemical level. You are your body, and you are your body chemistry, you aren’t separate from it or outside of it. The brain you might observe with is also part of the same physical and chemical systems.
When emotions are bigger and more complex it can take them a while to fully show up and longer to make sense. If you sit with them and allow them, then you can make sense of them more readily. There’s a lot to be said for letting your feelings happen in a considered way, making space for them where you can give them priority. It’s better by far than having them explode suddenly while you’re trying to do other things.
It’s ok to feel the difficult emotions. There are a lot of faux-spiritual messages out there about not feeling some of our feelings, and a lot of cultural stuff around which emotions are unacceptable. If you’re set quietly by yourself, there is no reason to avoid any feeling. Let it come. Know it, name it, understand it. Allow the shame and the guilt, the anger, bitterness, resentment and anything else you’ve been told isn’t ok. Let it happen. In making room for it, it becomes easier not to be ruled by it. The things we try to suppress and ignore or pretend aren’t there can control us in ways we are not conscious of. It’s better to be conscious.
When you make room for everything, you also make more room for joy and delight, hope and enthusiasm. Undealt-with feelings can rob you of all of that. When you let yourself have your authentic feelings you will find out what doesn’t work for you and that leads the way to changing your life for the better. When you’re dealing with your feelings regularly – ideally daily – you also invite peace. An emotion you’ve come to terms with can be carried peacefully – even a large and difficult emotion. You can have it with you without it feeling heavy to carry – and that’s true of even grief and anger.
