The first instinct, when something difficult surfaces, is to move away from it.
Distract. Rationalise. Fix. Scroll. Stay busy. Anything to avoid sitting with the discomfort of actually feeling what’s there.
I know this pattern well. Not just from working with people, but from my own experience. Emotions that are heavy or confusing or unnamed have a way of making us want to run. Not because we’re weak, but because we were never taught that staying is an option.
Most of us grew up learning how to manage emotions, not how to feel them. We were told to calm down, cheer up, be strong, stay positive. The message, however well-intentioned, was clear: certain feelings are problems to be fixed, not experiences to be held.
And so we became very good at escaping what we feel. But not very good at understanding it.
Sitting with an emotion doesn’t mean wallowing in it. It doesn’t mean amplifying pain or staying stuck in sadness. It means allowing the emotion to exist without immediately trying to change it.
It means noticing: I feel heavy right now. I feel anxious. I feel something I can’t quite name. And instead of running, simply staying.
This is harder than it sounds. Because emotions don’t always come with explanations. They don’t arrive neatly labelled. Sometimes, all we get is a feeling in the chest, a tightness in the throat, a wave of something we can’t articulate.
And our mind, uncomfortable with the uncertainty, rushes in to solve, explain, or suppress.
“Feelings don’t need to be fixed. They need to be felt. And in that feeling, they often find their own way through.
What I’ve learned — slowly, imperfectly — is that emotions have a natural rhythm. They rise, they peak, and when given space, they soften. Not on command. Not on our timeline. But eventually.
The problem is that we rarely give them that space. We interrupt the process. We numb the sadness before it has a chance to teach us something. We suppress the anger before it shows us what matters. We avoid the grief before it has a chance to heal.
But when we stay — even for a moment longer than is comfortable — something begins to shift. The emotion doesn’t grow larger. It grows clearer. And in that clarity, we often find what we were looking for all along: understanding.
Not intellectual understanding. The kind that comes from the body. The kind that says: I see what this is. I see why it’s here. And I don’t need to run from it anymore.
This isn’t something we master. It’s something we practise. Again and again. Imperfectly.
Some days, the emotions are small and manageable. Other days, they’re overwhelming. The practice isn’t about handling them perfectly. It’s about showing up to them honestly.
I’m not here to fix this feeling. I’m here to feel it. And that’s enough for now.
If you’ve spent most of your life escaping your emotions, sitting with them will feel foreign. Uncomfortable. Maybe even frightening.
But it will also feel like coming home.
Because on the other side of the discomfort is something most of us have been searching for: a deeper relationship with ourselves. One that doesn’t depend on everything being okay, but one that can hold whatever comes.
