​Honouring Your Emotions vs. Soaking In Them

The difference between making a safe space to experience your feelings vs. ruminating in them too long.

The conscious choice
Keyva Gardner “emotions are a wave... sit. Fill. Release.”
Noticing, breathing, and stepping more into a mindful role with our feelings vs getting pulled into a spiral around them. 

Our emotions are an inherent part of our humanity. And yet, there’s this strange practice in our society of ignoring any emotion that we feel is inconvenient until it can’t be ignored anymore.

Are you sad? Get shit done.

Are you frustrated? Forget about it and do what needs done.

Are you feeling shame? Self-loathing? Hopeless? Well just keep trucking and forget about it! Fake it til you make it! 

But the thing is, bottling up your feelings or reprioritizing them will only get you so far before your neglected emotions build and build to the point where you snap and completely lose control over them. Then… we’re drowning. We’re surrounded by an ocean of these feelings and it’s overwhelming. 

We have another choice. We can honour our feelings as they arise. All it takes as making a little bit of time and a safe space to let them come through. I’ve talked about this before which you can read in my article The Way Is Through.

But what happens if just stepping into that space starts the downward spiral into your feelings? Maybe you’re afraid if you make a little bit of space for your feelings you won’t be able to stop.

There is a difference between honouring our emotions rather than soaking in them. When we make the mindful choice to make space for them, this consciously prioritization of that part of ourself alone seems to soften our emotions and helps them pass easier. 

I was listening to a wonderful meditation by Keyva Gardner and she made a wonderful point. Our emotions are like waves… Sit and let the emotions come in, fill yourself with them, and then release them and let them go back to the ocean.

Don’t cling to those feelings that come up. Make space for their arrival, breathe through them. When they start to ebb practice noticing that sensation and let them go. 

We want to maintain the practice of noticing our feelings. You can do this by taking mental notes “I’m in pain, I’m feeling shame, I’m noticing that I’m replaying this moment over and over in my head, I feel stuck around this thought”.

It also comes from the breathe. We want to practice deep breathing throughout the whole space we’ve made for our feelings. Our deep breathing will keep our parasympathetic nervous system active, which keeps us calm and focused rather than frantic and panicking as we experience what we’re feeling. 

Practicing calm when we’re experiencing painful feelings can help us longterm to reorganize how we process pain. It doesn’t have to be a threat. It doesn’t have to feel scary and overwhelming.  It can just be what it is - discomfort. 

And we’ve all been uncomfortable in our lives, in more ways than one. Discomfort is survivable. It’s not a threat, and it doesn’t break us. We need to remember this about our emotional pain too.