True Engagement with Emotion
My brave clients are working hard to feel feelings that they have previously avoided or buried away. Yet they find that when they try to really feel their emotions on their own, they sometimes get stuck.
They might say: so I am feeling my emotions, and it feels crummy. So now what?
And this is a fair question! We as a society are getting used to having our emotions take up more space and attention. We’ve been told over and over that we have to feel it to heal it, but that IS at times an oversimplification. Ultimately, what we need to do is not only feel our emotions, but engage with them as well.
So how do we do that?
Let’s compare feeling grief with engaging with a feeling of grief.
You might imagine that you’re out for a walk and you realize you are at a place you used to come to with a loved one who has died. The pang of loss and longing for a time when they were with you arises. It’s an unwelcome feeling, even though you’re not at work, with kids or otherwise engaged (ie it is technically a suitable time for you to feel into this sadness), but you had other intentions for your walk—to be happy, enjoying your surroundings and precious free time.
Then you remember what your counsellor said and you sit down on a bench and feel the sadness for a few minutes. You focus your mind and body on the sadness and let it take up your awareness. You don’t particularly WANT to do this, as I said, you had a specific plan for the feeling of your outing, but you do it anyway, hoping that doing so will provide some relief. Now that the sadness has been given the opportunity, it takes up even more space inside you. You take a deep breath and a few tears well up in your eyes and trickle down your cheek. Well done!
Let’s pause here. Sometimes the act of just being with your feelings will be enough. Allowing time and space for the grief to surface and be expressed begins a natural process of transforming emotion. Just like an ocean wave that builds, crests, breaks and ebbs back into the swirl of movement, so too does emotion build and reach a point of peak discomfort or intensity before it subsides.
Sometimes, though, it needs a little extra help to move, to change form and ebb back into balance. Here’s where you might take feeling of your emotions one step further: engaging with the feeling. This next step is simple, but can be difficult to do alone, and is why seeing a therapist can help you get used to it.
While you sit with your feelings, make the experience of doing so as explicit as possible. To begin, take conscious note of any thoughts that accompany your feelings (you might jot them down on a notepad if it helps you to stay focused on the task at hand). Next, take note of the bodily experience of the emotion, noting areas of tension, heat, movement, pain or pressure. Now, with gentleness, and as though you are speaking with a young child, engage with your feeling:
Acknowledge its presence (this might sound like “ah, you are here”).
Ask the feeling what it wants to say. Responses may come in the form of thoughts or as a desire or longing for something to happen (receiving a hug, reassurance, companionship, returning to or leaving). Sit with the experience of feeling for a few more moments and see what happens. If you can, acknowledge what the feeling is asking for and give to it in response (if the the grief is asking to be held, can you hug yourself, rock yourself gently or wrap yourself in a blanket).
Now see if you can stay a few moments longer with this present state, and just notice how it feels. There is no wrong way to feel, no doing this wrong. This is simply an experiment in befriending and responding to your feelings. Stay as present as you can to the experience of it until you feel ready to let it go. And when you do, release it willingly.
These last few steps really take practice, so go easy on yourself if it feels uncertain or a bit clunky at first. Engaging with and regulating our emotions are skills that take repetition before a sense of competence emerges. Stick with it, and over time you’ll reap the rewards.
For further practice, you might try guided meditations whose purpose is to help you be present the any feelings occurring right now.
A favourite collection of mine are those offered by Tara Brach. Enjoy!
