Sitting With Difficult Emotions
I recently wrote about how what we attend to expands. The thoughts and emotions that we focus our attention on grow and strengthen, whether good or bad. I encouraged consciously attending to, and spending more time with, positive thoughts and emotions. While I did stress in that post that I do not recommend ignoring difficult emotions or thought patterns, I felt it was worth revisiting this topic. So here’s the thing.
Difficult thoughts and emotions are going to happen. Full stop.
You are a human being. You can’t opt out of them. You will experience stress, anger, and grief in your life.
It is, in fact, absolutely essential that you experience these in order to have a full experience of being alive.
Despite wanting to cultivate and strengthen positive thoughts and feeling states, it is not helpful to ignore or push down more “negative” feelings and emotions. Here are a few reasons why:
Attempting to suppress difficult thoughts or emotions actually multiplies them. The very act of suppression is an act of attention and what we attend to expands, remember?
Suppressing difficult emotions often leads to an increase in coping behaviours (think binge eating or alcohol consumption).
Avoiding thoughts or feelings with your conscious mind does not mean that your subconscious mind is avoiding them too. In fact, it’s quite the opposite and those thoughts and feelings have a sneaky way of invading your dreams.
Suppressing difficult thoughts and emotions causes a stress response in the body (and no one needs more stress in their life!).
So, what do you do then?
If you aren’t supposed to ignore or suppress unpleasant emotions and thoughts, what should you do when they come up?
It’s not complicated, but it is not easy either. The answer is that you sit with your difficult emotions and thoughts. You take the time to acknowledge them, to accept that they are there, to understand WHY you are experiencing them. You try not to judge them as “negative” or “bad” - this one is tough as we are conditioned from a young age to view them as such.
It does not always feel safe to sit with difficult emotions this way, and it certainly doesn’t always feel good. It is often deeply uncomfortable and painful. However, it will be temporary.
If you can allow yourself to sit with these thoughts and feelings in a non-judgmental way, without trying to fix them, just allowing them to be… they will pass.
And they will pass more quickly than if you try to force yourself to move on without acknowledging their presence.
If this feels overwhelming or scary to think about, it can help to have a supportive and safe space to start doing this work. A good coach or therapist is often an essential support person as you move towards your more difficult thoughts and emotions with open curiosity instead of running as fast as you can in the other direction.
