I’ll often ask clients what they do with difficult thoughts and feelings they experience. A lot of times, I’m met with the response that they ignore them. And I get it. Sometimes ignoring our difficult thoughts and feelings does seem like it’d be easier than allowing ourselves to notice them. And by noticing them, I’m not saying we need to wallow in them or let them dictate our day. I’m talking about allowing them to be present while we move about our day – more about this in a minute. When we don’t allow our difficult feelings to exist, we may actually be making them more difficult to experience.

In other words, ignoring them and avoiding them doesn’t work for the long-term. When we ignore or avoid them, we tell our brains that they’re not safe to experience these feelings. We also expend a lot of mental energy trying to suppress them, which can take us away from living in the present.

(Side note: if we’ve been through trauma, then our bodies may literally not feel safe to allow difficult emotions. If you’ve been through a traumatic event, I highly recommend working with a trauma therapist on being able to come back into your body and gain the tools, resources, and practice to allow your body to experience these feelings in a therapeutic manner that will not overload your nervous system.)

As I’ve written about before, God enabled us to feel difficult emotions like sadness, fear, and anger to show us what is important to us and what we need to do to stay safe. He promises to be with us during times of difficulty and uncertainty.

So, if the key is allowing them to exist, what does that mean exactly and how do I do that?

In a previous blog post, I write about allowing our feelings as “getting off the Struggle Bus.” In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (or ACT, the evidenced-based treatment for anxiety that I use in my work with clients), we describe allowing feelings to exist as “opening up and making room for painful feelings, sensations, urges, and emotions.” Instead of trying to control, “fix,” or eliminate our difficult emotions, we let them be as they are, even if they’re unpleasant.

But wouldn’t it just feel better to ignore them?

This might bring temporary relief, but there are a few reasons we recommend allowing difficult emotions to exist in ACT. First, openness to and allowance of our full emotional experience enables to act in accordance with our values. When we make room for all of our emotional experiences, we’re able to do what really matters to us. Second, when we dull negative emotions, it’s harder to fully experience the joy of the positive ones. We may actually end up creating more anxiety by denying our full emotional experience if we send the message to our brains that this feeling is “bad” and we must do whatever we can to avoid it.

Russ Harris, a prominent ACT educator writes, “When we accept our feelings, they may or may not reduce in intensity. We can’t predict it. But we can predict this: when we try to control or avoid our feelings, it’s likely that they’ll increase in intensity and cause us more distress.”

In my previous blog post, I give the example of blowing up a balloon:

“When I try to avoid my difficult feeling, or expend energy trying to get rid of it, it’s like I’m blowing more air into the balloon. My energy and my breath are making this balloon bigger and bigger, to the point the balloon cannot get any larger and may actually pop. At the same time, my breathing becomes more labored and my energy wanes. For me, accepting my difficult feeling is like letting all of the air out of the balloon. The balloon still exists, it hasn’t gone anywhere, but I’m no longer expending my energy to change it. My difficult feeling will exist whether or not I consciously acknowledge it. At least when I acknowledge it, I’m not expending energy trying to forget something that’s impossible to forget in the first place.”

So, how do we practice accepting our difficult emotions?

Acceptance is a practice (not a technique or intervention we apply to make things all better), and its ongoing, as we will all face difficult emotions throughout our lifetimes. While difficult feelings will always feel difficult, I have found that when I allow a difficult feeling to exist, I’m able to “ride the wave” of it, noticing it and waiting for it to recede, rather than white knuckle it, telling myself that if I just do the “right thing” or use the right coping skill, it will completely go away.

That said, allowing feelings to exist can be scary because when we’ve denied or avoided them for so long, our brains start to believe they’re “bad” and that we won’t be able to survive them. And if we grew up learning that negative emotions were a sign of sin, something to be silenced, or “too much,” these messages may have also reinforced the idea that negative emotions are to be ignored or “fixed.” In reality, unpleasant emotions are morally neutral – they are not fun to feel, but there is nothing morally wrong with feeling them. In fact, they are part of the human experience.

Some tips for allowing emotions to exist:

1. Grounding: a helpful practice for keeping us in the here and now, especially when our fear tries to sweep us away into thoughts of the future and “what ifs.” One of my favorite ways to practice grounding is the 5-4-3-2-1 exercise: from where I’m sitting in the present moment, I identify 5 things I can see, 4 things I can feel, 3 things I hear, 2 things I smell, and 1 thing I taste.
2. Notice: as I allow myself to feel this emotion, what sensations do I notice in my body? Are my shoulders tight, jaw clenched, heart pounding? Does this sensation have a shape or a color or a texture? Can I draw my attention to the space around this feeling in my body?
3. Curiosity: What is this difficult feeling telling me about what I value? What I need?
4. Self-compassion: what would I tell a friend who is experiencing this emotion? Can I offer that kindness to myself? Can I consider that this emotion is felt by all of humanity and I’m not alone in experiencing it?

It can be helpful as well to invite someone along on your journey, whether it be a mentor, trusted friend or loved one. A professional counselor can be helpful if you find that your emotions or thoughts are interfering with your ability to live the life that you want to live. If you’d like to hear more about how I work with clients on their individual journeys, you can book a free consultation with me here: https://secure.helloalma.com/providers/julie-williamson/

References

Harris, R. (2009). ACT made simple: An easy-to-read primer on Acceptance & Commitment Therapy. Oakland: New Harbinger Publications, Inc.