“Stop crying over spilled milk!”
“It’s bad to feel anger, you should work on that”
“Get over it, it’s not that big of a deal”
“Why are you being so emotional?”
Some of us have grown up hearing phrases like these from our caregivers, friends, teachers, and leaders, and we now internalize these messages for ourselves. In moments of anxiety, depression, or anger you may experience a strong desire to escape your negative emotions as quickly as possible, just as you were taught. It may feel scary or even wrong to feel certain emotions. However, I want to invite you into a new challenge: sitting with and accepting emotions as they come. This exercise draws from mindfulness techniques and allows you to grow distress tolerance as well as self-acceptance.
To start, do a quick body scan: are you holding pain anywhere throughout your body? Notice your bodily sensations from head to toe and take note where your anxiety or depression is the strongest. Next, notice the emotions that are currently surfacing. If you can, name the specific emotions arising. Try not to judge these emotions, but rather observe them with curiosity and openness.
Try to sit in this state of observation for a couple of minutes. The goal in this exercise is not necessarily to change your emotion or make it end sooner, but to simply be with your emotion. It may be helpful to think of your emotions as friends whom you can befriend: what would it be like to grow comfortable with your friend, Sadness, who comes to sit with you every so often?
It may be helpful to think of this exercise as riding a wave – pushing against an ocean’s wave is exhausting and largely ineffective, but in choosing the rise and fall with the wave, you can allow it to pass. In the same way, rather than pushing against your emotions, you can choose to ride them out, accepting them as they come and go.
