Ride the Wave

“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.

How to Prepare for Therapy

Picture this: You’ve done the hard work of finding a counselor you connect with, and now a few sessions in, you are searching for things to talk about each week. You have continued moments of anxiety, depression, and relational difficulties, but by the time you sit down on the therapy couch, your mind draws a blank. You may even begin to feel a bit of stress or even dread before your therapy sessions, because you don’t know where to start. 

If you relate to this experience, you are not alone! Life can feel like it is moving in fast motion, and it can be easy to lose sight of our emotions and self-reflective thoughts in the midst of work and life priorities. As a therapist myself, I have encountered this experience many times and stumbled into counseling sessions feeling jumbled and confused about what to talk about. 

To this experience, I will first say that you can be assured your therapist is trained to handle the ambiguity and rollercoaster of human emotions. Feel free to tell your therapist that you are unsure of where to start, and they will be more than happy to help you sift through the experiences and emotions coming up that can help you choose a path to go down. 

However, it can be extremely helpful to have guiding questions to return to throughout the week to help you prepare for your therapy appointment. It may be helpful to run through a few of these questions in the day or hours leading up to your appointment. Save this list to return to if you ever need help checking in with yourself:

  1. Do a quick body scan: take a few deep breaths and work your way through your body, from your feet, to legs, to abdomen, up to your chest, arms, face, and scalp. Notice if you are holding any tension in any areas of your body. Notice if this tension is tied to any particular emotion.

  2. Think through the time that has passed since your last therapy appointment. Did you have any upsetting, emotional, or significant moments happen over the weekend, at work, with a family member or friend? 

  3. How are you currently coping with negative emotions like anger or sadness?

  4. Think through the past couple of years – are there any experiences that you have not processed in therapy that continue to impact you?

  5. How was your self-talk this week – compassionate or shaming?

  6. What types of thoughts or thought patterns do you wish you could change?

  7. Have you been ruminating on any thoughts this week?

  8. Have you noticed yourself using any defense mechanisms, such as avoidance or denial? 

  9. When did you feel most yourself this week, and what was different about this time?

  10. Are there any relationships in your life currently that you wish were different?

May these questions help guide you towards understanding what might be currently happening in your body, mind, and life that counseling can help you unpack and process.