What Does it Mean to "Sit with a Feeling"?
If you’ve ever been to therapy before, or educated yourself at all about therapy, you've probably heard the phrase "sit with your feelings." But what does that actually mean? Each of us has developed our own way of processing our emotions and may not consciously notice when we're suppressing or ignoring our feelings. As a result, we also may not notice the signals our body and brain are giving us when we're not processing those feelings in a healthy way, and this can create a ripple effect of negative outcomes. In this post, we'll explore this commonly used phrase, "sit with your feelings," what it actually means from a clinical perspective, and why it's so important to our mental health.
What Does It Mean to "Sit With My Feelings"?
Simply put, sitting with your feelings means taking the time to notice and feel the full range of emotions without judging them or trying to fix them. If you're still unclear whether you're actually letting yourself feel your feelings, here are a few steps you can take to practice:
Recognize physical sensations connected to your feelings, e.g., a drop in your stomach, a racing heart, tension in the shoulders.
Name feelings with as much granularity as possible.
Observe feelings unfold in your body non-judgmentally. What does the act of observing your feelings do--amplify? Decrease? Shift feelings?
Invite compassionate curiosity by asking yourself what might be driving these feelings. Do you have any unmet needs? Try connecting to a vulnerable part of yourself and ask what they need today.
Practice self-compassion/self-talk by giving yourself the affirmation that you need based on feelings you have, e.g.,
Take it one step further by resourcing yourself by imagining protection, love, etc.
Sitting with our emotions is a mindfulness practice, and studies have shown that mindfulness can improve our overall well-being, reduce reactivity, and better regulate our emotions.
Why Do We Avoid Sitting with Our Feelings?
Avoiding our emotions is a deeply human experience, often as a response to formative experiences in our childhood or young adulthood. Maybe your caregiver(s) frequently discouraged you from crying when you felt sad or hurt, or maybe your displays of emotion--positive or negative--were treated as too much in your family, or ignored. Maybe you took a role in your family as a caregiver at a young age, and suppressing your emotions made it easier to survive day-to-day so that you could care for siblings and parents.
What emotional avoidance looks like:
Pretending everything is fine
Distraction through work, eating, exercising, scrolling social media
Overthinking or intellectualizing by trying to problem-solve (more on this later)
Caretaking to avoid personal reflection
Procrastinating on tasks to avoid the feelings that come with them
Numbing through substance use or other types of addiction
Deflecting or blaming others instead of taking ownership
Escapism through fantasies and daydreams
The problem is that our emotions don't just disappear if we avoid them. Emotions linger in the body and manifest themselves in other ways, or lead to adverse outcomes that have long-term impacts:
Staying in unhealthy situations for too long
Being unwilling to take risks that might be really beneficial
Missed opportunities to better understand yourself, others, and the world around you
Burnout at work or in family life, or both
Anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges
Self-destructive behaviors like addictive behaviors or self-harm
Physical consequences like blood pressure, cardiovascular issues, chronic pain, and more.
What Does It Mean to Intellectualize a Feeling?
Intellectualizing a feeling is thinking about your emotions rather than allowing yourself to experience them. You might analyze why you feel a certain way, explain where the feeling comes from, or try to "solve" the feeling by deciding how to address the situation that is causing it--all without actually connecting with how the emotion feels in your body.
Sitting with your feelings means giving yourself space to notice and experience them without immediately trying to explain, solve, or push it away. Go back to Step 1 of practicing sitting with your feelings: recognize the physical sensations connected to your feelings. Let yourself cry if you need to. The goal isn't to dwell on painful emotions, but to become more comfortable allowing them to move through you.
What Are Meta Emotions?
Meta-emotions are emotions you experience in response to another emotion. For example, you might feel sad and then feel ashamed or angry for feeling sad. When we don't give ourselves time to sit with an initial feeling, we may react from the meta-emotion instead of taking a moment to understand what's happening underneath it. For example, if your partner says something that hurts or upsets you, you might immediately respond with anger rather than pausing to recognize the hurt and saying, “I need some time to think about what you said.” If you give yourself time to sit with your feelings, you might realize that the anger is a reaction to sadness or fear.
Sitting with a feeling gives you an opportunity to notice these layers. Ask yourself: What am I feeling? Where do I feel it in my body? What thoughts come up when I allow myself to feel it? What story am I telling myself about these feelings, and this situation? With a little time and curiosity, you may begin to distinguish the original emotion from the judgment, fear, or discomfort that arises in response to it.
The Benefits of Sitting with Your Feelings
Our feelings are meant to be felt. In fact, the more we try to ignore, suppress, or push away difficult emotions, the louder they tend to be and the more likely we are to let them take over when we reach capacity.
When you allow yourself to notice and feel an emotion without judging it as good or bad, you can begin to understand what may be driving it, and what you really need in that moment. Sometimes, that may mean taking an action or making a change (inward or outward). Other times, you may simply need to acknowledge the feeling and allow it to pass in due time. This isn't just true for negative emotions, but for positive ones too -- sitting with positive emotions can help you be present to and fully experience moments of joy, connection, awe, and gratitude.
The goal isn't to stay stuck in an emotion or analyze it until it makes perfect sense. It's to give yourself space to experience it, understand it, and make a more thoughtful choice about how you want to respond rather than reacting automatically.
When Is It Bad to Sit With Your Feelings?
The only time it is not helpful to sit with your feelings is when you are outside your window of tolerance. It can look different for everyone, but being outside your window of tolerance can mean:
Hyperarousal: when your sympathetic nervous system goes into fight-or-flight response. Some signs of hyperarousal can be feeling on-edge, anxious, or angry. On a physical level, you might feel tightness in the chest, restlessness, or a racing heart.
Hypoarousal: when your parasympathetic nervous system triggers a freeze or shutdown response. Some signs of hypoarousal can be feeling numb, detached, empty, or hopeless. On a physical level, you might feel exhausted, cold, heavy, or have a low heart rate.
Feeling the urge to do unsafe things, such as turning to addictive behaviors or self-harm.
When you’re in one of these states, it is essential to take a break and turn away from your feelings, and focus on grounding yourself in the present moment, or distracting yourself from the intensity of your emotions until you’re in a more stable mental space. This is a great resource for grounding techniques, if you need them.
Therapy for Emotional Awareness
Learning to sit with your emotions takes practice, especially when doing so makes you feel uncomfortable or overwhelmed. Therapy is the supportive space where you can slow down, understand what you're feeling, and build greater tolerance for experiencing your emotions. Together with your therapist, you'll also have a chance to explore what the barriers were to feeling your feelings in the past, and how to recognize those barriers when they get in the way of your emotions in the future. If you’re ready to better understand your emotions and how they affect the way you move through life, our team at White Oak Counseling is here to help. Reach out today and we’ll connect you with a therapist in 1 - 3 business days.
About White Oak Counseling
White Oak Counseling is a practice of licensed therapists providing evidence-based mental health treatment for individual adults in Central Virginia. Founded in 2017, White Oak Counseling exists to bring a proven approach to the art of therapy, using research-backed methods to provide practical, compassionate care that honors each person’s unique mental health journey.
