How to Stop Avoiding Your Grief and Feel It

We Were Taught to Be Scared of Our Emotions

Emotions.

I feel like that's such a loaded word these days.

Because we've been taught that sitting with our emotions is scary and maybe even dangerous.

Emotions are a part of who we are as humans, and yet we're told to stuff them down (don't cry, you're ok), cover them up (keep yourself busy so you don't have to feel), or pretend they don't exist altogether (you’re can’t be angry, you’re a women and women are not supposed to be angry).

Emotions are one of the things that make us uniquely human, so why do we try our damnedest to avoid them?

What Happens When We Don't

Unprocessed emotions live in our bodies. They show up in a myriad of ways: tension, illness, unhealthy mental loops.

We suffer through all of that just because we can't turn and face our emotions.

And grief, that profound sadness and longing, it’s one of the biggest emotions our culture encourages us to avoid. Move on. Get over it. Move past. Funeral in 3 days and then back to work.

And yet there it is, and will always be, living in our bodies.

Each time it rises to the surface, we do everything we can to ignore it. We continue the cycle of suppressing our emotions because it’s all we know how to do, and it’s what we’ve been taught is the right thing to do.

What Our Emotions Actually Need

All emotions need from us is willingness.

A willingness to sit with them.

To witness them.

To be with them.

Because they matter.

How to Sit With a Feeling When It Rises

Hillary McBride, a therapist and author who writes about emotions and the body, offers something practical in her book Holy Hurt.

• Start by reminding yourself: the emotion is not dangerous.

• Then notice where it lives in your body. What does the sensation feel like? What does it want to do? How does it want to move? Where is it going?

• From there, try one of these:

  • Breathe directly into the center of the feeling. Let your breath surround the sensation, not push it away.

  • Or imagine watching the sensation from a distance, like bird-watching. Nothing to do but watch what it does next. Track its movement. Trust it will come and go. You're just the witness.

  • You might notice a word come to mind, or an image, or a desire to act. Notice it and come back to what you feel in your body.

One more thing worth knowing: you might feel the pull to act on your feelings. To let fear carry you out of the room. To let anger make you want to scream or hit something. What helps more, especially at first, is staying with the sensation. It won't hurt you or anyone else. But if your body really needs somewhere to put the emotion, clench your hands or your jaw. Jump up and down, then release. Let the energy move through you. That's discharge. That's how the emotion gets processed.

So the next time grief rises, get curious. What would it be like to sit with it? To experience it? To witness it?

If you try this, I'd love to know how it feels for you.

And if this resonated and you want more, I'd love to have you in my free weekly newsletter, KTInsights.