What Does It Mean to "Sit with Your Feelings"?

To sit with your feelings means to allow yourself to fully experience an emotion without immediately reacting to it, avoiding it, or judging it. Instead of numbing out, distracting, or pushing through, you pause. You notice what’s happening inside you, bring curiosity to the experience, and respond with self-compassion. This is the heart of mindfulness. Mindfulness is paying attention to the present moment with non-judgmental awareness. Studies show that mindfulness helps individuals regulate emotions, reduce reactivity, and build resilience.

This practice can be especially powerful when facing uncomfortable emotions like anxiety, anger, or sadness—feelings most people try to avoid. While avoidance might provide short-term relief, it often creates long-term consequences.

Why We Avoid Emotions—and Why That’s a Problem

What Avoidance Looks Like

Avoiding difficult emotions is incredibly common. Most people aren’t taught how to process what they feel, so they learn to cope in ways that push emotions aside.

We avoid emotions by:

Distracting ourselves (e.g., with work, food, social media)
Suppressing what we feel
Suppressing what we feel by pretending everything is fine
Overthinking instead of feeling, intellectualizing or problem solving rather than processing emotions
Procrastinating or putting things off to avoid the feelings that come with them
Using substances, like alcohol or marijuana, to numb emotional pain
Helping others too much to avoid looking inward
Blaming others instead of facing our own emotional discomfort
Escaping into daydreams or fantasies to avoid real-life stress

Consequences of Avoidance

Research shows that emotional avoidance is linked to worse mental health outcomes. Studies have found that people who suppress their emotions experience increased physiological arousal, higher levels of depression and anxiety, and greater difficulty in relationships.

When we don’t sit with our feelings, those emotions don’t disappear—they linger in the body and show up in other ways, like chronic stress, burnout, anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues. Unprocessed emotions can also lead to impulsive behaviors, difficulty managing anger, or emotional numbness.

How to Sit with Your Feelings: A Step-by-Step Guide

Learning to sit with your feelings doesn’t mean getting overwhelmed or stuck—it means building a compassionate, mindful relationship with your emotional world. My steps, drawn from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and the mindfulness teachings of Thích Nhất Hạnh, help you notice, name, and navigate emotions in a healthier way.

Here’s how you can begin practicing this in your everyday life:

1. Pause and Breathe

Start by slowing down.
Take a deep breath to ground yourself. Breathing connects you to the present moment and sends a message of safety to your nervous system. As Thích Nhất Hạnh wrote:

“Conscious breathing is my anchor.”

Let your breath remind you: this moment is safe enough to feel.

2. Identify the Feeling

Use a feelings wheel or emotion wheel to move beyond vague words like “upset” or “bad.” Try to name a more specific feeling like “disappointed,” “frustrated,” “ashamed,” or “lonely.” The more precise you are, the more you can begin to understand the underlying causes of your emotional responses.

In DBT, this is called naming the emotion—a key part of becoming emotionally aware and grounded.

3. Notice the Physical Sensation

Every emotion shows up somewhere in your body. Ask yourself: Where am I feeling this?

You might notice:

Tension in your jaw or shoulders
A lump in your throat
Butterflies in your stomach
A heavy feeling in your chest

Noticing the physical sensation helps you stay connected to the experience rather than escaping from it.

4. Allow the Feeling to Exist

Instead of judging the emotion or trying to push it away, observe it from a distance:

“I am noticing that I am feeling...
...and I can stay with it gently.”
...and I don’t have to run from it.”
...and I can allow it to move through me.”
...and I don’t need to fix it right now.”
...and I can make space for it without judgment.”

Notice the feeling without being consumed by it. You don’t have to fix it or force it away. You’re simply allowing it to rise, crest, and pass—like a wave, or a storm.

As Thích Nhất Hạnh reminds us:

“You are not the emotion—you are the one who can observe it, breathe through it, and survive it.”

5. Offer Yourself Compassion

Self-compassion quiets self-judgment—and self-validation gives your feelings the space they need to be heard.

When a difficult emotion shows up, try saying:

“It makes sense that I feel this way.”
“This is what I’m feeling right now, and it’s okay to feel it.”

This isn’t about agreeing with or enjoying the feeling—it’s about recognizing that what you feel is real and deserves your attention.

The more often you meet your emotions with compassion instead of criticism, the more you reinforce an inner sense of safety. Over time, practicing self-compassion during emotional discomfort builds emotional strength and resilience. Find some self compassion exercises here.

Takeaway

It’s not about control. It’s about connection. And it’s a practice—one that gets easier, and more powerful, the more you do it.

What Happens When You Start Sitting with Your Feelings

When you learn to sit, feel, and process emotions rather than avoid them, several things shift:

You become less reactive and more grounded
You develop greater emotional clarity
You improve your mental health by reducing long-term stress
You build a stronger connection to your inner world and needs
You can begin to understand patterns tied to trauma or past experiences

It’s also important to remember that this is a practice.

These uncomfortable emotions often carry information we need to understand ourselves and our experiences more deeply. Learning to sit with your feelings is not about getting stuck in them—it’s about creating just enough distance to observe and process them in a healthy way.

This practice isn’t easy. When we’re struggling with intense feelings, especially ones linked to trauma, or ongoing mental health challenges like eating disorders, depression, or anxiety, our first instinct might be to run. But what if, instead of running, we could turn toward those uncomfortable feelings with curiosity and self compassion?

Takeaway: A Healthier, Kinder Way to Feel

Sitting with your feelings is an act of strength. It helps you stop running from yourself and start reconnecting with who you are underneath the noise. By slowing down, tuning in, and breathing through the discomfort, you learn that no feeling is final, and no emotion is bigger than your ability to feel it.

Ready to Begin? We're Here to Help.

At our practice, we specialize in helping individuals learn how to relate to their emotions in a healthier, more compassionate way. If you're feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or unsure how to move forward, we’d love to support you.

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Sitting With Your Feelings: Why It Matters and How to Start