How To Process Emotions: The Simple Approach

Keep it simple. Don’t believe the narratives of the mind. Just feel into what is arising in your experience. If you get caught up in thoughts then that is okay. Return your attention to your direct experience. Ask yourself this question, what am I afraid to feel? What am I afraid to experience? What am I trying to get rid of in my experience? Is there anything that I have been running from experientially?

Acknowledge the thoughts but don’t get caught up in them. The emotion is made up of two parts. The narrative or story in the mind and then the physical experience and the sensations in the body. Most of us are only used to experiencing emotions through the narratives of the mind. We actually do this to avoid the physical experience of the emotion. Continuously thinking about what has happened or might happen and trying to strategize ways to change what has already occurred or prevent something from occurring. While this is the way that the vast majority of humanity experiences emotion it is not an effective way to process and released trapped emotions.

To do this we want to pay more attention to the physical experience of the emotion. This is good news because it is a way simpler approach than having to manage the thoughts and mind and endlessly search for solutions.

Use the inquiry questions provided above to turn your attention into your direct experience as it is arising now. The mind will continue to produce thoughts which will distract you from your direct experience. Usually, the ones which are the most enticing are ones around confusion and doubt. “Am I doing this technique correctly?” “Surely I’m making a mistake” “I hear this all the time but I don’t know how to do it” etc etc.

These are all thoughts but they usually have the emotional textures of confusion, doubt and frustration. You see, most people imagine releasing trapped emotions to centre on experiences like deep sadness, grief or something like anger or fear. Sure, this can happen but emotions like frustration, confusion, and doubt are just as equally important to release yet it is so easy to get caught up in their stories and believe that you are not releasing anything.

The mind is redirecting your attention into thoughts to avoid fully experiencing these emotions. You think you’re not feeling any emotions and you get frustrated at that fact, see what’s happening?

Frustration is saying hello and wants to be felt but you turn your attention in another direction in search of sadness and are avoiding the exact emotion that life is presenting to you in this moment to work with and release.

This is why the physical experience is so important because the narratives will send you in circles endlessly, IF you believe them. If you see the narratives as narratives, as the voice of the emotion, but don’t believe it then they are completely harmless.

So next time you are sitting with your experience and trying to open to any emotion that wants to be felt or released, be very aware of when the mind starts to turn experience into a problem. That’s your excellent clue that you are coming in touch with something you would rather avoid and thus it is the exact thing you need to experience to heal.

Ask yourself this question to any problem thoughts that arise, “and what’s the problem with that?”. The mind might say, “ah here we are again, sitting and nothing is happening”, then you ask, “and, what’s the problem with that?”. Then start open up to anything physical that arises that you don’t want to feel.

Be gentle with yourself, but be WILLING to touch in. You have to be willing to go into the spaces you have been chronically running from.

Also be aware of the thoughts you don’t want to experience and allow them. Maybe you are endlessly searching for a physical sensation but the thought keeps coming up saying, “there is nothing here, nothing to feel physically”. If that is bothering you then you need to see that you are avoiding that thought. Just allow it. Remember, “and, what’s the problem with that?”.

The problem would be that you are believing that thought shouldn’t be there, but its as equally innocent as the sensations. In fact the experience of no sensation is something equally important to become comfortable in.

So, in summary, stop searching for a specific experience. Open to what is HERE. Don’t believe the thoughts. And ask yourself simple questions to open up to what you might be avoiding.

Goodluck, you’ve got this.