Sitting With Your Feelings: A Guide to Slowing Down and Tuning In
What Does Sitting with Your Feelings Even Mean?
You might have heard the phrase “sit with your feelings” in therapy, self-help books, or mental health spaces. It sounds simple, maybe even vague, but what does it mean in practice and why is it something so many professionals encourage?
At its core, sitting with your feelings means making space to notice and experience your emotional state without immediately reacting to it, suppressing it, or distracting yourself from it. It’s an invitation to slow down, to turn towards discomfort rather than away from it.
Why would anyone want to do this?
Understandably, most of us would prefer to avoid unpleasant feelings. It’s human nature to try to move quickly past anxiety, sadness, anger or shame. We might scroll through our phones, overwork, eat, drink, or busy ourselves with problem-solving. Anything to make the discomfort go away.
But when we push feelings aside too often or too quickly, they don’t simply vanish. Instead, they tend to show up elsewhere: in our relationships, our health, or our sense of self. Sitting with your feelings offers a chance to respond differently and to acknowledge what's there, even if it’s messy or painful.
So how do you actually do it?
Sitting with your feelings doesn't require hours of deep meditation or intense introspection. It can be as simple as:
Pausing and noticing: This might mean stopping for a moment and asking yourself, ‘what am I feeling right now?’
Naming the feeling: Give it a label “I am feeling anxious, lonely, overwhelmed, resentful, etc”. This can help create clarity. You don't need to justify or analyse it, just acknowledge it. And remember, feelings aren’t always logical so it is okay if the feeling doesn’t match how, you think you ‘should’ be feeling.
Staying with it: Rather than pushing it away, allow yourself to feel it. You might focus on how it feels in your body or what urges come with it (like the urge to avoid or fix).
Being kind to yourself: This is not about indulging difficult emotions or letting them take over. It’s about offering yourself the same understanding you might offer a friend who’s struggling.
You might sit with a feeling for two minutes or twenty. The point isn’t to achieve something or feel better right away. It’s to build emotional awareness and tolerance and to recognise that feelings, however uncomfortable, are not dangerous.
What it’s not
Sitting with your feelings doesn’t mean wallowing in them, acting on every emotional impulse, or staying stuck in pain. Nor does it mean overthinking or dissecting every aspect of what you feel. It’s about allowing your emotional experience to exist without trying to fix or run from it straight away.
Why it matters
Feelings often carry useful information. They might be telling you something about your needs, your boundaries, your values or your relationships. By turning towards them instead of away, you give yourself the chance to understand what’s going on beneath the surface and to respond in a more thoughtful and grounded way.
In a culture that often encourages distraction, urgency and emotional control, sitting with your feelings can feel unfamiliar, even counterintuitive. But with practice, it becomes a powerful part of emotional growth. It helps us stay connected to ourselves, build resilience and relate to others with greater empathy.
So next time a difficult feeling arises, you might ask yourself: What would it be like to just sit with this, even for a moment?
