What do you do with a difficult emotion or a challenging experience?
In our culture, there is a pervasive belief that feeling bad equates to being bad. We not only have the feeling, we then treat ourselves like we shouldn’t be having the feeling. Like a fish in water, self-judgement, perfectionism, and resistance to our experience are so engrained that we often fail to recognize them. We tend to view life as a problem, and consequently see ourselves as a problem.
I encourage you to experiment with acknowledging what you’re feeling and experiencing, even if it’s just within yourself. It’s vital to recognize the impact and experiences we go through, even if we are unsure how to address them. When we minimize our experience or emotions, whether out of fear of disrupting relationships or because we are uncertain how to deal with them, we bury them within ourselves, where they ferment and stagnate.
When we minimize impact or try to ignore our feelings, we are not actually getting rid of the trigger. Sometimes this dissociative tendency of avoiding our emotions in the short term is highly skillful, especially if we are in an unsafe situation, such as a child without autonomy or agency…but when we bury things inside of ourselves over time that we are trying to keep our attention away from, that takes energy. It can create a kink in the hose of our life force and awareness, and that is the same hose that our joy, peace and presence flow through. So by avoiding how we feel about things, we are also avoiding the space that our wellbeing and goodness can flow through.
So let your experience and emotions flow, towards yourself. Let yourself know that you are aware, that they are being tended to, even if just by your awareness and self acknowledgement for the moment. Instead of diverting attention away from our feelings, there is the opportunity to allow ourselves to experience them, even if we’re unsure of what actions to take or how to bring the situation to resolution. Simply acknowledging our emotions can prevent them from being bottled up and intensified inside. Those things take a lot of energy and self-suppression to maintain.
Watching Your Problems
Michal Singer, the well known meditation teacher and author of the bestselling book The Untethered Soul, says “To attain true inner freedom, you must be able to objectively watch your problems instead of being lost in them. No solution can possibly exist while you’re lost in the energy of a problem. You will not be able to solve anything outside until you own how the situation affects you inside…The only permanent solution to your challenges is to go inside and work with of the part of you that seems to have so many problems with reality. Once you do that, you will be clear enough to deal with what’s left.”
I find two practices particularly helpful in dealing with challenging emotions.
The 90 Second Rule
The first is the 90 second rule.
Neurobiology research has shown that if you are willing to fully be with and experience something fully for 90 seconds, it can actually fully move through and metabolize in your system. Dr Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard brain scientist, says “Once the circuit is stimulated and we have triggered an emotional response, it takes less than 90 seconds for the chemistry of that emotion to flood through us and then flush completely out of our bloodstream. Of course, we can either consciously or unconsciously choose to rethink the thought that triggered the emotional circuit to run and stay hurt, angry, sad or whatever longer than 90 seconds. But in that case what we are doing at a neurological level is re-stimulating the emotional circuity to run over and over again. If there is no repeated trigger, the emotional circuit will run its course and stop afterwards.”
This possibility has also been taught in Tibetan Buddhism for thousands of years. Pema Chodron says, “If you can be with an emotion for 90 seconds without judging it, it will disappear.”
When working with the 90 second rule, you notice that you are triggered or having a feeling and you stay with the actual experience of that in your body. You do not push it away or pull it towards you to think about or dissect. You just stay with the experience fully, until the 90 second neurological cocktail that was released in your bloodstream clears.
Recognize, Allow, Investigate and Nurture
My other favorite practice for working with difficult emotions is a practice called RAIN.
RAIN stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate and Nurture. This process allows us to be fully with an experience, to explore it and be with it fully, and to hold ourselves and our feelings in loving compassion. After this process, a new space can open up that allows us to be with our experience and ourselves in a fresh, open and loving way. We learn to attend to our inner wounds with love and compassion.
By bringing awareness to our emotions, we create space for transformation. We can seek support from trusted individuals or our own inner wisdom to navigate difficult feelings. With time, kindness, and compassion, we can evolve and grow from our experiences.
Awareness is the greatest agent for change, so bring your awareness to how you are, how you feel, even if you don’t know what to do about it. Just allow it to be there. And bring as much kindness and compassion to it as you can. Over time, you will be amazed at what can evolve and change from that.
Remember, by acknowledging our feelings, even if only to ourselves, we open the door to healing and change. Don’t let emotions linger unacknowledged; instead, name them and bring compassion to yourself.
Try this guided meditation as you explore how to work with challenging experiences.
