How to Stop Avoiding Your Emotions & Start Feeling Them
A 10-year-old once called me an “emotions master.” It was such a sweet and funny moment, and it stuck with me. While I won’t claim mastery, emotions are something I’ve always been drawn to. In my past career as a special education teacher, I spent years teaching kids on the autism spectrum about social cues, emotional regulation, and relationships. And now, as a Marriage and Family Therapist Candidate, I see how essential emotional understanding is for everyone, not just kids, not just those in crisis, but as part of our everyday lives.
And yet… many of us never got the chance to learn how to feel.
That’s why I created Sit With It- a free, experiential workshop designed to help you slow down, tune in, and begin building a healthier relationship with your emotions. Here are a few key takeaways if you missed it, or if you’re just starting your own journey of emotional growth.
Emotions Are Messengers
Emotions are not problems to solve. They are signals to listen to.
Think of anger. It might show up when someone crosses your boundaries, pointing to a value being violated. Sadness can reveal something deeply important that was lost. Joy highlights alignment with your values. Anxiety can point to a need for safety and clarity. When we learn to listen to these signals, we can respond more effectively to our needs, and to others’.
But if we ignore them, that energy gets stuck. It doesn’t just disappear. It shows up as physical symptoms like tension headaches, irritability, exhaustion, or a sense of overwhelm. It also shows up in our relationships as emotional distance, misunderstandings, or reactive responses that create disconnection. I know this firsthand. Years ago, I pushed through a job that felt deeply misaligned with my values. I told myself I was fine and just had to make it through the next week. But my body said otherwise: daily stomach aches, stress eczema, numbness, and even swollen eyes. I didn’t realize at the time that by disconnecting from my emotions, I was also diminishing my capacity to connect with the important people in my life. I didn’t connect it to emotion until therapy helped me see the bigger picture.
The Truth About Emotions: It’s Not the Feeling, It’s the Resistance
Emotions themselves aren’t the problem. It’s how we react to them that causes distress. When we resist or suppress emotions (especially ones that we label as “bad”) we actually increase their power. The research backs this up: emotional suppression can lead to more anxiety, lower self-esteem, and strain our relationships.
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist, found that when we have an emotional reaction, our body goes through a chemical process that peaks and subsides in about 90 seconds. After that, it’s our thoughts (our rumination and judgement) that keep the emotion going.
That means… you can build the capacity to feel anything for 90 seconds.
Increasing Your Emotional Capacity
If the idea of sitting with your emotions feels overwhelming, you’re not alone. It can feel like opening a floodgate you can’t shut. But like lifting weights, the more we practice, the stronger we become.
At first, that emotional “weight” may feel too heavy. But over time, we build the muscles to hold it without being crushed by it. We learn to be with sadness, anger, fear- not to fix it or push it away, but to feel it and let it pass through.
Reacting vs. Responding
Sometimes we’re not even responding to what’s really going on. We’re reacting to our feelings about our feelings. If you’ve seen the movie Inception, you might remember how each dream had layers within layers, getting closer to the root with each level. Our emotions can work like that too: what seems like frustration on the surface might stem from deeper feelings like fear, grief, or shame.
You feel hurt > but shame tells you it’s weak to admit that.
You feel angry > but guilt convinces you to hide it.
You feel afraid > but you’re told fear isn’t “strong.”
These reactions can keep us stuck and disconnected, both from ourselves and others. They also tend to show up negatively in our bodies and relationships when ignored.
Why We Avoid Feeling
Avoiding emotions is often a survival strategy we learned early on. Many of us didn’t grow up in families or cultures that modeled healthy emotional expression. We were taught that:
“Big boys don’t cry.”
“Don’t be dramatic.”
“Get over it”
“Shake it off.”
Feeling was seen as weakness, or worse- something dangerous. So we learned to protect ourselves, by numbing, distracting, minimizing, intellectualizing, people-pleasing, or controlling. These aren’t character flaws. They’re coping tools. But over time, they can cut us off from connection, joy, and authenticity.
So… How Do We Actually Sit With It?
It starts with slowing down.
We can’t change automatic emotional reactions unless we pause long enough to notice them. Slowness is where emotional safety begins. And with safety comes the possibility for change.
Here’s a simple practice you can try anytime:
Pause. Feel your feet on the ground. Breathe slowly.
Notice. Where do you feel tension, pressure, or heaviness?
Name. What emotion might be living there? Be curious, not judgmental.
Validate. Tell yourself: I see you. You’re allowed to be here.
Ride the Wave. Imagine the emotion washing through your body, head to toe, like a wave. Trust that it will pass.
Start small. You don’t have to dive into the deep end. Even 30 seconds of awareness is a powerful beginning.
Final Thoughts
You’re not broken for struggling with your emotions. You’re human.
Feeling deeply isn’t a weakness. It’s what makes us capable of love, empathy, creativity, and connection. You don’t have to do this perfectly. You just have to start. And you don’t have to do it alone.
If you’re ready to explore this more deeply, therapy can be a beautiful space to unlearn emotional avoidance and reconnect with your inner world. That’s what helped me, and I’d be honored to walk that journey with you.
Sources:
Brown, B. (2012). Daring greatly: How the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent, and lead. Gotham Books.
Taylor, J. B. (2006). My stroke of insight: A brain scientist’s personal journey. Viking.
Gross, J. J., & Levenson, R. W. (1997). Hiding feelings: The acute effects of inhibiting negative and positive emotion. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 106(1), 95–103. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.106.1.95
De Castella, K., Goldin, P., Jazaieri, H., Ziv, M., Dweck, C. S., & Gross, J. J. (2013). Beliefs about emotion: Links to emotion regulation, well-being, and psychological distress. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 35(6), 497–505. https://doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2013.840632
English, T., & John, O. P. (2013). Understanding the social effects of emotion regulation: The mediating role of authenticity for individual differences in suppression. Emotion, 13(2), 314–329. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029847
