“People forget that you can feel one way, and think another… You can still feel these feelings, but at the same time think differently and hold an optimistic attitude about life…” Joan Rosenberg

Aha! There it is! That’s the one.

It seems life is a balancing act of getting up and getting on with things, whilst being able to acknowledge the not so good stuff.

It also seems that, as humans, getting this balance right is something that we tend to struggle with.

A lot of my lovely clients often say “But HOW???” “How do I process difficult emotions without being taken down by them?”

The reality is, that when you develop a fear of negative emotion, it becomes a beautifully sabotaging double whammy of not just the negative thought, but the fear and angst that goes with it. Lovely stuff.

Create space and observe

In a podcast with Peter Crone, Peter talks about this concept of welcoming ALL emotions – a bit like, welcoming ALL guests to the dinner party, not just the ones you like personally.

So why not give it a go? When you can imagine having any emotion that shows up sitting there in front of you, it gives you the space to observe and acknowledge before then deciding what to do with it.

Identifying the difficult emotion

If you’re struggling to ‘know’ how you feel, there are a few ways to unearth that emotion, feeling and / or driving thought:

Meditation: pick any guided meditation and notice what comes up during and / or after.

Journalling: put pen to paper and allow yourself to just write the first words that come out of your mind. They don’t need to make any sense, just allow the scrawl to flow and soon it will come together.

The ‘advanced’ LP: in this version of the LP, rather than saying ‘stop’ you say ‘I hear you.’ And then, when you move into the coach position, you ask yourself “What is going on for you right now?”

Now, when you move into the present position, you literally allow yourself to say anything and everything that comes up. So it could be something like “[This] is going on for me right now, and it’s really shit, it’s making me really unhappy.” As contradictory as this may feel, just go with it.

Now this is key – when you step into coach, all you need to say, is ” I hear you.” or “Of course you feel like that, I get it.” You then step back into present and feel what that feels like to have that acknowledgement.

There is a lot more I could say on this but the key is that, as the coach, you give yourself permission to feel the shitty stuff! Half the battle sometimes is the judgement we make of ourselves – there’s an underlying belief that if we ‘du bad feelings’ we are weak, or not allowed to feel them (which is utter rubbish!).

Ask the question

Once you know how you feel and what is going on; approaching it from a place of openness, curiosity and intrigue is where you want to be.

If needed, you can use the LP to get yourself into these ‘states.’ Take yourself back to a time when you really had a sense of openness, and being able to ‘hold’ certain feelings or difficult subjects / conversations etc. And then focus on curiosity and being intrigued about something.

You will find that when you start to operate in this way, you move from ‘Oh no!!! Disaster!!’ to ‘Interesting… I wonder what I can learn from this.’

Allow and acknowledge those feelings

Now, once you have those feelings, you absolutely need to allow yourself to feel them. But before you do, set a timeframe. Tell yourself – i’m going to allow this for a few hours, days, whatever – and THEN, I’m going to move on.

Once you’ve done that, it’s time to face the feelings:

• Notice it there but recognise it is not YOU – it is simply a sensation you are experiencing. It can be helpful to imagine you are ‘holding’ it in front of you.
• Recognise it is simply a bodily sensation. That’s all it is. And in fact, emotions only last 90 seconds if you allow them to just do their thing (Joan Rosenberg – see below). It is the activation of particular thoughts that will ensure those emotions continue. So if you are stepping into fear, or continuing to engage in the thought process that triggered off the thought originally, then you will continue to feel those feelings. BUT. If you can acknowledge and change the relationship you have with that emotion, therein starts the process of change.
• Ask the question “What is this here to teach me?” Notice what comes up and journal it all out. Journalling is an amazingly powerful way of helping us to release negative emotions but also understand them, and it gets us into a space where we can use our understanding to inform a more positive future.

When you’ve done that, you should be in a better place to start considering how it is you want to move forward, and what you need to do that.

Moving forwards

Once you have reached your ‘timeframe’ there are a couple of things you can do to move forwards:

• Recognise it is okay to feel that way but think differently. You can notice difficult feelings but continue moving froward from a place of optimism and future focus.
• Use the LP to focus on how you want to move forward.

Food for thought

So there we have it. Feel the emotions, observe what that experience brings, and allow yourself the space to pour it all out, before moving forward for the better.

If any of this is not clear, I am always available to talk it through – just message or email me and I will be happy to help 🙂

Otherwise, a couple of other resources:

• The ‘V’ word: on being vulnerable
• The Psychology of Feeling podcast episode with Joan Rosenberg and David Newell (credits to this podcast which influenced some of the ideas and content in this article)
• Peter Crone also has a number of podcasts on spotify that talk about how to deal with pain.