Meeting your feelings with sensitivity and compassion

If a child came to you and said, “I’m feeling sad today” I have a feeling your response wouldn’t be “ugh, get it together, you need to get to work!” You would likely welcome that little one into your arms for a big hug and offer kindness and reassurance.

And yet, when it comes to our own feelings, we often are in a pattern of responding to ourselves with the former. I get, I’ve done it, (and I still do when I’m not mindful).

What I want to offer, is a way to respond to yourself with the sensitivity and kindness you would offer to a child, that you can give to yourself.

Feelings can be hard. All of us have days when we feel low energy, we feel more sensitive than usual, when we feel lonely, or angry, or frustrated.

Rather than trying to ‘turn it around’ and get out of that feeling as quickly as possible, we can respond to ourselves another way.

We can respond by nurturing ourselves just as we are.

The question to ask ourselves is “how can I take really really good care of myself while I’m feeling…”

The goal is not to suppress our emotions, or even to control our emotions, but to have the capacity to care for ourselves no matter what we feel.

This acceptance helps us regulate our nervous systems, practice self-compassion and self-awareness in a really embodied way, and engage in self-care in a way that is actually about *caring* for ourselves.

It could be as simple as acknowledging that we’re having a hard time, and while most of us still have to do our lives (work, parenting, etc) even when we’re having a hard time, we can choose to not pile on with telling ourselves to ‘snap out of it.’

The paradoxical effect is that when we have more tolerance and acceptance for our emotional experiences, we no longer get so dysregulated by our fluctuations in emotions. Essentially, we’re not layering on shame or guilt about our feelings.

This idea of meeting your emotional experiences with a nurturing energy is abundant across the literature - it’s a the N in the RAIN compassion meditation created by Tara Brach, it’s part of the Internal Family Systems model and the idea of allow all parts of yourself to be there (no bad parts), it’s part of Somatic experiencing, and also the idea of re-parenting.

If it feels hard to offer yourself that kind of response, ask “if my friend came to me and said I’m feeling XYZ (frustrated, overwhelmed, down, etc) what would you offer them?”

Self-kindness in action can be as simple as acknowledging that you feel the way you feel and it’s hard, dressing yourself in comfy clothes, or making a nice cup of tea. Big actions are great too, vacations, spa days, etc, but in the day-to-day ebb and flow of emotions, we need to hold space for ourselves and nurture ourselves in the small day-to-day ways. For me, a hand on my heart, and a sigh, is a tiny gesture, like a hug to offer myself.

Wishing you a little bit of nurturing, however you need it today

 - Martha