We are programmed to run away from uncomfortable emotions and run after pleasurable ones.
Avoid the "low" and look for the "high".
That is why, when we feel bad, a TV series, social networks, a drink, a vice, are a "patch" that helps us to avoid seeing what we are feeling head on.
We don't really know how to do it.
Since we were children, we were not taught that this 'running away' and avoidance does not remove the emotions that 'contract' us, that make us feel bad: shame, guilt, sadness, anger, apathy, frustration, pride.
We start to accumulate them from a very early age because we don't know how to manage them, we don't know what to do with them when they appear, not to mention that voice that tells us "no one can know that you feel bad", or that what we are feeling implies weakness.
After years, they catharise and depression, illnesses, emotional crises arrive, because although we did not want to - or could not - see them, they never disappeared.
How do we deal with these emotions, how do we stop accumulating them?
When uncomfortable emotions arise, if instead of focusing on our thoughts - which tell us the story behind what we are feeling - we go to our body, we will realise that there is a physical sensation accompanying the emotion.
There is an energy moving or being suppressed.
Once the attention is in the body, if we "welcome" that sensation, we will notice that the accumulated energy begins to disperse.
Just recognising the sensation/emotion without resistance gives it the space to make its way out.
This is where the famous "letting go" comes from. Not from avoidance. Not from keeping busy so as not to think about it. Not from "giving it time".
When we welcome what we feel, ask ourselves the questions:
- Can I let it go?
- Do I want to let it go?
Even if the answer is "no", the feeling is already dissipating. And if it generates resistance, we can do the same with it. "Can I let go of the resistance?"
A book that explains this in detail and in all areas is "The Sedona Method" - by Hale Dwoskin.
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