Welcome your emotions by giving them space without judgment

Are there mornings when you wake up and feel flat? Or perhaps there are other times of the day you notice something? Not a crisis. Nothing feels quite wrong, but nothing feels quite right either.  Maybe you catch yourself with thoughts like ‘Why do I feel like this?’ or ‘What’s wrong with me?’ It could be a whole range of different thoughts and questions, but what they often have in common is a more subtle, deeper question: ‘Should I be feeling this way at all?’  In effect, this question acts like some kind of emotional quality control that checks every feeling for signs of malfunction. And it’s exhausting.

Somewhere along the way, we learned that certain feelings are acceptable, and others are ‘problems’. There’s the more comfortable range: calm, upbeat, grateful, focused, ‘regulated’. And then there’s everything else: boredom, sadness, shame, frustration, numbness, doubt, and the assumption that they need managing. Or even that we need managing. But what if feeling low, anxious, unfocused, or just emotionally ‘off’ isn’t a glitch in the system? What if it’s not a sign that something’s wrong? What if it’s just life, moving with us and through us?

One way to consider this whole area is to relate to emotions like we do to weather. Not good or bad, just present. Sometimes unpredictable. Sometimes inconvenient. Sometimes breathtaking. Sometimes grey. We don’t ask ourselves what we’re doing wrong when it’s raining. And yet when sadness rolls in or we feel flattened by a fog we can’t name, so many of us turn on ourselves. Try to fix. Or figure it out. Or override. But what if we could just notice? Not with analysis or detachment, but by being in it, alongside it. What if we didn’t have to name it, fix it, or understand it - just allow it?

This isn’t about liking every emotion. Or wallowing. Or getting lost in the story. It’s about becoming tolerant of the presence of discomfort without needing to run from it. We can start with small steps. Pause when we notice we're distracting ourselves. Focus on our breathing instead of reacting. Sometimes it means staying with discomfort a few moments longer than we normally would. Letting it rise. Seeing what it might say if we stopped shutting it down.

That kind of enquiry isn’t intellectual - it’s relational. We’re not analysing our emotions. We’re listening to them. The impulse to ‘fix’ how we feel often comes from discomfort, anxiety and even panic. From the idea that being emotionally messy is unsafe, unattractive, or unacceptable. But what if that’s not true? What if we’re allowed to feel weird, heavy, irritable or lonely, without translating that into a story about us? Or our value and worth? And, what if the very act of allowing those feelings is what starts to shift things - not because we’re trying to force anything to shift, but because we’ve stopped pushing against what’s already there?

There is power in unlearning a belief that we need to be consistent, calm, and emotionally presentable in order to be acceptable to others – and to ourselves. That anything else means we’re falling short. Emotional fluctuations are part of being human. Your moods will change. Your emotions may surprise you. You may wake up some days not knowing why you feel the way you do. Practicing being with ourselves - especially when we’d rather not – can be challenging.  It might sound straightforward, but it’s not always easy. It takes courage to feel deeply without needing an answer or to fix something - or someone. It requires us to be vulnerable and sit with what we don’t yet understand. And there is no courage without vulnerability.

But over time, that practice builds something stronger. Not perfect. Not always stable. But real. A kind of rootedness that comes from no longer needing to be anyone else. Or your interpretation of a more ‘together’ version of you. Next time your mood drops, or an unexpected wave moves through, try pausing before jumping into fixing mode. Maybe even speak out loud: This is allowed. This is normal. I can be with this. See what happens. Not because it will make the feeling go away, but because over time, you will begin to see more fully how extraordinary you already are!

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