Handling Difficult Emotions

A short guided meditation to help you when you're feeling overwhelmed by difficult emotions, such as anger and fear. It's important to feel all of your emotions. This will allow you to feel some of your more negative emotions with ease.

Transcript

Human beings don't naturally enjoy feeling sad,

Angry,

Or scared,

And yet these emotions are a natural part of the human condition.

One tool for greatly increasing your happiness is to allow yourself to feel all of your feelings.

Think of it as though there's a giant fire hose inside of you that is constantly flowing with emotions of all sorts.

As it turns out,

When you cut off a feeling like sadness,

You also clamp down on your ability to feel happiness and joy.

Because all feelings come from the same place,

You can't just shut off part of the spigot and close off anger while still allowing yourself to only feel joy.

There is just one faucet,

And it's either on or off.

We'll do a short exercise today to allow you to feel some of your more negative emotions with ease.

Take a moment and,

Sitting quietly with your eyes closed,

Think of a person or a situation that is upsetting you right now.

Next,

See a radio dial in front of you,

And imagine yourself turning it up to a 10 to increase the feeling in your body as you recall this unpleasant moment.

Now,

Notice where you feel these sensations in your body.

Is it in your stomach,

Your chest,

Neck and shoulders,

Jaw?

Simply notice where you feel the sensations.

Next,

See yourself sitting on a park bench or porch swing,

Gently swinging back and forth.

You're in a very serene place,

And you feel comfortable and relaxed.

Now,

Feeling that emotion inside of you from the situation that's upsetting you,

I'd like for you to imagine or visualize that feeling from your body sitting next to you on this park bench or swing.

If this feeling had a color,

What color would the feeling be?

Does it have a texture or a shape?

See it or sense it sitting next to you now.

You may imagine it as a brown blob or a prickly,

Dark green mass.

See what texture and color show up.

Now,

I'd like for you to befriend this blob that is sitting next to you by gently putting your arm around it or reaching your hand out for it to take.

Take a moment and just sit on the bench together,

Peacefully,

With your arm around it or holding hands.

Perhaps gently swinging back and forth if you are on a porch swing or just sitting quietly on the bench.

You're simply getting to know this feeling and befriending it.

Turn to this shape now and look into its eyes as you sit quietly together and ask it,

What do you want from me?

What do you want from me?

Notice what it says.

See if you can give it whatever it is that it wants.

So if it wants to be loved,

Turn to it and say,

I love you or give it a hug.

Do this now.

Many of us think that pushing down our uncomfortable feelings is the way to make them go away,

But what you resist persists.

If you want to release unwelcome feelings,

The best way to do this is to love and accept those feelings.

Do this now,

Spending a few more seconds just sitting quietly with this feeling and accepting it just the way it is.

The next time you feel angry,

Sad,

Scared or any other way that you don't want to feel,

See if you can invite that feeling to rock with you,

To sit next to you quietly for a few moments and just hang out.

Whenever you're ready,

Get up and start your day.

If you're still with us,

A great way to transition back into your day is by drinking a glass of water.

Namaste.

.

Reviews

"IF YOU'RE STILL WITH US..." 😅 YES, I'M STILL ALIVE 😂

I found this exercise to be calming and very helpful. Thank you 🙏🏽💜

This helped me a lot. I was unable to forgot the insult. Now I found right meditation. Thank you 🙏

I love the analogies in this. It really helped me to understand my feelings and how to handle them. Thank you.

I am loving your insights and meditations Vanessa. I’m also doing your 30 day course that is truly life changing. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I’ve felt such a profound shift in my soul.

I’m really hoping that you’ll do some ‘live’ events at a time when we Australians can tune in 🌻🙏🥰

Thank you for this message…. What you resist- persist… I will use it to help me deal with those difficult feelings 🙏💫namaste ⭐️

That was amazing! I am a big one for stuffing down feelings and it was incredible to open my heart! Thank you!

Wonderful way to address uncomfortable, undesirable emotions! Thank you🙏

Just what I needed 🙏

Very helpful! Thinking about thoughts in this way of acceptance and love seems to help.

Great meditation. I did it in hope rather than expectation of feeling better and more able to cope. I am really grateful for this meditation because it has helped me to recognise the reasons for my feelings of frustration and anger at the world and I see that they are my mind trying to cope. The emotions are mis guided but they come from a good place.
I hope this makes sense.
Thank you.
James

Very touching and intense meditation

2016

Great mediation. Thank you 🙏🏾 4/20/20

Thank you, just what I needed. The idea of the one hose streaming all types of emotions was really powerful and helped me remember that all emotions are part of being human. Thank you so much!

I'm surprised I was able to do this but itwas super helpful. We have a swing that hangs from our oak tree in our front yard and so I imagined what she said to do in that swing which I consider a very healing place on our property. I imagined a dark red and black little being, kind of blobby, but with it's head hung in shame and sadness around its resentments and fears sitting next to me. And checking in with my body I realized that my posture guards my heart and this little being was as dark as the blood that goes through my veins, lots of symbolism. But I was able to put it on my lap and rock it. the acceptance and compassion for it definitely helped rather than pushing it away and rejection which just feeds the fear and consequently the anger.

Namaste 🙏 This is an incredibly helpful practice. Thank you💕

Really help me all the way around today thank you so much

Thank you so much for this incredibly effective meditation Vanessa! I’ve spent 37 years going out of my way to avoid feeling anything remotely negative and in just 6 minutes, you’ve given me the much-needed tools to change that, thank you! ❤️

Mmm this is GOoD
🙏🏻❤🏳

Informative and helpful