COURSE

Dealing With Difficult Emotions With Self-Compassion

Emotions are our drivers, the fuel that fires the fullness of our humanity, the quality of our everyday life. Emotions inspire us, sometimes they frighten us and we find ourselves fighting them. In this course, I will guide you through reflection on the five key human Emotions, and you will learn simple interactive and mindful practices to help you understand more fully your emotional world. When you are congruent in this aspect of life, mind, body and spirit aligned, you can become easier with expression of real, heartfelt emotion, embracing your wholeness, and coming home to yourself with love and acceptance.

Grounded Stress Energy Secular Mindfulness Open Awareness Happiness Health & Happiness Stress & Anxiety Spiritual Secular Mindfulness

Meet your Teacher

Jan Russell

Faro District, Portugal

Dr Jan Russell is a lifelong coach, counsellor, writer and teacher of NeuroLinguistics. She holds her PhD from Durham UK in Counselling, and her work is recognised through various publications and honorary roles. Importantly, she is a woman who is a grandmother, a mother, a life partner, an aunty, friend and crone. She continues to learn throughout life and is an artist who loves music and dance. Jan believes that all people are born equal, and that it is a birthright to find physical and mental safety and well being. She has an ethic of accessibility, and is delighted to have chosen a profession which enables others while being fulfilling for her. You will find Jan's work grounded in psychology, mindfulness, and a huge portion of down to earth wisdom with a touch of humour.

6 Days

2.8k students

4.8 stars

13 min / day

Grounded

English

Lesson 1

Feeling Fear And Moving Through

Fear is one of our most primal instincts, and can become a source of our own power and safety, or a force of suppression. In this first lesson, you will explore and understand more deeply how fear can be harnessed to inform you and to empower yourself. You will hear some talk on the nature of fear, it's physiological roots and purpose, and also learn some tools to be able to sit with your fear and recognised the learning that it brings.

Lesson 2

Sadness And The Calming Of Our Inner Selves

Sadness is an emotion that invites pause. We feel sad when there are changes, endings, maybe disappointments. It is a time to stop the rush of life, to release the pent up feelings of the past and the now, to make space for the next phase of life. When we honour sadness, we can liberate our state and allow ourselves to prepare for moving on. An interactive talk and shared practice.

Lesson 3

Un Shaming And Self Liberation

Shame is a challenging emotion to navigate, often instilled in our deep structure from times gone past. In this session, you will explore what shame means and identify ways to face it and let it go. Shame invites a sense of responsibility, yet too often feeling ashamed is a result of someone else's abuse of responsibility. You will gain through this interactive talk an awareness of some tools to deal with shame, and some gentle suggestions to support yourself to let shame go.

Lesson 4

Anger As Energy

Anger is one of the primal emotions that carries great energy. It is also one which receives a lot of attention socially. Anger, appropriately expressed, is one of the most pivotal emotions in change and transformation. In this session, you will find tools to support you to allow yourself to feel anger, and to express it in ways which match your intention and your values. Interactive talk with guided practice.

Lesson 5

Embracing Joy And Happiness

In this session, we take a trip around the principles and methods of what makes us happy, and you will learn tools to take with you to increase your sense of purposeful happiness. Joy is a many splendoured state, and is likely to be present in glimpses on an every day basis, as well as attached to specific events. You will find ways to increase your joy and your happiness level by making certain shifts in practices.

Lesson 6

Affirming Your Allowance: Integrating The Experience Of Your Emotional World

Oftentimes, we can find ourselves feeling an unwanted emotion about what we feel, a type of double bind. In this closing session, you will hear a brief summary of the areas we have covered followed by an active guided mindful practice, a tool which you can review over and over and which helps you to move to full self acceptance of your freedom to express.

4.8 (112)

Recent Reviews

Gretelg2

July 4, 2025

Thank you so much for sharing this course. 🙏🏻✨💜

Patricia

May 17, 2025

What I found very useful is understanding when strong emotions can steer you in the right direction and they are not something to ignore or try and get away from. That was very big for me when considering the emotion Shame. Great insight from the course.

kenneth

May 5, 2025

New to Insight Timer. This 6 day course was extremely powerful. Looking forward to listening to more of your work, thank you :)

Kara

May 3, 2025

This was very helpful. It gave me permission to feel emotions that I tend to push away. Remarkably, when you allow them they go away sooner. I also enjoyed learning about why the emotions might be trying to tell you. Looking at them as teachers instead of negative thoughts is also very helpful.

Orte

March 4, 2025

Its fabulous and do helpful!

Don

January 2, 2025

Jan, That was simply phenomenal! And it appeared at exactly the right time in my life. I will be returning again and again. Thank you so much for bringing this to life in Insight Timer. Blessings and gratitude. . Don W.

Kim

December 6, 2024

Such a powerful course! Dr Russell clearly has the professional knowledge combined with a heart for healing herself and others. Blessings

Sarah

October 20, 2024

I found this course to be very helpful and I already feel it has helped me in accepting my difficult emotions. I am going to be doing it again.

Denise

September 18, 2024

The somatic visceral emotions that I feel are okay. I was taught to repress EVERYTHING related to my feelings. You can imagine how that worked for me. The idea that using motion and physically experiencing my emotions has been quite healing. Thank you, Dr Russell.

Mardene

June 5, 2024

Very helpful and thought provoking! I reallly love your approach to every day situations! Thank you🙏🏻

Jarmila

May 29, 2024

Thanx.

Teresa

February 13, 2024

Dear Dr. Russell, I found your course helpful and hopeful, especially the somatic exercise in the last lesson. I will be repeating this course, and I am grateful. Thank you. Sending every good wish for your happiness and wellbeing.

Deneen

January 19, 2024

Wonderful course! I like the multifaceted approach to understanding the embodiment of the emotional states. The identification of gestures to represent the three body states in the last session really resonated with me and I was pleasantly surprised how quickly and easily my body provided the gestures. Thank you!

Renee

December 11, 2023

Another great course! Thank you for sharing your courses here on Insight Timer.

Sue

December 7, 2023

Thank you

Karey

December 6, 2023

Such a useful course. I’m doing it again . Thank you.🙏🏻

Chelsea

November 16, 2023

Great course!

Susan

November 12, 2023

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