Softening Into Difficult Emotions

A practice for approaching and allowing difficult emotions in your own time. Based off the work of Drs. Christopher Germer, PhD and Kristen Neff, PhD.

Transcript

Welcome to the Soften Soothe and Allow practice.

This practice is intended for dealing with difficult emotions.

So if you're feeling at peace or happy and content right now,

Or even neutral,

You may want to choose to do another practice at this time.

Sitting in a comfortable position that allows you to be relaxed and alert and awake.

Feeling free to close your eyes or keep them open.

And beginning by taking a few deep and slow breaths.

Allowing some of the tension or stress you're having now just to be breathed out of the body.

A few long and deep and slow breaths.

And perhaps visualizing tension,

Stress moving out of the body.

And letting the breath now just to return to normal.

And finding the breath wherever you're feeling it most prominently in the body.

At the belly rising and falling.

At the chest expanding and contracting.

Or maybe the nostrils with air coming in and out of the nostrils breath by breath.

Just noticing what the breath feels like,

Connecting with this felt sense of breathing.

And releasing awareness from the breath now and calling to mind the situation that's causing you to feel stress.

Perhaps you're feeling bad about yourself,

You may have made some mistake.

Maybe you're feeling some difficult emotion towards someone else or a stressful circumstance.

Calling to mind the details of this situation,

Maybe even visualizing how things played out.

Without getting caught up in the story here,

Just refreshing the mind of what happened.

And noticing how the situation makes you feel.

And we're going to be working with emotions in the body now,

Seeing if we can bring some nurturing tenderness to our pain by working with physical sensations in the body.

So acknowledging now what emotions you're having in response to this painful situation.

Perhaps there's more than one emotion too.

Just labeling the emotions as you become aware of them.

Anger,

Sadness,

Guilt,

Shame,

Fear,

Grief.

What emotions are you noticing?

And then choosing the emotion that you're feeling the most strongly in the body.

Seeing if you can tell where you're feeling this emotion in the body.

Perhaps exploring the regions of the body where we often carry emotions in the belly,

The chest,

Throat,

Face.

And seeing if you can describe the very sensations of emotion to yourself.

Is there a tightness,

Heat,

Tingling,

Cold,

Numb,

Sharpness,

Throbbing?

Just labeling what sensations are here,

Doing the best you can.

And because this is a very painful emotion,

You may notice a completely normal tendency to want to push this feeling away,

To fight against it or resist it,

To try not to feel it.

And noticing these tendencies,

Seeing if you can be aware of the emotion in the body.

Try to soften around it with the breath.

Perhaps using the out-breath to move towards and open up to and soften into the sensations of the emotion.

If the emotion is quite intense or overwhelming,

Or you're noticing lots of resistance to feeling this,

Maybe just focusing on the edges of the emotion.

Softening around the borders of the emotion.

Breathing,

Being kind,

Being patient with yourself,

And softening.

At the same time,

Seeing if you can bring some compassion to yourself,

Acknowledging that you're in pain.

This hurts.

This is suffering.

And maybe also acknowledging that everyone feels pain.

You are not alone in feeling this way.

This is the human experience.

You are human.

And taking your hand and gently touching the part of your body where you're feeling the emotion.

Allowing your touch to be gentle and nurturing,

Being very kind and very sensitive with yourself.

Maybe caressing this region with the tips of the fingers,

The palm.

And as you gently bring touch to yourself,

Trying to soothe the difficult emotion.

Telling yourself that it's really difficult to feel this way.

If you're comfortable,

Perhaps saying to yourself,

Honey,

I'm so sorry you feel this way.

Honey,

This really hurts.

You're allowed to feel this.

This is natural.

Soothing and comforting yourself for the fact that this hurts.

This is painful.

And then seeing if you can just allow the sensations of the emotion to just be there.

Letting yourself feel exactly as you feel.

This is just how it is right now.

You're safe.

It's okay.

You're not in any danger.

This is just an emotion.

Allowing it to be there as it is.

And also noticing if the emotion is changing at all.

If you notice any changes in the intensity or quality of the emotion.

Perhaps the location of the emotion in the body changes.

And for the next several moments,

If you're noticing that the emotion is still very strong,

Or perhaps you're noticing a new painful emotion coming up,

Then repeating these three steps of softening,

Opening up to softening the edges of the emotion.

Soothing the body with your touch.

Soothing yourself for your difficulty in feeling this way with a lot of kindness and compassion.

And then just allowing the emotion to be there.

It's okay to feel this way.

It's safe to feel this.

And if you find the mind going into a thinking mind or into a story,

Analyzing your situation,

This is okay too.

This is very normal.

So when you notice this,

Just bringing awareness back into what the emotion feels like in the body.

How it's sitting within the body.

Perhaps noticing if any sensations of peace or relaxation arise.

And if so,

Then being with those sensations too.

And if strong,

Painful emotion is still present.

Staying with the three steps of softening,

Soothing,

And allowing.

Trusting in the process of being here for yourself in this time.

If you're finding the mind drifting off into thought or you're finding yourself checking out of your emotional experience.

Seeing if you can come back into contact with a difficult situation,

The source of your pain.

And then working with emotions in the body with gentleness and tenderness.

Softening,

Soothing,

And allowing.

And now dropping awareness from this emotion sensation.

And expanding your awareness to take in your whole body.

The whole multitude of sensations and just letting your awareness rest here in your physical being.

And placing your hand gently over your heart and getting in touch with whatever feelings are here now.

Whatever they are.

Rawness,

Numbness,

Tenderness,

Kindness,

Openness,

Closeness.

Whatever's here.

And thanking yourself for taking this time to be here for you.

This is an act of self-love.

This is an act of self-love.

Reviews

Good meditation! Calm slow voice. For those who (like me) have misophonia with mouth sounds as a trigger, you might either need to play some white or impulse noise simultaneously or sadly, skip this meditation.

Just superb. I will use this regularly I am sure. Fantastic resource. Thank you 💕

What a compassionate and mindful way to manage challenging emotion🙂.. and becoming aware of the thoughts that are connected to the emotion.
Thank you for keeping a lovely rhythm of guidance and silence for self discovery to occur🌟🙏🏼

This is a good meditation for softening and accepting difficult emotions; allowing a sense of calm to move through the body.

Very helpful! Thank you ❤

I was able to release to fearful and anger emotions from a trigger

This is exceptionally helpful to use if you're under-going any kind of trauma therapy, as I am. It resonated so deeply for me and reminded me of the self compassion we all so desperately need and how to hold and accept all manner of emotions within us, yet at the same time to not allow them to take hold and overwhelm. I hope to use this often. So glad I found this, thank you!

This was very helpful for me. Thank you.

A beautifully led self-compassion practice

Thank you! The self soothing practice was really helpful.

Excellent! Thank you! Great exercise from Kristen Neff's Self-Compassion book. 😀❤ Happy Valentine"s Day! 😊🎈

Simple and heartfelt.

Beautifully done! 🙏🏻

Extremely helpful

Yes this is one I have bookmarked.

Peaceful and calming.

This was an absolutely wonderful experience. A very needed reminder to be compassionate with myself in the midst of pain instead of pushing it away.

Very helpful. Thank you.🙏