There is an incredible power in feeling your authentic feelings and learning to sit with difficult emotions. Emotions that we are taught are wrong to have, take anger for example. As women, growing up, we are discouraged from feeling anger. It is unladylike and our feelings are wrong, we have reiterated to us time and time again. Over time, we learn not to have the emotion.

Up until recently, I never thought of myself as an angry person. That emotion just was not there for me. Even the time in my early twenties I had to leave my job due to harassment, I remember the next day feeling so numb. ‘Why aren’t I angry?’ I remember wondering. But I was numb. So freaking numb. Looking back, I had been conditioned out of anger. But there is powerful energy in anger, the energy to create productive change in our lives. If we can learn to sit with it and harness it instead of suppressing it or lashing out, it is so empowering!

When you can learn to sit with the difficult emotions and not be swayed to escape from them, the world is your oyster. You can cultivate such discipline from that. Imagine not needing to overeat, drink alcohol, spend money or any other activity with the intention of trying to feel better from it. Imagine not needing to suppress your emotion because you have the inner strength to sit with it and remain fully conscious to it, not suppressing how you truly feel.

It is okay to have these difficult emotions, they are part of life and to be honoured. Feel it for as long as it needs to be felt and feel free to do so. There are messages in these emotions that are worth listening to so you can be guided by them to change your life for the better. It is an act of love for yourself to provide yourself with the space and freedom to feel your emotions so they can be processed and released. When you don’t, you let them run your life as they consume you from the inside and that compounds the dysfunctional distraction strategies.

Your emotions might feel intense at first but they don’t stay that way forever. They come in waves, each wave decreasing in size. And as you do this, over time your emotions reframe themselves. Depression becomes grief which becomes nostalgia. Anxiety becomes nervousness which becomes excitement. Anger becomes empowerment. Resentment becomes freedom.

Sit with it. Breathe. There is gold here waiting to be found.