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Willingness Aka How to Feel Your Feelings and Emotions - Therapy in a Nutshell

4 min read

These are all notes from the following YouTube video, so you’re welcome to watch that to get the info directly from the source if you’d like! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cFhhUuMEW8

Steps:

  1. Describe what you’re feeling instead of judging
    1. All core emotions serve a purpose, instead of saying good/bad say pleasant, unpleasant, cold, hot, heavy, light
    2. Willingness is not saying I want to feel pain, it’s saying this is what I’m feeling right now so I might as well tune in and experience it. And this is the process that’s most likely to free you from intense painful experiences
  2. Be curious, practice exploring a healthy relationship to your emotions and sensations
    1. Curiosity is the antidote to worry, so if you explore with curiosity the worry should slowly melt away
    2. “Oh hi anxiety, do you have anything to say before we move on?”
    3. Figure out what the emotion feels like in your body, where is it located?
      1. Does it have a color?
      2. Does it have a sound?
      3. Does it change over time?
    4. This isn’t about figuring out the why with some childhood explanation (overanalyzing is a form of avoidance), it’s about the willingness to stay in the present moment and experience
    5. Instead of holding the brick of emotions far away (hard to do, arm gets tired), be curious and pull it in close and feel it (easier to hold in your lap)
    6. Stop struggling against the emotion and instead put your energy toward embracing it
  3. Be present
    1. It’s natural to worry about how long will this last, what if this lasts forever, etc. But instead just think “it is what it is right now” and then get back in your body, be curious, name and describe
  4. Get back in your body
    1. Sometimes it helps to put your hand where you’re feeling the emotion and breathe space into it, imagine lightness flowing into your emotions
    2. Notice muscle tension, expand awareness into other parts of your body/other sensations
    3. Experiment with inviting your emotions to get worse, “bring it on anxiety, do your worst. You can be uncomfortable, but you can’t damage me.” This is called boiling the kettle. When you realize the emotions can’t actually hurt you they lose their power over you
  5. Be compassionate
    1. “How am I treating my body and my anxiety, am I being kind?”
    2. The emotions may not feel good, but being mean to them will make it worse
    3. So say to your emotions “take as much time as you need”
    4. Lean in and be gentle and empathetic and fully accepting with your emotions, like hugging a loved one when they’re hurt
  6. Watch out for your “stories”
    1. All humans have these: what’s wrong with me, is this emotions telling me something, etc, etc.
    2. It’s okay to explore that and ask if your emotions are asking you to change something/etc. As the thoughts come up just acknowledge them and move on, don’t dwell on them or overthink them
    3. Overthinking can be a form of avoidance, so shift attention away from stories and back to your body
    4. What you’re feeling right now is unpleasant but it doesn’t make it bad. Feeling an unpleasant emotion doesn’t hurt you, struggling against it does
    5. You are the CEO of your brain, you aren’t in control of what thoughts/sensations come up, but you get to choose what you focus on, and when you focus on something it gets louder. So the key is to acknowledge the unpleasant emotions as they pop up, and then choose what to focus on (sometimes it’ll be the unpleasant emotion because you want to process it, sometimes it will be something else)
      1. When you constantly scan yourself for “how’s my anxiety today” and put importance on that all the time you tell your brain that’s the most important thing and your brain will put more energy toward it
  7. Shift your focus to something that’s more important to you
    1. Whether that’s peace or calm or being a kind person or something else, once you’ve acknowledged the painful sensation deliberately focus your energy back toward something you care about. This isn’t avoidance or distraction, it’s deliberately putting your mental energy toward something you care about once you’ve acknowledge the unpleasant emotion

Can practice willingness by doing an uncomfortable thing and monitoring your emotions (like holding an ice cube or doing a wall sit)

This worked in some pretty major ways for me, especially when combined with deliberate idle time aka not listening to music/podcasts re: How To Move On - Dr. K

My Experience with Willingness to Feel

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