How to feel your feelings

6 STEPS TO PROCESS YOUR EMOTIONS IN A HEALTHY WAY

By Kristina Benoist

(Adam Cao / Unsplash)

Imagine you’re having a conversation with a friend, and it quickly goes from just a disagreement over something small to a full-blown argument. You leave the conversation feeling angry, upset, hurt, confused, maybe even embarrassed or guilty. 

It can feel overwhelming to experience an intense emotion like that, and it’s not something you just walk away and forget about. That can happen in so many different situations, relationships, life events, and most of us aren’t really ever taught how to process those emotions. In mental health, the phrase “feel your feelings” is really common, and it’s definitely important, but it’s also important to not get stuck in those intense emotions if you can avoid it. 

So how do you feel those emotions, process them, and move on in a healthy way? Next time you’re overwhelmed with your feelings,  follow these steps to help you process.   

1

Find a quiet space. The most important thing to do is to step away from whatever person, situation, conversation, event, place — whatever it is — that caused these really intense emotions to come at you in the first place. Sometimes, it’s not easy to walk away, but it’s important to find a quiet, hopefully, comfortable space, to process what you’re feeling.  

2

Let yourself feel it. This is the “feel your feelings'' part. If you need to cry, go ahead and have a good cry sesh. If you need to yell into your pillow or something to get out your anger, let out a good scream. Research shows that letting yourself express your emotions can actually relieve stress and help you self-soothe. When you try and hold those feelings in, they end up catching up to you later anyway, so let it out ASAP. 

3

Focus on taking slow, deep breaths. It’s normal to feel these emotions physically. Your body reacts to whatever you’re going through. Maybe your heart is pounding, you’re sweaty or shaky, you feel like you’re going to throw up.  So your next step is to trick your body into feeling a little calmer, and research shows that you can do that just with the magic of your breath. 

Somatic therapist Aimee Falchuk recommends trying it like this: “Take a deep breath so your belly expands into your hand. Bring the breath all the way up through the nose and then allow yourself a long deep exhale. Focus on the exhale. As you do this, your body (and mind) should start to calm down.”

4

Figure out your thoughts. This is when you understand what’s actually going through your head and where your emotions are coming from. Research shows that when you verbalize your emotions, you feel better. So really ask yourself what you’re thinking and feeling. 

“Try writing down the emotions that you are experiencing and pairing them with the thoughts that are going with these emotions,” says therapist Imani Tutt. “This can help you organize how you feel, rationalize your thoughts, and develop coping mechanisms.” 

It can be a huge mental release to write out your thoughts instead of letting them just race around your head.

5

Take some action. If you’re feeling up for it, this is when you start to figure out what your next step is — it’s okay if this doesn’t happen immediately. This is probably the most difficult part, but studies actually show that it’s also one of the most important parts of processing your emotions and moving on. So maybe you’ve written out your thoughts, and you realize your emotions were triggered because of something that’s happened to you in the past. Maybe now you see that you need to set a boundary to prevent something from happening in the future. Or all of it could be signaling that you need to talk to someone — a friend, a family member, a therapist, a doctor — about something bigger that may be going on in your life.

6

Validate your experience. Your emotions are completely normal. Everyone experiences them at some point. Hopefully, you’ll find some clarity in taking the time to process your emotions and make sure that you don’t doubt yourself or minimize your experience as you’re processing. One study shows that accepting, processing, and validating your emotional experiences actually can lead to a better overall mood in people. Your thoughts, your feelings, and your emotions are valid — no matter what.