What It Really Means to "Sit with Feelings" — And Why It's So Hard (But Worth It).

If you’ve spent any time in therapy spaces, you’ve likely heard the phrase “sit with your feelings.” On the surface, it sounds simple — just feel what you feel, right? But for many of us, especially when those feelings are uncomfortable or intense, sitting with them can feel impossible. Instead, we tend to distract, numb, or react — anything to avoid fully experiencing what’s happening inside us.

So what does it actually mean to "sit with feelings," and why is it such an essential part of emotional health? Let’s break it down.

Sitting with Feelings vs. Acting on Urges

First, let’s clarify a huge misconception: Sitting with a feeling is not the same thing as acting on the urges that feeling brings up. For example, imagine you're feeling intense anxiety before a social event. The feeling itself is a natural emotional response. But the urge might be to cancel plans, avoid, or numb out in some way (scrolling, drinking, overworking, etc.). Sitting with the feeling would mean acknowledging, “I’m feeling anxious right now,” and allowing yourself to notice the sensations in your body without trying to push them away or immediately fix them.

Acting on the urge, however, would be giving into the anxiety by canceling plans, avoiding the event, or distracting yourself so thoroughly that you don’t even let yourself notice the feeling. Similarly, if you’re feeling anger, sitting with that anger doesn’t mean lashing out at someone or sending that rage-fueled text. It means acknowledging the anger, noticing what it feels like in your body, and allowing it to exist without letting it drive your behavior.

Sitting with feelings is a learned skill — not something we’re born knowing how to do. If no one ever modeled how to feel emotions without shutting them down, lashing out, or avoiding them, it makes sense that this feels hard now. Maybe you grew up in an environment where emotions were dismissed, punished, or ignored, so your system learned to see feelings as dangerous, overwhelming, or shameful. The good news? Just like any other skill, learning to sit with feelings takes practice — and it’s never too late to start. You’re not "bad" at feelings — you may have just never been shown how to be with them safely.

Acknowledging a Feeling: What Does It Look Like?

Acknowledging a feeling involves several key steps:

1. Naming it — “I’m feeling sad,” or “I’m feeling overwhelmed.” Naming helps create a little distance between you and the feeling, giving you space to observe rather than react.

2. Locating it in the body — Often, feelings show up as physical sensations: tight chest, racing heart, stomach knots, heaviness. You might ask yourself, “Where do I feel this in my body?”

3. Staying present with it — Instead of jumping to fix, distract, or avoid, you stay with the feeling for a few minutes, like sitting beside a friend in distress. You might say internally, “It makes sense I feel this way right now.”

4. Practicing self-compassion — Offering yourself kindness, such as “This is hard, but I’m allowed to feel this.”

This practice builds emotional resilience. It teaches you that feelings are temporary experiences, not emergencies requiring immediate action.

Why Sitting with Feelings Feels So Hard: The Role of Habituation

For many of us, sitting with feelings is difficult because it hasn’t been safe to do so in the past. Maybe you grew up in an environment where big feelings were punished, dismissed, or ignored. Maybe you’ve had experiences where certain emotions felt dangerous.

This is where habituation comes in. Habituation is a psychological process where, over time, repeated exposure to something reduces our emotional reaction to it. It's the same principle that makes scary movies less frightening the more you watch them or makes a cold pool feel warmer after you've been in it a while.

When we sit with feelings (rather than acting on urges or avoiding them), we are engaging in emotional habituation. We’re teaching our nervous system that the feeling itself — while uncomfortable — isn’t dangerous. Over time, this repeated practice helps the feeling lose some of its intensity and power over us. It’s a process of learning safety in emotions.

For example, someone who feels panic at every sign of sadness may, through repeated practice of sitting with sadness, begin to notice that sadness comes and goes — and that they can handle it. The body learns, “Oh, this isn’t going to destroy me. I can survive this.”

Learning Safety in Emotions

When we sit with feelings, we teach ourselves that emotions are not threats. They are messengers, telling us something about what we’re experiencing. If we always avoid or act on urges, we miss the opportunity to learn that feelings peak and pass. But if we sit with them, we begin to trust that:

• We can tolerate discomfort.

• We are not at the mercy of every feeling.

• We don’t need to fear our internal world.

  
  

Over time, this increases our emotional flexibility and resilience. Instead of fearing sadness, anxiety, or anger, we begin to see them as part of being human — things we can navigate, not things that control us.

A Final Thought

Sitting with feelings doesn’t mean liking them or wanting them to stay forever. It means accepting that they’re here — and that we can handle their presence without immediately trying to make them go away. The next time a tough feeling shows up, what would it be like to pause and say, “Okay, I see you. You can be here. I’m listening.” You might be surprised how much strength and peace grows from simply allowing yourself to feel.