What Does It Mean to “Sit With” Your Emotions in Therapy?
If you’ve been in therapy for any length of time, you may have heard your therapist say something like, “Can we sit with that feeling for a moment?” Maybe you’ve nodded along, even though you weren’t entirely sure what they meant. Or maybe you’ve wondered what you are actually supposed to do when someone tells you to sit with an emotion. Are you supposed to close your eyes and focus on it? Think about where it came from? Let yourself cry? Stop trying to feel better?
These are completely reasonable questions. “Sitting with your emotions” is one of those phrases therapists use fairly often, but it can sound much more mysterious than it actually is.
When I use language like this with clients, I am usually not asking them to sit there and suffer through a difficult feeling, and I am certainly not asking them to make an emotion bigger or more intense than it already feels. More often, I’m inviting them to slow down enough to notice what is happening inside them without immediately needing to push it away, figure it out, fix it, explain it, or do something about it.
For many people, that is not something they have had much opportunity to practice.
We Often Learn to Do Something With Our Feelings
Most of us develop ways of responding to uncomfortable emotions long before we have the words to describe what we’re doing. Some people become very good at staying busy. When something hurts, they work more, clean, exercise, scroll, organize, help someone else, or find something else that needs their attention. Other people immediately start thinking. They replay conversations, analyze someone's tone, search for what they might have done wrong, or try to figure out exactly why they are feeling the way they do.
There are also people who have learned to talk themselves out of emotions before they have really had a chance to experience them. They tell themselves that it isn’t a big deal, that other people have it worse, that they are being too sensitive, or that they should simply be able to get over it. And some people respond to difficult emotions by taking action. They send the text, ask for reassurance, withdraw, apologize, confront someone, make a decision, or try to solve whatever seems to be causing the discomfort.
None of these responses automatically mean something is wrong with you. In fact, many of them probably developed for good reasons. At some point in your life, distracting yourself, staying busy, thinking things through, or taking action may have helped you feel more in control when something inside you felt uncertain or overwhelming.
The difficulty is that there is a difference between responding to an emotion and allowing yourself to experience an emotion. Sometimes therapy is a place where we begin to notice that difference.
Sitting With an Emotion Doesn’t Mean Doing Nothing
I think this is one of the most important things to understand about the phrase.
Sitting with an emotion doesn’t mean becoming passive or deciding that you shouldn’t take action when something needs to change. It means creating a little bit of space between having a feeling and immediately needing to do something about it.
You might notice that you’re hurt without immediately deciding what the other person meant. You might recognize that you’re angry without sending the message you’ve been drafting in your head. You might notice anxiety without immediately trying to convince yourself that everything is going to be okay. You might feel sadness without deciding that you need to understand exactly why you're sad before you’re allowed to feel it.
The emotion can be there, and you can be there too.
That sounds simple, but for someone who has spent years trying to manage, suppress, avoid, or explain their emotional experience, it can feel surprisingly unfamiliar. Sometimes the hardest part isn’t the emotion itself. It’s the belief that we have to do something about it immediately.
You Don’t Have to Like What You’re Feeling
Sitting with an emotion also doesn’t mean approving of it or deciding that whatever you’re feeling must be completely justified.
You don’t have to like being angry. You don’t have to agree with everything your fear is telling you. You don’t have to decide that your sadness means something terrible has happened. You don’t have to turn every emotion into a meaningful lesson.
Sometimes sitting with a feeling is as simple as being able to say, “I’m really hurt right now,” without immediately following it with, “But I shouldn’t be.”
That distinction can be surprisingly important.
An emotion is an experience. It is not necessarily an instruction. Feeling afraid doesn’t automatically mean that you are unsafe. Feeling guilty doesn’t always mean you’ve done something wrong. Feeling rejected doesn't necessarily mean that someone doesn't value you. Feeling angry doesn't automatically mean that you need to confront someone.
When we can make room for an emotion without immediately treating it as a command, we create more room to decide what we actually want to do. This is one of the things I often hope clients take away from this kind of work: you can take your feelings seriously without letting every feeling make the decision for you.
Sometimes You Don’t Even Know What You’re Feeling
Another part of sitting with emotions that doesn’t get talked about very much is that sometimes you genuinely don’t know what you’re feeling.
A client might say, “I don’t know. I just feel off,” and I don’t necessarily see that as a problem that needs to be solved right away. Sometimes that is simply where we begin. Maybe you know you’re irritable but aren’t sure why. Maybe you feel like crying and can’t explain it. Maybe you’re exhausted, restless, disconnected, or unusually quiet. Maybe you have spent so much time focusing on what everyone else needs that you’ve lost touch with what is happening inside you.
You don’t need to arrive in therapy with a perfectly labelled emotion.
Sometimes we begin by becoming curious about the experience itself. What do you notice in your body? Do you feel tense, heavy, restless, numb, tight, or unsettled? Does your mind keep returning to a particular thought? Do you notice an urge to move toward someone or away from them? Has something changed in your mood since a particular event?
We don’t have to answer all of these questions. Sometimes simply slowing down enough to notice is the first step. And interestingly, when we stop demanding that a feeling make sense immediately, we can sometimes understand it more clearly.
What Happens When You Stay With a Feeling?
One reason therapists encourage people to sit with emotions is because emotions are often more changeable than they initially feel.
When an emotion first arrives, it can feel like the whole story. I’m anxious, so something must be wrong. I’m angry, so someone must have done something terrible. I’m sad, so maybe I’m going to feel this way for a long time.
But when you stay with the experience for a little while, you may notice something else. The intensity might shift. Another feeling might appear underneath it. You might realize that what felt like anger was partly hurt, or that what looked like frustration was actually disappointment. You might notice that your anxiety is connected to uncertainty or that your irritation has been building because you’re exhausted and haven’t had much space for yourself.
Sometimes we discover that an emotion connects with something much older than the situation in front of us. Other times, we discover something much less dramatic: the feeling was uncomfortable, and then it changed.
That matters.
One of the things we can learn by sitting with emotions is that we don’t always have to make a feeling disappear in order for it to change.
Sometimes Thinking is a Way of Avoiding Feeling
This is something I see quite often in therapy. Someone may come in feeling frustrated because they “can’t stop overthinking” something. They have gone over the conversation a dozen times, considered every possible interpretation, and tried to figure out what the other person was thinking. Naturally, they want the overthinking to stop.
Sometimes, though, when we slow things down, we discover that all of that thinking is doing something for them.
If I keep analyzing what happened, I don’t have to feel how hurt I was. If I keep trying to figure out what someone meant, I don’t have to acknowledge how much I wanted to feel important to them. If I keep worrying about what might happen next, I don’t have to sit with the uncertainty I’m experiencing right now.
This doesn’t mean that overthinking is something you consciously chose or that you can simply decide to stop. Often, it is a very well-practiced way of trying to create safety or control when something emotional feels difficult to tolerate. So rather than simply asking, “How do I stop thinking about this?” therapy can sometimes invite a different question: “What might happen if we slowed down enough to notice what the thinking is helping you avoid feeling?”
That can be a very different conversation.
Sitting With an Emotion is Not the Same as Being Overwhelmed by it
This distinction is especially important because I would never want someone to hear “sit with your emotions” and interpret that as “make yourself stay in overwhelming distress.” There is a difference between being present with an emotion and being completely flooded by it.
If you are so overwhelmed that you can’t think clearly, feel grounded, or stay connected to what is happening around you, the answer may not be to sit in the emotion for longer. Sometimes the first step is creating enough safety and stability that you can come back into the present.
Therapy is not about proving how much emotional pain you can tolerate.
Sometimes we move closer to a feeling. Sometimes we take a little distance. Sometimes we talk about what happened. Sometimes we notice what is happening in your body. Sometimes we need to pause, breathe, have a glass of water, or even talk about something else for a few minutes.
There isn’t one correct way to experience an emotion. The goal isn’t to become someone who can tolerate anything. It is to develop a relationship with yourself where you can recognize what is happening and respond in a way that takes your needs and capacity into account.
You Can Feel Something Without Acting on It
For many people, this is one of the most useful parts of learning to sit with emotions.
You can be angry and not send the text.
You can feel anxious and still go to dinner.
You can feel jealous without immediately accusing someone.
You can feel rejected without deciding that you aren’t wanted.
You can feel the urge to withdraw without disappearing completely.
You can feel sad without deciding that something is wrong with you.
The feeling gets to exist, and you still get to choose what you do. This is part of what makes emotional awareness so different from simply trying to “control” your emotions. The goal isn’t necessarily to become calm as quickly as possible. Sometimes it is about becoming able to experience something uncomfortable without allowing that feeling to completely determine your behaviour.
That little space between feeling and acting can become incredibly valuable.
What if You Start Crying?
A lot of people worry about this in therapy. I often hear, “I don’t want to cry,” or “If I start crying, I’m not going to be able to stop.” Sometimes there is a fear that once an emotion is allowed in, it will become impossible to contain. But crying isn’t necessarily a sign that something has gone wrong. Sometimes it is simply one of the ways our bodies express something that has been held for a while.
You may cry and then realize you’re okay. You may cry without knowing exactly why. You may become emotional and then be able to talk about what is happening. And sometimes you may realize that you don’t want to go any further into something right now.
All of those experiences can be part of therapy. You don’t have to explain every tear. You don’t have to turn your emotion into a perfectly understandable story. And you don’t have to keep going simply because you've started.
Part of learning to sit with yourself is also learning that you can pay attention to your limits.
Sometimes Sitting With an Emotion Looks Very Ordinary
I think there can be an expectation that emotional work in therapy has to look profound or dramatic. Often, it doesn’t.
Sometimes sitting with an emotion means admitting that you are disappointed when you’ve been telling yourself you don’t care. Sometimes it means recognizing that you are lonely rather than immediately filling the silence with something to do. Sometimes it means noticing that you’re exhausted instead of criticizing yourself for not being productive enough. Sometimes it means saying, “Actually, that really hurt me,” after spending the entire week convincing yourself that it shouldn’t have.
There may not be a breakthrough.
There may not be a huge realization.
There may simply be a moment where you stop arguing with your own experience.
For someone who has spent years minimizing their feelings, distracting themselves from them, or criticizing themselves for having them, that can be meaningful in itself.
You Don’t Have to Understand an Emotion Before You Can Feel It
Many of us have learned to believe that if we can explain something, we can manage it. So when an emotion shows up, we immediately start searching for the reason.
Why am I like this? Why am I so upset? Why can't I just let this go? What is wrong with me?
Understanding yourself can absolutely be helpful. I spend a lot of time with clients helping them make sense of patterns, relationships, experiences, and emotional responses. But sometimes the pressure to understand can become another way of moving away from the actual experience.
You may not know why something hurts yet. You may not know why a particular interaction brought up such a strong reaction. You may not have a neat explanation for why you’re more emotional today than you were yesterday. You don’t have to solve the feeling before you’re allowed to experience it.
Sometimes understanding comes later, after we’ve given ourselves enough space to notice what was already there.
Learning to Sit With Yourself, Too
Perhaps the deeper part of this work isn’t only learning how to sit with difficult emotions. It is learning that you can stay with yourself while you’re having them. That can be a very different experience.
Instead of immediately thinking, “I shouldn’t feel this way,” there may eventually be room for, “Something in me is hurting right now.” Instead of asking, “Why am I so sensitive?” you might become curious about what the situation brought up for you. Instead of immediately abandoning yourself through distraction, criticism, reassurance-seeking, or overthinking, you begin to develop the ability to remain on your own side.
You don’t have to fix yourself for your feelings to deserve attention. You don’t have to make an emotion disappear to prove that you’re okay. And you don’t have to understand everything before you can respond to yourself with compassion.
That, to me, is often what is underneath the therapist phrase, “Let’s sit with that.”
It isn’t about becoming someone who feels everything all the time. It isn’t about getting stuck in sadness, anger, fear, or grief. And it certainly isn’t about forcing yourself to experience more pain than you’re ready to hold. It is about becoming a little more willing to notice what is happening inside you without immediately turning away from yourself because what you find is uncomfortable.
What Therapy Can Help You Learn About Your Emotions
Our relationship with emotions often has a history.
Maybe you grew up in a home where feelings weren’t talked about very much. Maybe you learned that being upset was inconvenient, anger was unsafe, sadness was weakness, or needing comfort meant you were too much. Maybe you became the person who stayed calm for everyone else. Maybe you learned very early that it was easier to take care of other people’s emotions than to make space for your own.
You may not even remember consciously deciding to respond to emotions this way. These patterns can become so familiar that they simply feel like who you are. Therapy can provide an opportunity to slow some of that down.
Together, we can become curious about what happens when an emotion comes up, what you learned to do with it, what you fear might happen if you allow yourself to feel it, and what you actually need in those moments. Sometimes that means getting closer to a feeling. Sometimes it means learning how to step back from it. Sometimes it means developing enough safety that you can finally allow yourself to acknowledge something you’ve been carrying for a long time.
The goal isn;t to become better at feeling bad. It may be to become less afraid of your own internal experience. To know that you can feel something difficult without immediately needing to escape it. To recognize that an emotion can be present without becoming your entire identity. And perhaps most importantly, to discover that you can stay connected to yourself even when what you’re feeling is uncomfortable.
If this resonates with you.
If the idea of “sitting with your emotions” sounds uncomfortable, confusing, or even a little impossible, that is something you can bring into therapy. You don’t need to already know how to do this before you walk through the door.
Therapy can be a place to learn, gradually and at your own pace, how to recognize your emotional experience, understand some of the patterns around it, and respond to yourself with more compassion rather than immediately trying to make the feeling disappear.
You don’t have to become someone who feels everything perfectly. You can simply begin by becoming a little more curious about what happens inside you - and learning that you don’t have to abandon yourself when difficult emotions show up.
If you’d like support exploring your emotional experience, you can learn more about our Individual Therapy services to see whether therapy might be a helpful place to begin!
Reach out today to take the first step toward feeling more understood, supported, and connected to yourself.
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Written by Tianna Home, RP, MACP
Registered Psychotherapist and Clinical Director at A Welcoming Home Psychotherapy
