How to manage your feelings without shutting down or blowing up
We often think of “managing our feelings” as something that involves controlling them — getting a grip, calming down, moving on. But the reality is more complex — and far more useful.
The way through a difficult feeling is not around it, but through it. That idea shows up again and again in the work I do with clients — the moment someone stops trying to argue their way out of an emotion and instead lets themselves actually feel it is almost always the moment something shifts. Either the feeling changes – or their relationship to the feeling does. Emotions aren’t static to be managed away. They’re information. And the way we resist them tends to cause far more suffering than the feelings themselves.