Why Your Emotions Aren’t Problems to Solve
“If the only thing that people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.”
- Sydney Banks”
We go through all sorts of emotions throughout our day. Sometimes, it feels like we’ve run the entire emotional spectrum in the same time it takes Usain Bolt to run 100m.
But one of the biggest realisations I’ve had is that none of my emotions are problems. Surprising, right? We’ve been conditioned to see emotions like anxiety, worry, frustration, or sadness as things to fix, change, or get rid of.
But what if they weren’t?
What if they were simply part of life, no more threatening than a passing cloud? What if they didn’t need to be changed at all?
When uncomfortable emotions arise, we usually respond in one of three ways:
We deny them, trying to push them down and keep them hidden; we try to control them, forcing them out of our awareness; or we release them reactively, usually after they’ve built up over time.
It’s like our internal settings are set to deny, control, and react (in that order).
But here’s the missing piece: none of these responses involves simply feeling the emotion as it arises without doing anything about it. If we just let ourselves feel it, we let go of resistance, and the emotion moves through us naturally because we’re designed that way.
The feeling itself isn’t the problem; It’s our mental stories about the feeling that makes it bigger and scarier than it actually is. It’s our resistance that’s creating our suffering.
And here’s the best part:
If emotions aren’t problems, then there’s no need to find a solution.
We can finally let go of all the ways we try to fix, control or avoid them and allow ourselves to feel whatever arises. This is one of the most natural things we can do as human beings.
For much of my life, I struggled with depression, anxiety, and addiction. In my late twenties, I was desperately searching for external solutions to escape the internal feelings I believed were unsafe to sit with. I thought those emotions were wrong and they meant something was wrong with me. How could I have sat with them, given that story? It wasn’t my fault; it was simply the language I had learned in childhood. But it was a lie, and I suffered immensely because of it.
Today, I see emotions very differently:
They’re like passing weather patterns moving across the sky. And I am the sky, the space that can hold any emotion as it arises and naturally passes through. There’s nothing I need to do. These feelings are temporary experiences, not permanent parts of me. They’re not unsafe and they don’t mean anything about me.
How do you usually respond to uncomfortable emotions when they arise? Often, we distract ourselves, thinking, 'Nope, don’t wanna feel that!' So we head to the laundry to throw in a load, notice the floor needs vacuuming, grab our phone to zone out, or open the fridge and stare into it, hoping some magical fairy has stocked it with something new since we last checked 15 minutes ago.
But here’s the thing:
These avoidance tactics aren’t truly you. They’re just habits of the mind. Our minds are conditioned to pull us away from uncomfortable feelings because we’ve been taught to label them as 'unsafe' or 'wrong' and personalise them as if they define us in some way. What if none of that is true? What if these emotions are simply part of the human experience and completely harmless?
These habits aren’t a reflection of who you truly are. Who you truly are is the space and awareness behind those thoughts, the calm, steady presence that can hold any experience without judgment or fear.
Here’s a question I often ask my clients:
If your child or a child like a niece or nephew came to you feeling the way you’re feeling, what would you do? Most people say, “I’d hug them and tell them it’s going to be okay.” And when I ask, what is that an expression of? The answer is almost always “Love.” So, what if we treated ourselves the same way?
When we stop resisting (which, let’s be honest, is the exhausting part!), we rediscover the power of love and acceptance for ourselves. In that space, we give ourselves and all of our emotions what they truly need: to be seen and felt.
At their core, emotions are just energy in motion (e-motion), sensations moving through the body. This is constantly happening, by the way! We love feeling sensations and emotions; we even chase them. That’s why we love music, movies, and rollercoasters! (Okay, maybe not everyone loves a rollercoaster, but you get what I’m saying.)
We’re beings who are meant to feel; we’re just looking through a lens that says not all emotions are okay or that they define us somehow. We can unlearn this language, today.
Next time you feel an uncomfortable emotion arise that you’ve been resisting, try this:
Pause and notice the feeling.
Acknowledge the stories your mind is telling about it.
Don’t buy into them. Just allow the stories and feelings to be there (They are safe and they are not wrong).
Don’t fix it. Just feel it and watch it naturally pass through like a cloud in the sky.
You’ll be amazed at the peace and ease that come from allowing yourself to experience emotions without judgment or fear. Emotions don’t define who you are; they simply need space to be seen and felt. They are an invitation to stop resisting what is and simply be with what is, including witnessing the stories your mind creates around those emotions arise and dissolve on their own.
So here’s my final question for you:
What shifts when you let go of the need to fix your emotions and simply feel them? Let me know what you discover. I’d love to hear from you!
I’ll leave you with this quote from Pema Chödrön: “You are the sky. Everything else, it’s just the weather.” So, instead of resisting a beautiful part of being human, let’s embrace it
From my sky to yours,
Peter