Reacting vs. Feeling- Learning to Sit With Your Emotions

In this episode, we dive into the important distinction between feeling your emotions and reacting to them. Often, we think we're processing our emotions, but we're really avoiding them—whether through distraction, busying ourselves, or even clinging to others. I share stories from clients who have transformed their emotional experiences by learning to sit with their feelings, instead of running from them. We’ll explore how staying present with your emotions, even the uncomfortable ones, leads to deeper connection, more freedom, and lasting joy. I also provide practical tools you can start using today, including a daily body scan exercise, journaling prompts, and insights into how to embrace your emotions without letting them control you.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to recognize when you’re reacting to your emotions instead of feeling them.
• Why avoiding your emotions creates disconnection and keeps you stuck.
• The importance of staying in the room with your emotions and allowing them to move through you.
• How to bring compassion to the parts of yourself that are feeling shame, grief, or other heavy emotions.
• A practical daily body scan exercise to help you become more emotionally aware.
• Journal prompts to deepen your relationship with your emotions.

Key Takeaways:

1. Feeling vs. Reacting: Emotions are meant to be felt in the body, not analyzed or avoided. Recognizing whether you're reacting to your emotions (through distractions or overthinking) or truly feeling them is the first step to emotional freedom.

2. Story of Grief & Connection: One client realized that her urge to cling to her son’s childhood moments was a way to avoid feeling the grief of him growing up. By staying present with the grief, she found clarity and was able to connect more deeply with herself.

3. Compassion for Younger You: A client feeling shame visualized a 6-year-old version of herself hiding in a dark basement. By staying with the emotion and offering compassion to her younger self, she brought light to the shame without needing to 'fix' it.

4. Practical Tools:

   • Body Scan Exercise: A simple way to get out of your head and into your body. Spend a few minutes each day scanning for where you feel tension or sensations, and breathe into them without judgment.
   • Journal Prompts: Use journaling to explore what emotions you avoid, how you typically react, and what it means to show compassion to yourself in those moments.

5. Temporary Nature of Emotions: Emotions are temporary, and resisting them only makes them last longer. By learning to sit with them, you let them flow through, allowing for more joy and connection in your life.

Action Steps:

• Try the body scan exercise each day this week. Take just two minutes to notice what’s happening in your body, name the sensations, and breathe into them.
• Use the following journal prompts to explore your emotional patterns:
  1. What emotions do I avoid most often? Why do I avoid them?
  2. What’s a recent situation where I reacted to an emotion instead of feeling it? What would I have done differently?
  3. What does compassion look like when I sit with an uncomfortable emotion?

Show Notes: Here

Connect with Me:

• Email: chantel@chantelallencoaching.com 
• Website: www.chantelallencoaching.com 
• Instagram:@chantelallencoaching

If you're wanting to grab a 1