Can You Sit With It Instead? 4 Simple Steps to Actually Feel Your Feelings

Did you know that when you feel your feelings, it is not the same as processing them?

These days, there is a lot of focus on processing emotions.

People talk about them, journal about them, learn coping skills, or try to understand where their feelings come from.

All of these things are helpful, but an important step often gets missed.

Actually feeling the emotions!!

You can process something many times and still not fully feel it.

You might understand it, explain it, or even notice it, but still be disconnected from how it actually feels in your body.

There are many reasons for this, but one of the main ones is simple: most people were never taught how to truly feel their emotions.

Talking about emotions is one thing, but it is very different when emotions suddenly appear. That is why this step often gets skipped.

It is not just because it feels uncomfortable, but because it is unclear.

Most people do not know what to do in the moment, or what it really means to feel their emotions instead of just thinking about them.

In today’s post, I will explain what it means to feel your emotions and share a simple step-by-step process you can start using right away.

What It Actually Means to Feel Your Feelings

Most people think they are feeling their emotions when they are actually just thinking about them.

They might analyze why they feel a certain way, replay what happened, try to make sense of it, or look for ways to fix it. That’s all part of processing.

Truly feeling your emotions means paying attention to what’s happening in your body as the emotion appears.

Maybe your breathing gets shallow, your chest feels tight, your stomach churns, or you feel an urge to act.

If you keep pushing your emotions away instead of acknowledging them, they often stick around and show up in other ways.

So exactly how to feel your feelings instead of intellectualizing them?

Letting yourself feel your emotions means allowing them to happen in the moment, even if it’s just for a short time.

If you feel like crying, you let yourself cry. If your chest feels tight, you notice that feeling for a bit.

You don’t need to fix anything right away or jump to regulating yourself.

You’re allowing the experience instead of automatically trying to escape it.

This is where DBT mindfulness skills can help, giving you a simple way to practice this.

A Simple DBT Approach to Sitting With Emotions

In DBT, instead of trying to change your feelings right away, you first learn how to sit with them. This is the foundation of learning to feel your feelings, not avoid them.

A set of mindfulness skills can make this process easier to manage.

These skills are straightforward, but they can be hard to use when your emotions feel intense.

There are 2 parts to these skills. The ‘What’ skills are the actions you take: observe, describe, and participate.

The ‘How’ skills are about the way you do them: nonjudgmentally, one-mindfully, and effectively.

These skills are really about how you pay attention in the present moment, and you can apply them to really anything.

In this post, I am going to use the skills to focus on emotions.

After teaching these skills in DBT groups for years, I’ve noticed that most people want to figure out their emotions, fix them, or make them disappear.

That’s completely understandable, especially when emotions are strong.

But if you always skip the step of noticing and allowing your feelings, you miss the chance to practice being with them.

If you can stay with a feeling, even for a short time, you build up your tolerance.

This way, it won’t feel as overwhelming the next time it comes up.

You don’t need to memorize these steps. They just offer a simple way to return to the present and stay with it.

In the next section, I’ll show you how this works in practice. that looks like.

RELATED POST: If Your Emotions Go From 0 to 100, This DBT STOP Skill Can Help

Step-by-Step: How to Feel Your Feelings

I will now walk you through the 3 DBT mindfulness steps so you can actually follow them when you’re in it.

If you’re new to DBT skills, this might feel a little confusing at first, so it can help to read through all of the steps once before trying them.

I am going to use one consistent example throughout the steps so you can see what this actually looks like in real life.

Step 1: Observe (Notice What’s Happening)

The first step is to notice what’s happening inside you, without trying to analyze it or make it go away.

Most people jump right into their thoughts at this point. You might catch yourself thinking, “Why haven’t they responded to my text yet?” or “Did I do something wrong?”

This is your mind’s way of trying to solve a problem.

Research from Columbia University shows that our bodies often feel emotions before we can name or understand them.

That’s why noticing physical sensations is often the first step to recognizing what you feel.

When you slow down enough to feel your feelings, your body becomes your guide!!

Your body often gives you clearer signals than your thoughts do in the moment, so let’s focus on what your body is telling you.

How to do it:

• Take a moment to pause. Do a quick scan of your body from head to toe and notice anything that stands out.
• Choose the sensation that stands out the most right now and focus your attention on it. For example, it could be:
  • tightness in your chest
  • a knot in your stomach
  • restlessness in your legs
  • shallow breathing
  • tight shoulders or jaw
• When you notice a sensation, keep your focus there for about 10 to 20 seconds. You don’t have to time it, just stay with it long enough to really notice what it feels like.
• You’re not trying to relax, change, or get rid of the sensation yet. Just notice it. If your mind drifts back to the situation or starts judging, gently bring your focus back to the sensation you chose. You might need to do this more than once.

Ideas for Practicing Observing:

• Sit in one place and slowly look around the room. Name five specific things you see, such as a blue chair, a white wall, or a phone screen.
• Close your eyes and listen to three different sounds. You might hear a fan, cars outside, or someone talking.
• Hold something small, like a coin or a key, and focus on how it feels for about 30 seconds. Notice if it is smooth, cold, or rough.
• Take a bite of the food and pay attention to its taste, texture, and temperature before swallowing.
• Sit still and focus on your breathing. Notice your chest or stomach moving in and out for one minute.

Step 2: Describe (Put Words to the Experience)

Now that you’ve noticed what is happening, you’re going to put it into simple words as you begin to feel your feelings.

This will help you stay focused on what is actually happening instead of getting pulled into assumptions or worst-case scenarios.

A lot of people think they are describing when they are actually interpreting.

Interpretation sounds like “they dont care about me,” or “I know I did something wrong.” Those are conclusions, not observations.

When you’re describing, you’re staying very close to what you can directly observe.

How to do it:

• Take what you observed and say it to yourself in plain language, either in your mind or out loud.
• You can break it into 3 parts if that helps: what you feel in your body, the emotions that might be there, and the thoughts that are showing up.
  • “My chest feels tight.”
  • “I feel anxious.”
  • “I am having thoughts that they might be ignoring me.”

Notice the difference between saying “I am having the thought that they might be ignoring me” vs. “They are ignoring me.”

The first one stays as a thought, and the second one turns into a fact, even though you don’t actually know that.

Try to stay specific and avoid adding extra meaning. If you catch yourself going back into storytelling, gently bring it back to what you can observe.

In DBT, we say that if you can’t observe it through your senses, you can’t describe it.

Ideas for Practicing Describing:

• Watch a short video or show and say what you see happening, like “he is walking,” “she is sitting,” or “a car is driving by.”
• Watch a person walking by and say simple things you see, like “red shirt,” “walking fast,” or “looking down.”
• Think about what you are feeling and say it simply, like “I feel tired” or “I feel okay.”
• Pay attention to your thoughts for a minute and say them out loud, like “I am thinking about work” or “I am thinking about food.”
• Focus on your breathing and quietly say “in” as you breathe in and “out” as you breathe out.

Step 3: Participate (Be Present With It)

The third step is to participate in the experience for a short time rather than immediately react to it.

This step might look similar to observing, but it’s not the same.

Participating starts after you already know what’s there (observing). Now the shift is, “Can I stay with this for a moment without escaping it?”

When an emotion spikes, most people feel the urge to act right away.

In this example, the urge might be to check your phone again, send another text, or distract yourself so you don’t have to feel anxious.

How to do it:

• After you’ve observed and described, continue to keep your attention on your body and the present moment.
• Set a small, clear window of time. For beginners, 20-60 seconds is enough. You’re not trying to with the feeling forever.
• While you’re doing this: notice the sensation in your body, notice any urges that come up, and give yourself a short window before doing anything.
  • If the urge feels strong, you can stay to yourself, “I can check my phone in a minute.” This will give you a clear boundary.

Your mind will keep trying to pull you away. Each time it does, bring your attention back to what you’re feeling right now as you feel your feelings.

Once the time is up, you can choose what to do next. Now, you’re responding from a more grounded place instead of reacting immediately.

Ideas for Practicing Participating:

• When you talk to someone, make eye contact, really listen, and reply right away. Try not to check your phone or let your mind wander.
• Sing along out loud to a song, even if you can’t carry a tune.
• When you wash dishes, focus on what you’re doing. Notice each step, like picking up, scrubbing, rinsing, and setting them down.
• When you do a hobby, dive in and enjoy it without worrying about how well you’re doing.
• When walking, pay attention to each step and keep your focus on moving forward instead of thinking about something else.

For Neurodivergent Individuals...

If you try these steps and either feel nothing or find everything confusing or overwhelming, know that this is more common than most people realize when you try to feel your feelings.

Some people find it harder to notice signals from their bodies.

You might not notice sensations unless they are very strong, or you might only notice them when they become overwhelming.

Some people feel too much at once, which can quickly become too much to handle.

If this happens, try starting with something smaller and more concrete.

Rather than searching for emotions, focus on something specific and neutral.

• Notice how your back feels as it presses against your chair.
• Pay attention to your feet pressing into the floor.
• Feel the texture of objects you can touch nearby.

Focus on one of these sensations for about 10 to 15 seconds. This helps you get used to noticing what your body feels.

If internal sensation feels too hard, start with the outside by using the 5-4-3-2-1 technique. Name 5 things around you that you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste.

After that, gently check if you notice any sensations in your body, even if they are very faint.

With practice, your body will get used to noticing sensations in a way that feels comfortable and manageable.

What to Do After You Feel Your Feelings

Once you’ve spent some time to feel your feelings, the next step will be deciding what you want to do with them.

Feeling and processing are connected, but they are not the same.

Feeling is about allowing the emotion to show up in your body, and processing is where you will start to regulate, reflect, and decide how to respond.

This is where things like journaling, therapy, and coping skills can be super helpful!

If you want a more structured way to process your emotions, I break that down in a step-by-step way here: How to Process Your Emotions (When No One Taught You How)

Grab this beginner-friendly guide to understand your emotions when you don’t know where to start!

Feel Your Feelings: FAQs

1. What is DBT and how does it help?

DBT stands for Dialectical Behavior Therapy. It’s something I use a lot in my work because it gives people practical ways to handle day-to-day challenges.

It focuses on skills like staying present, getting through stressful moments, managing emotions, and handling relationships a little more effectively. It’s often used when emotions feel intense or hard to manage.

The main goal of DBT is to help you manage your emotions and change your behaviors so you can create a life that feels meaningful to you.

2. How do I know if I am actually feeling my feelings or just thinking about them?

If you find yourself replaying events, trying to solve problems, or analyzing things, you are probably thinking about your feelings instead of actually feeling them.

When you are really feeling an emotion, you pay more attention to your body and what is happening right now. You might notice physical sensations or urges.

One easy way to check is to ask yourself, “Am I focused on my body or my thoughts right now?”

3. What if sitting with my feelings becomes overwhelming?

If your emotions start to feel overwhelming, it’s okay to take a break and use distress tolerance skills to help you get through it.

When you feel more steady, you can return to the emotion, but just for a short time.

If your emotions often feel intense, are hard to manage alone, or start to affect your daily life, it may help to talk to a therapist or consider joining a DBT group for more support and structure.

Final Thoughts…

If you remember one thing, let it be this: feeling your feelings is a skill you can learn, not something you either have or don’t have.

I’ve worked with a lot of people who thought they were simply “bad” with their emotions, and most of the time, they had just never been shown how to slow down and notice what’s happening in their bodies.

You don’t need to sit with your feelings for a long time. Even spending 20 or 30 seconds noticing and staying with an emotion can help.

With practice, it gets easier to feel your emotions without getting overwhelmed or caught up in them.

If this feels unfamiliar, that’s okay. You’re learning something new, and that takes patience and practice.

I hope this helps you relate to your thoughts, emotions, and reactions with a little more awareness and choice.

More Posts on Emotions You’ll Love

• How to Process Your Emotions (When No One Taught You How)
• 23 Low-Effort Ways to Reset After a Stressful Day
• If Your Emotions Go From 0 to 100, This DBT STOP Skill Can Help
• 60 Guided Journal Prompts to Help You Process Your Emotions
• 50 Monthly Reflection Questions to Explore Your Needs

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