Accept What You Honestly Feel

Your personal growth, spiritual expansion, and happiness depend on it

Sometimes, we might not accept what we honestly feel. We’re ashamed of an emotion like resentment, sadness, or fear, and we swallow it down inside of us where it can’t be seen. We prefer that nobody catch a glimpse of it because of the concepts we associate with it. We may link anger with disgrace, anxiety with weakness, or believe our emotion signifies something else about us that’s not right.

Working in the mental health arena, I encountered many people with issues. The issues looked like practical matters, broken relationships, a lack of care in childhood, perhaps. But unresolved emotions rather than circumstances caused the most pain. It wasn’t whether somebody was jilted, abandoned as a kid, or something else that had happened to them. Their pain stemmed from how they felt about their experiences.

What we feel might threaten to overwhelm us, in which case, shutting it away is due to our inner safety valve. Later, when we have more support or are more robust, we need to open the doors of our hearts and set our emotions free. If we don’t, they become ticking time bombs.

Sometimes, people with a painful past seek spiritual enlightenment. They are attracted to growth like moths to a flame. They intuitively know following lightness (spiritual illumination) can help. Their pain and sensitivity can contribute toward greater self-awareness, spiritual insights, and empathy. But this can only happen if they unpack what they feel and learn from what they’ve been through.

Our emotion has no outlet when we don’t accept what we feel. After all, how can it fade if it never sees the light of day? It festers within us, waiting to bob to the surface unexpectedly when we are triggered. Or it causes physical, stress-related ailments like aches and pains. Some believe it contributes to serious illnesses since it’s a source of constant unrecognized tension.

Many spiritual seekers, of course, haven’t encountered a harrowing past. But their soul veers toward awareness expansion. Nonetheless, it’s wise to unpack emotional baggage even in such cases. Otherwise, it can block progress because it gets in the way and hampers awareness.

Everyone suffers from stress occasionally, but how they handle anxiety-provoking thoughts makes a difference between chronic strain and moving on. When we hang onto our pain, we stuff our psyche with unspent emotion, adding to the baggage we carry on our shoulders.

When we accept how we honestly feel, we can transform our emotions into life lessons and let them go. To learn how to handle them, we need to understand them and how they provide helpful information about our mental state. They tell us about our well-being, and we can take them into account when we make choices.

Why do we have emotions?

No one will blame you if you assume events and people cause your stress. It certainly seems that way. But they can only act as triggers for anxiety. No one is powerful enough to create your emotions. If they could do so, you wouldn’t be able to change your mood. You act and think for yourself. When you don’t see you are at the helm, you might accidentally give away control over your emotional well-being.

One of the first steps to understanding your emotions better is to recognize they come from inside you and not from causes outside of you. Many people think they have little control over their feelings, an illusion affecting their happiness. They try to please the individuals they believe govern their emotional well-being.

Circumstances don’t control your emotions, either. You may suffer from misfortunes, yet you can choose how to respond. Some events are tidal waves, like loved ones dying or losing a job. They can overwhelm you. Still, leaning into them shamelessly, understanding tears heal helps.

At other times, painful emotions can stem from minor everyday circumstances that push your buttons. They trigger old, unexpended pain that seeks acknowledgment. When you see your feelings this way, you recognize they need your attention. Rather than avoiding them, you can embrace them like a loved one you seek to comprehend and help.

Why do we sometimes try to avoid what we feel?

We might notice what we feel and consider avoiding fully experiencing it. Some emotions hurt, and it’s natural to want to resist them. If you put your hand in a fire, you want to pull it out. We instinctively do our best to evade pain as a survival tactic. Unlike the pain of being burned, however, the hurt caused by what we feel doesn’t go away when we try to escape from it. Indeed, we need to take the opposite action and reach into the heart of it.

Avoidance creates resistance, which adds to pain. Pretending our feelings aren’t real can cause complications, too. It’s like hiding a broken water pipe in your house and expecting not to experience water damage. Emotions, like water, always find an outlet. If you dam them up, they build and burst free. If you hide them, they find a way to escape. So, it’s wisest to acknowledge them and explore why they exist and how to channel them in a way that doesn’t create damage.

How can we acknowledge what we feel?

We can experience emotions in our minds and bodies. So, we might have a mental response or physically feel the result of an emotion. Often, emotions appear first in our minds, and soon afterward, particularly if we don’t fully allow them to flow, they appear in our physical form as discomfort or pain. You may get a stress headache, for instance, or experience a situation as a literal pain in the neck.

We don’t change circumstances by recognizing what we feel. But we do change how what happens affects us.

We might note what we feel by checking in with ourselves now and then. Asking, “What do I feel now?” and “Where do I feel it?” is helpful. The answer could go something like “I am experiencing anxiousness” and “anxiety shows up as irritation in my stomach, “ for instance.

Saying “I am experiencing anxiety” is more helpful than saying “I am anxious” or whatever you feel. If you say you’re anxious, angry, or irritable, this makes the emotion sound permanent. In truth, it’s an experience that passes through you rather than who you are. Knowing this can help you separate what you feel from your identity and handle it more easily.

What can we do with what we feel?

Emotions don’t tell us how to act. For example, if we experience anger, the anger doesn’t mean we should lash out and do harm. Rather, what we feel shows us our discomfort, revealing what we’ve been through and need to work on for personal development or what we’ve already learned. So, if we face a careless driver on the road and respond calmly, our experience of calmness may tell us we have a healthy level of understanding regarding human nature.

If, on the other hand, we experience rage when we encounter a careless driver, our experience may tell us we have unresolved emotional baggage. Or it may point toward a lack of understanding. Of course, it could also signify burnout, tiredness after sleepless nights, or fragility due to an illness. It’s our job to look at what we feel and make sense of it if we can.

Sometimes, it’s hard to decipher the cause of our emotions. We need time to think, especially if we are in the middle of experiencing anger, sadness, or fear. We must wait until we are calm and secure to unravel what’s inside us.

When we approach the exercise, we can do so with compassion, knowing we sometimes experience painful emotions because we need attention and care. We can give ourselves support, even when it’s not forthcoming from other people. We can also seek help from experienced professionals, friends, and support groups if we find our emotions too difficult to handle alone.

The most advanced spiritual teachers and seekers I’ve met have mastered their emotions. They understand their feelings are tools and use them wisely.

When we accept what we honestly feel, something magical occurs. There’s an unraveling of knots in the stomach, aches in the shoulders, or heaviness. Acknowledging our mental state with frequent checks helps us let go of emotions so they can pass through us more readily without getting lodged inside.