How to Stop Running from Your Emotions (and Start Healing)

5 minutes

Contents

Most of us are taught how to achieve, perform, or please — but very few of us are taught how to feel. And yet, emotions are not problems to fix or something to be avoided. They’re messengers that reveal our truth, our needs, and our inner state. Howev fact the sensations that are created when emotions are triggered also make us feel uncomfortable. This means we often go to great lengths to avoid painful or uncomfortable emotions—from busyness or scrolling endlessly, to logical explanations, distractions, or old learned habits like drinking or judging. (See Part 1 of this blog) These defenses might feel helpful in the short term, but they keep us trapped in emotional isolation and conditioned responses,while blocking real healing.

If you’re ready to improve your mental and physical health and wellbeing by learning to acknowledge and express your emotions, rather than flee from them, this guide is for you.

Why It’s Important to Stop Avoiding Emotions

Avoidance brings short-term relief, but long-term consequences:

Unfelt emotions don’t disappear — they remain unresolved and end up fueling anxiety, chronic tension, burnout, and even chronic health conditions.
Emotions that we have learned to avoid often resurface as overreactions, emotional numbness, chronic pain/symptoms and/or feeling disconnected from life.
When you start to feel, you start to heal — your needs become clearer, your boundaries become more natural and it’s becomes easier to feel more grounded.

How to Start Feeling Emotions Again (Without Becoming Overwhelmed)

Learning to feel emotions is like building a new muscle — it takes self-compassion, consistency, and often courage.

1. Shift Your Mindset

Emotions are messengers, not enemies
They bring insights into unmet needs, boundaries, or inner wounds.
Feeling is healing.
Avoidance prolongs suffering—feeling allows emotions to move through you.
There are no bad emotions.
Anger, sadness, jealousy, and fear all have lessons for us. They’re signals, not mistakes.
You are not your emotions.
Emotions are experiences—not your identity. They are temporary and will pass through if you let them..

2. Practice Daily Emotional Awareness

Start small with these simple, powerful tools:

Pause-Breathe-Feel-Reassure

At any time and especially when you become aware of having been triggered, maybe when you notice sensations in your body (whether this is related to emotions or a symptom), or regularly throughout the day:

Pause – from whatever you are doing to become mindful
Breathe – Gently breathe in and out, preferably through your nose and gradually allow the rate to calm down
Feel – rest your attention on your body (see body scan below) and allow whatever you notice to ebb and flow without restriction and with curiosity
Reassure – Use soft, reassuring self-talk to reassure yourself that you are safe, maybe talking to the part that feels something to reassure it

Mindful Check-Ins (2–3x daily)

Ask: ‘What am I feeling emotionally?’ and, ‘What am I feeling physically?’
Label your feeling without judging it (e.g., “tense,” “grief,” “hopeful”).

Body Scanning – Feel It to Heal It

Sit still witih your eyes closed (or your gaze lowered if you prefer). Gently, and with curiosity, scan your body for sensations, including tension, tightness, or pressure. If you become aware of a feeling, notice where it is in your body and name it, if you’re able to. The body is often where emotion lives and by breathing into the sensations and calmly observing whatever you are aware of, you are demonstrating that you are safe and that they are not a threat.

Emotional Journaling – Prompt ideas:

What emotion am I avoiding?
What does this feeling want me to know?
What do I need right now?

3. Tools to Stay Regulated While Feeling

Learning to feel doesn’t mean losing control. It means learning to build your tolerance in order to more easily allow emotions to surface to be acknowledged and expressed, without feeling threatened and overwhelmed. These tools help you self-regulate and stay grounded and can be used to stop yourself from becoming overwhelmed. By pendulating between allowing emotions and self-soothing, you will build your window of tolerance:

Calm, connected breathing: through your nose and gradually slowl down the rate as you calm down
Visualise a safe place: this could be an imaginary place or somewhere you have been where you felt completely safe and really imagine you are there
Splash cold water on your face: Bring yourself into the now
Ground yourself: Use your senses and note what you are aware of in this moment
Movement: Walk, shake, dance, stretch — help emotion move through the body
Voice it: Talk to someone safe, or even record a voice note just for you.

4. Questions to Ask Yourself When You’re Avoiding:

What emotion might I be avoiding right now?
What would happen if I allowed this for just 30 seconds?
What am I afraid this emotion is saying about me?
Where did I learn that this feeling isn’t safe?
You could them explore this through journaling and consider anything you can learn from this that would help you moving forwards

A Final Note: You Don’t Have to Do This Alone

If emotions feel overwhelming or unsafe and you are struggling with any of this – you’re not broken!

It’s likely that you are carrying something too heavy to face alone. This is where therapy, somatic work, and safe relationships can help. If you would like some support, even if it’s initially just a free initial call with one of SIRPA’s Practitioners, then you can go to SIRPA’s Directories. You can then look through who’s available and choose someone whom you feel could be a good fit for you or who might be able to just answer some of your questions to offer you guidance.

Avoidance is a survival habit — but feeling is where healing begins. You don’t need to control, fix, or solve your emotions. You only need to feel them. And, with a little practice, your ‘felt sense’ will improve. As this improves and you learn to acknowledge and express emotions that have been triggered, rather than avoiding them, you will have less need of any avoidance strategies or symptoms.