Emotions and their Causes

I’ve sat with the idea of needing to name, be present with, and process through our emotions for optimal emotional and mental health for several years now.

But, I recently came across a distinction between sitting with our emotions and sitting with the causes of our emotions. This thought comes from Eckhart Tolle’s book Practicing the Power of Now. He says to give all your attention to the feeling, not to the person, event, or situation that seems to have caused it.

And I realized I had never separated the two. I have always made part of my emotional naming also naming the causes of it. Which, there is a time and place for this. But, I’ve realized after reading Tolle’s thoughts that separating the causes and the emotions can be most helpful when I’m stuck in an emotion.

When an emotion stays around for too long, I am likely playing the causes over and over in my head and ruminating on them. This fuels the emotion to keep going and impedes me from working through that emotion. When I’m too stuck on the causes of my emotions I become unproductive and get stuck in my thoughts. I ruminate and struggle to move past thinking about the causes, often literally stuck sitting in one spot and unable to get myself up to do anything.

Sitting with just an emotion looks different for me depending on the emotion being felt. Anxiety does best when I become mindful, and lean into deep breaths, and getting outside is often the most helpful. Anger prefers that I get active and do something, whether it’s a workout, cleaning, or yardwork, anger desires movement of some sort. Sadness does best when I let someone know I’m sad and they can sit with me in my sadness. Through all of these, I recognize the emotion and meet that emotion where it needs me, but my mind isn’t replaying the causes that got me into that emotion.

Again, I do think there is a time and a place to process the causes of our emotions. Many times there are actions that can be taken when we are aware of what caused us to feel a certain way. But, we aren’t ever meant to be stuck in an emotion, and I think hyper-focusing on the causes can contribute to getting stuck.

So, next time you feel an emotion is staying around longer than you’d like it to, try just sitting with the emotion itself and try and stop thinking about the causes of that emotion.