I started writing this post on November 2nd, just days before the US presidential election. I was a bundle of nerves, anxiously anticipating the coming election, struggling to focus on anything else. By Wednesday, I was a mess of emotions: confusion, hurt, anger, betrayal, and fear. As the week wore on, I alternated between periods of intense focus and purpose, and stretches of numbness and disbelief. Many of my clients and loved ones shared that they were on similar emotional roller coasters.
I’m not naive enough to believe that everyone, including those I know and love, has the same emotional response right now. Our experiences, beliefs, and values vary greatly. Our emotional landscapes are personal. What is nearly universal, however, is our desire to avoid sitting with uncomfortable emotions like anger and sadness, or experiences like grief, guilt, and resentment. Anger and sadness can feel overwhelming—even a sign (in the case of anger) of possible danger. So we resist, manage, and avoid them. Anything other than allowing and feeling them.
The English language is full of idioms that describe this resistance. We 'choke back our tears' and 'put on a brave face.' We 'keep a tight lid on our feelings' and 'bottle our anger.'
We learn this from an early age. We’re shown or told that emotions are too much. That crying is a sign of weakness, that anger is unacceptable. Or we are conditioned to believe that anger is a sign of danger, or that sadness is something to be embarrassed about. No matter our upbringing, we each learn to manage and avoid many of our emotions rather than feel them.
If you grew up in a household where anger was explosive—slamming doors, yelling, physical abuse—you probably learned that anger was a threat to avoid at all costs and dangerous to feel yourself. You might have tried to do everything "just right" to avoid angering anyone. You might have shut yourself in your room with something, anything, to distract yourself from the chaos outside.
Maybe you grew up in a home where any emotional experiences other than positive ones were hidden behind closed doors. Emotions like anger or sadness weren't modeled or acknowledged — they existed under the surface of 'if we don't talk about it, it will go away.' If your emotional experiences were met with indifference or guilt, you likely learned how to suppress them.
These strategies were not then, nor are they now, flaws. They are not evidence that you’re broken. They’re protective adaptations (pretty ingenious ones!) that we learned early on as a way to stay connected and safe.
Repressing what we feel and ignoring what we need might give us a sense of connection and safety in the moment, but over time, it leads to burnout, resentment, and disconnection from ourselves and others.
When we learn to recognize how we manage and avoid our emotions, we open the door to deeper self-connection. When we stop spending our energy trying to feel different, we get to be with our emotions and experience our humanity just as it is.
WHEN FEELING FEELS LIKE TOO MUCH
It’s often easier to avoid focusing on our needs and emotions than feeling them, especially when doing so might make our situation—or another person—uncomfortable (hello, emotional outsourcing).
Two of the most common ways we (especially us people-pleasers/emotional outsourcers) sidestep emotional discomfort are by distracting ourselves or consuming something, anything, to feel different from what we are trying to avoid.
DISTRACTION
This might seem like an obvious one since we live in a time when there’s always something vying for our attention. Emails, texts, push notifications, overlapping deadlines, a new event or opportunity—these pulls at our attention aren’t inherently good or bad. But when we rely on them to distract us from uncomfortable thoughts or feelings, we can get caught in an unhealthy cycle.
If you use distraction as an avoidance strategy, you might keep your schedule full and your mind busy. Feelings? What feelings?!
Distancing yourself from being present leaves no space to tune into what you’re truly feeling. Maybe you reach for your phone at the first hint of unease, scroll mindlessly, or lose yourself in busy work or social plans. Maybe you decide this is the time for a snack—or suddenly remember an email you need to respond to—just as you sit down to tackle a meaningful but daunting project.
For example, as I wrote this post, I caught myself looking for distractions—picking up my phone, grabbing a snack, and then another snack, checking my email, refilling my water bottle. Why? Because writing is uncomfortable! It stirs up thoughts like, I don’t have anything valuable to share. I’m wasting time. And, it brings up feelings of fear—fear of rejection, disapproval, or indifference.
Sometimes, we might not consciously discern these fears, but we feel them—a knot in our stomach, a clenched jaw, tightness in the chest, or shallow breaths—and often, we find ways to avoid facing why we feel them.
CONSUMPTION
When emotions feel too big to distract ourselves from, we might turn to consuming—food, alcohol, shopping, almost anything—to change our experience. We consume to numb the discomfort or feel something, anything, other than what we feel now. Emotional eating is called emotional eating for a reason.
The dopamine rush, intoxication, sugar high, or food coma might soothe us temporarily, but repeatedly choosing an altered state over feeling our emotions can have a lasting impact on our well-being and relationships.
(A loving reminder: long-term or habitual substance use might signal a serious, life-threatening addiction. If you or someone you know needs support, call 988 for emotional and mental health support or SAMHSA’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357) for care referrals.)
These strategies, while ingenious coping mechanisms, rob us of the ability to experience life fully. When we shut ourselves off from discomfort, we often shut ourselves off from joy and connection, too.
Recognizing our patterns and strategies before they happen takes practice—and it isn’t always necessary. The goal is to notice when it happens and shorten the time we spend avoiding discomfort.
Breaking these patterns means making space for something different.
The practice is to pause long enough to sense our discomfort, acknowledge our automatic strategies without judgment, and then choose a path towards presence and connection instead of away from it. In time, we become less reactive to life and more responsive. We connect more deeply with others, feel at home in our bodies, and make decisions that move us closer to what we want rather than away from what we want to avoid.
MAKING ROOM
Breaking up these patterns begins by recognizing our automatic patterns. What are the ways you cleverly avoid emotional discomfort?
The exercise below is a reflective practice to help you label your most-used strategies, recognize when you use them, and get curious about what you feel in those moments.
SITUATION/RESPONSE/FEELING
Recall a recent situation that triggered a strong emotional response (e.g., a conversation with a coworker or loved one, feedback from a client, driving in traffic).
Describe the event. What happened? What didn’t go ‘according to plan’? (Zoom in—pinpoint the moment your mood or energy shifted.)
Explore your response. How did you react? (Did you scroll social media? Blame someone else? Decide it was snack time even though you weren’t hungry?)
Identify your feelings. Get curious. What were you experiencing in that moment?
Here’s a list of commonly avoided emotions to help you get started:
What did you notice? Do you see a pattern in your reactions? Do you cope differently depending on the situation? Are there certain emotions that make you more uncomfortable than others?
With practice, you’ll strengthen your ability to feel and process your emotions and create a deeper connection with yourself. When we're able to sit with our emotions and feel them without reacting to them, THEN we get to experience our life and our relationships with more calm, clarity, and presence.
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