How to Have a Better Relationship with Your Emotions (Without Trying to Fix Them)
Ok we need to talk about emotions because there can be so much going on with that aspect of our lives — much of it unseen. Maybe there’s a sense that we should be handling them better. That we should feel calmer, clearer, more in control. That if anxiety shows up, or grief lingers, or something in us feels heavier than it “should,” then something has gone wrong.
So we try to manage what we feel. We minimise it, move past it, explain it away. We tell ourselves we’ll deal with it later, or that it isn’t that big a deal, or that other people have it worse. We learn, often without realising it, to close the door on parts of ourselves that feel inconvenient or uncomfortable.
And yet, for many of us, that doesn’t actually make things easier. It just makes us feel more disconnected. From ourselves, from other people, from what’s really going on.
In a recent conversation on A Thought I Kept, I spoke with Dr MaryCatherine McDonald about this — and in particular, about a simple but quietly radical idea: that our emotions might not be something to fix or control, but something to relate to.
She shared a poem by Rumi that has stayed with her for years, about being human as a kind of guest house, where emotions arrive as visitors. Joy, anxiety, grief, irritation. Some welcome, some less so. All of them coming and going, whether we invite them in or not .
It’s such a different way of seeing things.
Because many of us have been taught to do the opposite. To decide which emotions are acceptable and which need to be shown the door. To believe that if something uncomfortable is present, then something must be wrong — and the goal is to get back to a more “acceptable” state as quickly as possible.
MaryCatherine described living like that for years. Feeling as though she was at war with her emotions, trying to control them, contain them, make them behave. And underneath that, a quieter belief: that if anxiety or grief were there, they would take over. That they might ruin everything.
It’s a feeling I recognise, and one I see often in my work. That fear of what might happen if we really let ourselves feel what’s there.
But what if the work isn’t to get rid of what we feel?
What if it’s to sit down with it?
To offer it a chair, rather than pushing it out of the room. To get curious, even gently, about why it’s here. Not because we want to analyse it or solve it, but because we’re willing to be in relationship with it.
That idea of relationship feels important.
Because emotions don’t arrive neatly, one at a time. They overlap. They contradict each other. We can feel anxious and hopeful, tired and grateful, grieving and still find something to laugh at. And yet, we often try to simplify that complexity into something more manageable. I am anxious. I am fine. I am coping.
But that can leave us feeling stuck. As though we’ve become the emotion, rather than someone experiencing it.
What I found grounding in this conversation was the idea that we don’t have to identify so completely with what we feel. We can be in it, without it being all of us. We can let something move through, rather than holding onto it as a fixed state.
And that matters, particularly when things feel heavy.
MaryCatherine talks about something she calls “rehearsing loss” — the way our nervous system, often shaped by past experiences, tries to protect us by anticipating what might go wrong. Imagining endings before we’ve fully lived the beginnings. Bracing ourselves, just in case.
It makes sense, when you see it like that. It’s not weakness. It’s protection.
But it can also make it harder to access the moments that are here. The small, ordinary experiences that carry something lighter in them. A conversation that lands. A moment of connection. A flicker of joy that doesn’t erase what’s hard, but sits alongside it.
This is something else she reframes beautifully — the idea that joy isn’t something we reach once everything is sorted, but something that appears in the middle of things. Not fluffy or superficial, but steady and tenacious. Something that helps us stay, rather than escape.
And maybe that’s part of what a different relationship with our emotions can offer.
Not a life where we only feel the “right” things. But a life where we feel more of what’s real, without it meaning something has gone wrong.
Where we can notice when we’re trying to push something away, and instead soften, even slightly, towards it.
Where we don’t have to be at war with ourselves.
If you’re someone who has been trying to manage or control what you feel, it might be worth asking a different question.
Not “how do I fix this?”
But “what might it be like to sit with this, just for a moment?”
There’s no perfect way to do that. No right or wrong response. Just a gradual shift, over time, from resisting what’s there to being alongside it.
And if that feels unfamiliar, you’re not alone in that either.
If you’d like to explore this idea further, you can listen to my full conversation with Dr MaryCatherine McDonald on A Thought I Kept. It’s a thoughtful, honest exploration of emotions, grief, joy, and what it means to be in relationship with what we feel.
And if you’re looking for a little more support in understanding your own emotional world, you can also explore my emotions coaching sessions — a space to gently make sense of what’s going on, at your own pace.
