I Don’t Want to Make Room for My Feelings

by | May 20, 2025 | articles | 0 comments

“I am already in a stressful job, plus my parents are aging, and I notice I’m ruminating like all the time. I know there’s stuff I’m sad about and I should make time for processing that, but I don’t really know how.”

We generally have a hard time making room for our feelings. Especially if we are already full of ongoing anxiety. Multiple people at my weekly meditation group talked about already being so burdened by the cycle of worries and fears that it just didn’t feel like there was any space for more emotions.

inside out board lighting up with anxietyCredit: Inside Out 2

Anxiety is not the same as other emotions.

The primary five emotions (joy, fear, sadness, anger, and disgust) are a different category than anxiety. They are temporary travelers in our nervous system (as long as they are not ignored).

Anxiety is more of an ongoing effect than the primary five feelings. So when you have persistent anxiety, you may be restricting yourself from feeling anything else because you believe you’d get completely overwhelmed and be unable to function.

We have to mitigate and develop coping mechanisms to deal with anxiety because it seems like it’s always there. But the anger, sadness, and others? They aren’t planning to stick around that long. They just want to tell you what’s going on in your heart and then fade out.

image divided in half. On the left side it says "Anxiety needs to be grounded" with the a gif of a lightening bolt striking the ground and the energy grounding into the earth below. The right said says "Feelings needs to be felt" with a drawing of a child hugging a teddy bear and hearts floating up from her shoulders.

 

When you reassure your mental manager (that part of you who’s trying to keep everything running smoothly) that feeling emotions is going to be temporary, you will likely feel less fear or resistance to carving out a little time.

Then you can curl up with a blanket, tea and a Squishmallow while you watch a sad movie and cry it out (it me), or write an angry letter you’ll never send, or discover some other way of feeling and expressing your emotions.

This will relieve some of the pressure you’ve been feeling, plus it may decrease some of the anxiety affect because some of your internal noise will quiet down.

 

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