Emotions Acceptance Meditation

Welcome to Navigating your Career, the only podcast that blends personal development, professional skills and psychology to help you get happy at work and live the life you want. If you want to stop feeling stuck and start feeling better, this is the place for you. I’m your host, Melissa Lawrence. Let’s get started.

Hello, and welcome to this week’s episode of the podcast. Now, this week’s episode is a meditation on acceptance of emotions, and this is a follow up to last week’s episode where I talked about the impact, the positive health effects of meditation and how it can actually help you advance in your career and feel less stressed as well as help alleviate a lot of other health issues that you may experience or to help prevent those things from happening. So the acceptance of emotions meditation is a strategy that you can use to help accept your emotion, not get rid of the emotion.

So many clients will use a control strategy to deal with emotions, which is to try to suppress it, to decrease the frequency or intensity to numb it by shopping or drinking or eating or watching a lot of Netflix distracting yourself. But when we deliberately suppress the emotion, it really just bubbles up over time and gets worse, and it is found to contribute to a number of negative outcomes in the long run.

And so a different way to deal with it rather than to control it and suppress it is to accept it where you accept the emotion and the experience of that emotion fully without attempting to control it. It’s a non judgmental attitude toward emotion, and it requires you to stay in contact and be uncomfortable because you’re allowing a negative feeling to exist. But the worst that is going to happen is you’re going to have a sensation in your body that isn’t comfortable, but you are safe.

And the idea is if you accept these emotions over time, the relationship with your emotions can change. So just like meditation, how practicing it over time will help bring the health benefits. This is one way that you can use meditation to practice a specific goal of allowing negative emotions to exist, to process and heal.

And it’s not uncommon if you go through this for it to be uncomfortable to stop. Maybe you try this and it immediately sends you to the refrigerator.

That’s okay.

Just be aware of it and come back and try again.

Being aware of how you feel, allowing yourself to be in touch with your emotions, it’s going to be a great way for you to grow and to heal, to stop negative thought patterns, to stop self sabotage, and to stop being triggered by these experiences that your brain is really just trying to protect you from. But there is nothing to fear here in processing your feelings. So I recorded this meditation for you so that you could give this a try and see another way that you can use meditation to feel better and help you with your goals.

Give it a listen.

Hello. So this meditation is all about the acceptance of your emotions. We often will push our emotions aside or distract ourselves and numb ourselves with work, shopping, alcohol, Netflix, all of the things. And this meditation is all about allowing yourself to accept your emotions for what they are. So before we get started, try to think of something that is bothering you.

It may be a scenario that worries you or something that has happened in the past or something that may happen in the future. Try to think of a scenario that elicits an emotional reaction. In this meditation, you will imagine yourself in your chosen scenario. Now, if at any point you feel that the meditation is too much, you have the option to open your eyes and or wiggle your fingers and toes, which will help reground you in the present. You can also try bringing your focus of your attention back to your breath.

If this doesn’t help and you do not wish to continue the meditation, then please respect yourself and stop. You may always choose to do this exercise again later and improve your emotional acceptance through smaller steps.

Let’s get started.

Begin by closing your eyes.

If you choose to leave your eyes open. If that is more comfortable for you, then focus your attention on your feet and let your gaze softly rest and remain there for the duration of the meditation.

Start to notice your breath, each inhale and exhale after at least five breaths, notice where your body is making contact, feet touching the floor, back on the ground. Sit bones on your chair.

Now, bring that challenging scenario that you’ve chosen to the forefront of your mind.

Imagine yourself as vividly as possible in this scenario.

What happened? What might happen as a result of this scenario that you have recalled, you may notice that certain emotions arise.

What emotions are you experiencing?

What thoughts are going through your mind.

Now focus on your body.

Often emotions are represented in our bodies.

What feelings arise in your body.

Observe what you are feeling.

Maybe you feel tension or other sensations.

Perhaps you experience tightness in your stomach, around your heart or neck.

Whatever you experience, try to stay with the sensation and be gentle on yourself.

Emotions are just vibrations in your body.

You try to locate it, your head, your heart, your stomach, your side.

Is it cold, warm.

Use your breath as a vehicle to stay with those sensations and remember. Be gentle on yourself. Direct your awareness to the part of your body where those sensations are the strongest.

Breathe into that part of the body on the inhale.

Rather than pushing this experience away, try to let it be.

You can say to the feeling it is okay. You are allowed to be here.

Whatever it is, it’s okay.

Let me feel it.

See what happens if you allow yourself to experience whatever you experience at this moment.

Just stay with the awareness of these bodily sensations and your relationship to them. Breathing with them, accepting them, letting them be.

Repeat it’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay.

You are okay. Now, perhaps you notice that the feeling gets more intense. Maybe it will stay the same or diminish. It may also move into your body. Whatever happens, it’s okay.

Allow it to be. Observe what happens. Remember to stay with the experience with curiosity and kindness.

You are allowing your sensations to be experienced without reacting to them.

Often our thoughts can distract us from the present moment. Maybe you have thoughts about this scenario. Maybe you have thoughts about this exercise. That’s okay. Notice when your attention is focused on thoughts and then kindly direct your attention back to your experience in the present moment.

Continue to discover what happens within your body and mind without tightening or resisting it. Try holding both the sensations in your body and the sense of your breath together. Being aware of breathing with the sensations.

When you notice that your bodily sensations are no longer pulling for your attention, return to your breath and continue with that as your primary object of attention.

Just breathe.

Whatever it is you’re okay.

Now slowly let your chosen scenario. Leave the focus of your attention when you’re ready, wiggle your fingers and toes. Slowly open your eyes.

Return your attention to your room.

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