Sitting with Uncomfortable Feelings

It's necessary even though it's unpleasant.

So, a Thing happened. No, I’m not going to tell you what said Thing was. Yes, I know that is annoying. No, I don’t want to talk the specifics of the Thing just yet. (Yes, it is about writing). Instead, I want to talk about how the Thing made me feel. So, this is an essay about feelings—the Thing is less important than how it caught me up in my feelings and didn’t want to let me go.

The Thing happened out of the blue. When I was already in a kind of vulnerable state, I had sent off my book proposal. I was pondering my life choices yet again. I was baby-stepping back into my writing career. And BAM! I felt like I was knocked off of my feet before I was ever really standing. At first, I was shocked. Speechless and uncertain. And then, I was incandescently angry, punch-someone-in-the-throat-even-though-I-am-against-violence angry. And then, I was bereft and unmoored.

Before I realized it, I was sad and angry, sangry if you will. Shaking and crying at my computer and completely unsure as to what to do next.

So, I didn’t do anything next. I didn’t plan. I didn’t strategize. I didn’t take charge. I didn’t commit to what Kelly was going to do with her one glorious life. Nothing felt glorious. Glorious didn’t feel possible.

I just spent the day sitting, alternating between weepiness and emptiness.

I called a friend in the afternoon to vent, and he gently explained that I wasn’t venting instead I was grieving. The Thing was a loss, not a major loss or maybe it was, but a loss all the same. Of course, I was a wreck. How could I not be?

I was, once again, in a stew of uncomfortable emotions. And he reminded me that Americans especially try to push past grief and uncomfortable emotions and move on. We want to be over it. We want to get over it—without really experiencing it at all. We’re terrible at sitting with uncomfortable emotions when sometimes what we really need to do is just dwell in them and feel them.

So, I took his advice. I didn’t push past the uncomfortable emotions. I got up the next day, and I was sad. So, I put on a cozy pair of pants that look like real pants but were functionally pajamas. I grabbed one of my favorite soft cardigans and put it on too. I wore my comfiest clothes and let myself be sad. I let myself be weepy. I let myself be angry. I sat with those uncomfortable emotions. I dwelled in them. In fact, I wallowed in them.

And reader, I hated it. I hated that the Thing happened, but mostly, I hated how I felt and how I reacted. I hated these uncomfortable emotions.

Feeling your feelings, according to my therapist, is the healthy way to process your emotions rather than my tried and true “push the emotions down where you can’t find them until you explode at a later date or turn you into a puddle of goo” approach.

And yet, and yet, I still let myself feel them despite how much I hated it. I felt sad. I felt angry. I was a mopey mess of a human being wearing a t-shirt with a skeleton that read, “Staying Alive.” At least, I still had jokes. (I always have jokes.)

But, something happened.

After days (maybe weeks) of dwelling in these emotions, I actually started to feel a bit better. I grieved the Thing. Oh boy, did I grieve. I felt how I felt. And I felt not good, not good at all. Until I didn’t. Eventually, the sadness and angry weren’t as overwhelming as they were at first—their intensity muted little by little with each passing day—until finally I accepted that the Thing had happened. I had to move forward. I was still sad and angry in glimpses and moments, but neither were constant companions anymore.

And now, months later, I still have occasional twinges of that anger or sadness, but I have—mostly—moved on. Those baby steps back into writing became a speed walk, or possibly a run. The book proposal that I agonized over became a book contract, so I’m writing a book again. I’m writing essays here at Substack again too. The Thing doesn’t loom as large as it once did for many reasons, but one of the big reasons is that I did the emotional work around it instead of avoiding it like I really wanted to.

Confronting those uncomfortable emotions head on was painful, yes. It sucked. But letting myself do that early on instead of letting those emotions fester and come back to attack me later was the best decision I could have made. It was a valuable lesson in how “feeling your feelings” should include not just those feelings that you are comfortable with but the uncomfortable ones too.

Too often, I’m quick to encourage other people to feel their feelings—whatever they are—while not extending the same advice or grace to myself. So, I’m trying to learn from this experience. To get more comfortable with those emotions that make me uncomfortable. To feel them and let them go.

So, I can move on—truly move on—not just pretend I’m ready to.

And now, once again, when I find those uncomfortable emotions bubbling to the surface, I’m not running from them. I’m gonna feel them. And it’s gonna suck. But, I’ll get past them. I know I will. Day by day, slowly moving forward, processing them as I go, until they just don’t hurt as damn much as they do now.

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