Worksheet: Learning to sit with our Feelings.

A step-by-step somatic and acceptance practice guide.

Learning to Stay With What We Feel

Many people come to emotional work believing that something is "wrong" with them — that they don’t know how to regulate their emotions, that they’re “too much,” or that they’re failing at skills others seem to manage more easily.

But often, the issue isn’t that we don’t know how to regulate emotions.

It’s that we were never taught how to sit with them.

In fact, really, we were thought the entire oppositive.

Many of us grew up in environments where emotions were misunderstood, minimized, rushed, or judged.

In Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), this is described as an invalidating environment — a context where inner experiences were dismissed (“you’re overreacting”), corrected (“you shouldn’t feel that way”), ignored, or only accepted when they were convenient for others.

Over time, we learned that feelings were problems to solve or hide, rather than experiences to be met.

When this happens, our nervous system adapts. Emotions may become overwhelming, shut down, confusing, or urgent — not because we are incapable, but because our system never learned that it was safe to feel and stay.

For a long time, when I felt overwhelmed, my instinct was to do something about it. I tried to calm down, understand or logicalise why I felt that way, or used various "coping strategies" like distractions or self-soothing to make the feeling go away. Even practices meant to help — such as mindfulness — sometimes became another way of "fixing" myself.

But in trying to fix it, I wasn’t actually meeting the feeling.

I merely managing it from a distance, without actually going to it.

What I slowly learned was this:

The more I struggled with my emotions, the louder they became.

The more I tried to regulate from urgency or self-criticism, the more my body tightened, braced, or shut down.

What I needed wasn’t better control — it was a different relationship with my inner experience.

This worksheet was created from that place of learning.

Rather than teaching you how to regulate or change emotions, this practice invites you to stay with them.

Instead of focusing on thoughts or explanations, it gently guides attention into the body — where emotions are actually felt. The intention is not to fix, resolve, or calm, but to allow, to notice, and to remain present without struggle.

A somatic approach recognizes that emotions are lived through sensations first: tightness, heaviness, warmth, numbness, pressure.

These are not signs that something is wrong — they are expressions asking to be felt. When the body experiences presence instead of correction, the nervous system often begins to settle on its own. And when it doesn’t, we can still learn to stay without abandoning ourselves.

Radical acceptance, in this context, does not mean liking what we feel or giving up on change. It means acknowledging what is here without adding judgment, resistance, or urgency.

It is the shift from “this shouldn’t be happening” to “this is what’s happening right now, and I can be with it.”

And this worksheet below is an invitation into that shift.

You may notice changes as you sit with your experience — or you may not. Both are valid. The practice is not measured by relief or insight, but by your willingness to remain present.

Each time you stay rather than struggle, you offer your system a new message:

"You don’t have to escalate, shut down, or disappear to be met."

And with that, emotions don't become such an intolerable thing that needs to be urgently fixed or regulated anymore.

We can learn to over time, slowly learn to sit with them.

Acknowledge them and letting them be.

And given it's not heard, undersoon, seen, attended to - with time it will resolve it too.

You can return to this worksheet whenever a feeling feels overwhelming, confusing, or persistent. Not because you’re failing at regulation — but because you’re learning, perhaps for the first time, what it means to stay.

Take care,

Hernping

Worksheet - Learning to sit with our feelings.pdf

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