Seeking shade: A short practice for working with unpleasant emotions.

It has been oppressively hot for many days now, the kind of hot that melted a candle in my sunroom without so much as a flame to ignite it, and that has wilted my plants of 30 years and put stress on the newly planted trees. I went for a walk in the heat, trying to get some movement for this body that has been unhappily laid up due to an injured pinkie toe (from falling out of a crow pose arm balance in yoga, of all things!) and now a back spasm from lifting something in a bad position. I went to my favorite walking spot, and while I found, to my disappointment, that my body was not having it (the walking), I discovered a shady and grassy place to sit and just rest. What struck me was that there was immense comfort in the shade, great relief from the heat even though the sun was full-on shining at almost 100 degrees and the humidity was dense. In the comfort of the shade, without needing to make the sun go away or change anything about the day (including my negative mood), I found ease.

Working With Difficult Emotions

So often in this life, we feel discomfort of all kinds; emotions that we would rather not feel, that we would prefer to push away, suppress, avoid, or ignore. What I have found to be helpful, for myself and my patients, is that rather than trying to will these emotions to go away (which often we can’t, and only causes increased suffering), or thinking we need to wait for our life circumstances to change in order to feel better, we can learn to “seek shade.” Seeking shade can come in many forms, but the idea is that we allow whatever we are feeling to be there just as it is, and we invite a more expansive emotion to sit side-by-side with whatever we are feeling. For example:

• If we are feeling sadness, we might invite in a feeling of comfort.
• If we are feeling disappointed or upset, we might invite in acceptance.
• If we are feeling grief or loss, we might invite in self-compassion.
• If we are feeling anger or irritability, we might invite in equanimity, empathy, or understanding.
• If we are feeling anxious, we might invite in feelings of safety or stability.
• If we are feeling negativity, we might invite in gratitude or appreciation for something that is also here.

This tendency that we have, to avoid what is uncomfortable, to push away our “negative” emotions, is part of our human condition and evolutionary wiring. While this was adaptive for our ancestors, who faced external, physical threats on a regular basis, this same strategy is not so adaptive for our internal experiences. When our inner experiences are suppressed, as the saying goes in psychology, “what we resist persists.”

Yet how do we acknowledge our own uncomfortable emotions and sit with this discomfort? When we can “find shade” in the midst of difficult emotions, we allow them to be just as they are and attend to them the way a good friend might sit with us in a moment of upset, offering presence and a more spacious place for our uncomfortable emotions to rest. It’s not that our friend takes away our difficult emotions (and it’s certainly not helpful to be told to “cut it out” or “stop feeling what you’re feeling”)—it’s that in the presence of a good friend, our internal experiences begin to shift. We are not taking away or subtracting something, we are adding to it. This creates a kind of alchemy that changes our relationship to our inner experiences.

How to Seek Shade: A Way Through Difficult Emotions

1. Identify a “difficult” emotion that you are experiencing (e.g., irritability, anger, frustration, sadness, disappointment, impatience, etc.). Name it. Acknowledge it.Example: I am feeling sad and heartbroken at the breakup of this relationship.
2. Ask what, if it were also present, would bring some ease, the way that sitting in the shade on a hot day can be helpful. Another question to ask is: If you were sitting with a good friend, what might you wish for them to offer you that would feel helpful (comfort, compassion, acceptance, empathy, a felt sense of safety, courage, simple awareness of what you are experiencing, a sense of being heard and seen)?Acceptance of things as they are and compassion for myself would be helpful.
3. Recall if there was a time when you felt the emotion that you are trying to invite in. For example, if it is comfort, you might remember a time when you felt comforted by a loved one or friend. If it is acceptance, you might recall a time when you were able to accept a difficult situation. If it is an experience of feeling seen and heard, you might call up a time you felt seen and heard by another.I experienced a painful disappointment recently and was able to accept that situation and be kind to myself.
4. Using imagery, words, memories, and any of your senses, call up this emotion now so that you are not just thinking about it but feeling it in your body, resting in this more expansive emotion. You might picture this more expansive emotion like the sky, and your difficult emotions like passing weather, or your difficult emotions like a wave held in the spaciousness of the ocean. Rest in the spaciousness of the emotion you are inviting in. Notice how it can hold whatever you are feeling.I am picturing acceptance like an enormous blanket being wrapped around the parts of myself that are hurting. There is ease in allowing my feelings to be as they are, not struggling to resist what is here, and offering myself some care.

**

This article was originally published on Psychology Today.