Turning toward sadness

This article, written by clinical psychologist Beth Kurland, shifted my perspective on the necessity of processing raw emotions. She describes sadness as "a bit like food that needs to be digested in order to move through you. When left undigested, it can sit there for a long time and cause unintended consequences”. The author provides six powerful "views" or vantage points to help process these heavy emotions. The one that works best for me is the Audience View, which helps to loosen the grip of the story I've attached to the emotion. The practice involves imagining yourself as an audience member observing your experience and then distinguishing between your raw emotions and your thoughts. For example, you might say: "There is sadness, and I am aware of thoughts telling me that I should be over this by now." This helps me label emotions as emotions and thoughts as thoughts, recognizing that neither of these are facts, but rather "food" to digest. — CD