Most people seek therapy because they want to improve the way they feel

Emotions are complex and automatic physiological responses we experience throughout our body and brain that represent our reactions, beliefs, and needs, given a particular stimuli or situation. These emotional signals serve as important information for us in better understanding ourselves in a variety of ways. According to Charles Darwin in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, our emotions are adaptations that help us survive and thrive in a complex world. Our feelings are seen as helping us to communicate socially through facial expressions, as well as to prepare us for the events that elicit them.

In general it can be difficult to identify, process, understand, and tolerate our feelings, especially if we have not yet learned how. By learning how to be present in experiencing what we are truly feeling, (rather than suppressing, invalidating, resisting or judging), we are able to both honor our most authentic selves from a place of self-compassion, while also reducing the negative impacts our emotional reactions can have on us and our relationships.

Additionally, much of how we feel can actually come from the ways in which we relate to the things we experience, and specifically what we choose to focus on. In fact, at times, how we learn to relate to our problems, sensations, feelings and experiences can actually have much more of an impact on us than, what it is that we even experience.

We can learn ways to both hold space for our emotions in order to accept and honor them, while also shifting the ways we relate to our feelings so that we reduce suffering and respond in our most adaptive and authentic ways.