Feel your painful feelings, don’t think about them

Feel the overwhelming-seeming ache of a bruised heart. Feel the emptiness of loneliness.

Sit with the bitterness of rejection. Feel your feelings, experience them. Don’t ignore them.

These feelings will pass. And they will likely pass sooner if you feel them instead of ignoring them.

Everyone is affected by painful feelings over the course of a life. You are not your feelings. You will remain. The feelings will pass.

Telling yourself your heart will ache forever -- though this feels as if it is the case -- doesn’t help, and it isn’t true.

Once you have really felt your feelings (which is hard), try your best to minimize adding thoughts of anxiety or stress or self-judgment to those feelings (also hard).

Adding secondary thoughts to feelings, or attaching meaning to them, compounds the feeling to no good purpose.