The advice that you should “feel your feelings” and “sit with your sadness” has been thrown around so often on Armchair Psychology Tok that they’ve started to feel like empty platitudes. “Most people were not taught how to feel their feelings, so when intense feelings come up, they automatically tend to numb or avoid them,” says Yolanda Renteria, LPC, a psychotherapist and somatic coach in Yuma, AZ, who specializes in healing from trauma. And if your instinct is to bury that sadness somewhere deep inside and get on with things because it hurts like hell, you wouldn’t be alone. How do any of these scenarios make you feel? Uh, really freaking sad. Your pet, who was like a baby to you, just died. You just scrolled through pics of your friends at a party you definitely weren’t invited to. You didn’t get that dream job you were manifesting hard.
