There is a technique for working with trauma, fear, and pain that does not involve escape, suppression, or attempts at “positive thinking.” It is a practice that requires courage, gentleness, and tremendous honesty with yourself. It involves fully entering into what is happening inside you—your fear, grief, tension, every memory, and every bodily reaction—with complete mindfulness, without avoidance and without the desire for immediate healing. In essence, it is about allowing yourself to feel fully and treating what arises with unconditional love and compassion. It is a method you will encounter in psychotherapy, philosophy, and spirituality.

Conscious experience of emotions

In psychology and psychotherapy, it is increasingly emphasized that emotions must be fully felt in order to truly dissolve. Approaches such as somatic experiencing, Internal Family Systems, Gendlin’s focusing, and ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) teach that any emotion that has not been fully experienced remains in the body as tension or internal weight.
When you pause and allow emotions to exist without avoidance, you create a space in which the body can complete the process that was once interrupted. You don’t have to analyze or understand anything. All you have to do is observe — be present in your body and allow feelings to flow instead of trying to control them.

Over time, you begin to notice that emotions have layers. Sadness may lie beneath fear, helplessness beneath anger, silence beneath despair. When you stop fighting, these layers begin to reveal themselves, and something that was previously impossible appears within you: peace, which is not a lack of emotions, but their full acceptance.

Presence in pain and dissolving resistance

From a spiritual point of view, this practice is nothing more than entering into full presence. Buddhist teachings on mindfulness, Advaita philosophy, and contemporary teachings by teachers such as Eckhart Tolle and Jeff Foster describe this process as dissolving resistance to experience.

Suffering does not come from pain itself—it comes from resistance to pain. When you stop defending yourself, you do not become weaker. On the contrary, you discover that you can bear everything that arises within you. Pain that previously seemed unbearable begins to transform in the presence of your acceptance.

This does not always happen quickly. Sometimes it takes many moments of silence for the tension to melt away. But when it does, you begin to understand that within every emotion — even the most terrifying one — there is a space where you feel life. And that is where freedom is born.

Working with the shadow according to Carl Gustav Jung

The technique we are discussing here is also one of the elements of working with your own shadow, as described by Carl Gustav Jung. Working with your shadow is a journey into yourself – into those areas that you usually try to avoid. The shadow is everything you don’t want to see in yourself: anger, jealousy, fear, shame, selfishness, but also dormant strength, courage, or desires that you once considered “bad” or “inappropriate.” These are the aspects you have repressed because they did not fit the image you wanted to have of yourself or what others expected of you.

When you repress your shadow, it does not disappear – it works from behind the scenes. It manifests itself in your reactions, in what irritates you, who you judge, and what situations you avoid. What you condemn in others is often a reflection of something you don’t want to see in yourself. Working with your shadow means stopping running away and starting to look at yourself honestly, without judgment.

This is not an easy process. It takes courage to admit to emotions that you would rather not feel. But the more you suppress them, the more power they have over you. When you begin to accept them, you regain the energy that you have been using to pretend and control.

Working with your shadow is not about fixing yourself, but about getting to know yourself as a whole. It’s about accepting every part of yourself – the part that shines and the part that fears the light. Only then can you act from a place of authenticity, rather than from a need to defend or prove yourself. By integrating your shadow, you become more real. Not perfect, but alive, conscious, and free.

Unconditional love as a healing force

Being fully with your pain doesn’t just mean observing it. The deepest healing comes when you can embrace your suffering with love. This is not love in the romantic sense, but a quiet, compassionate presence towards yourself.
When you feel tension, sadness, or fear, try to approach it as you would someone you truly love. Not with analysis, not with an attempt to fix it, but with a simple gesture: “I see you. I am with you. It’s okay to feel this way.”
This approach not only soothes, but also integrates the scattered parts of yourself that have been repressed or ignored over the years. Compassion is not weakness — it is the deepest form of strength you can have towards yourself.

How to practice feeling your emotions fully

You don’t need any special tools to start this practice. All you need is space, silence, and a willingness to truly connect with yourself.

Sit quietly or lie down in a place where you feel safe. Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and let your body sink into its weight. Feel that you are sitting, that you are breathing, that you are here. You don’t have to go anywhere or achieve anything.
Turn your attention inward. Quietly ask yourself, “What hurts me the most right now? What needs my attention?” Don’t expect a verbal answer. Perhaps an image, a memory, or just a subtle tension in your body will appear. Whatever it is, let it be.
Focus your attention on your body. Notice where you feel it most — maybe in your chest, your stomach, your throat. Breathe into that place. Don’t try to make the tension go away. Just breathe and observe.

If fear or discomfort arises, remind yourself: it’s just a feeling. It’s in you, but it doesn’t define you. It’s energy that has come to be released. Allow it to do so. Let it move, tremble, undulate — however it needs to.

At this point, you can add compassion. Place your hand on your heart and say something simple and sincere to yourself: “I see you. It’s okay. You don’t have to fight anymore.” Feel that the part of you that is suffering can finally rest in your presence.
When the emotion begins to calm down, don’t try to stop it or speed up the process. Sometimes it dissolves into warmth, sometimes it just fades away. And even if it doesn’t go away, that’s okay too. Healing doesn’t always mean no pain. Sometimes it means being able to be with it without running away.
Finally, return to reality. Pay attention to your feet, the sounds around you, the air on your skin. Take a deep breath and say to yourself, “I have done something important. I deserve peace.”

Safety and gentleness

This practice, while healing, can be challenging. If you have deep trauma or overwhelming emotions, remember that you don’t have to do this alone. Sometimes you need a therapist or someone who can accompany you in the process when your emotions become too strong.
It’s not about heroism or pushing boundaries. It’s about returning to yourself with tenderness – step by step, breath by breath. Even a few minutes a day is enough for your body and mind to begin to learn that feeling is safe.

Returning to yourself

Feeling emotions fully is not a technique that you “do right” or “do wrong.” It is a way of being with yourself. It is a choice not to look away from your own humanity.
When you learn to be present in pain, you begin to see that beneath the layers of fear, anger, and regret lies something deeper—a softness that has always been there. You begin to trust that even the most difficult emotions can be accepted and transformed into something that does not hurt, but opens you up.
It is a path where you stop running away and start living truly — fully, with courage and tenderness toward who you are.