- Tension: We want to feel whole, but we fracture ourselves into fragments: the composed one, the angry one, the numb one, the “working on it” one.
- Noise: Wellness culture flattens emotional work into hacks, while online life teaches us to perform healing instead of embodying it.
- Direct Message: Emotional mastery is not about controlling feelings—it’s about choosing not to abandon yourself in their presence.
Read more about our approach → The Direct Message Methodology
It’s easy to remember the version of myself that used to unravel quietly. Not publicly, not in spectacular fits—but in smaller, subtler abandonments. I didn’t throw things. I disappeared.
I’d mute myself in meetings, exit conversations halfway, doom-scroll until my eyes hurt, and call it “processing.” But what I was really doing was running away from feeling things all the way through. I told myself I was emotionally self-aware because I noticed my emotions. But noticing is not the same as staying.
What changed? Not overnight epiphanies or one-size-fits-all routines. But a slow, sometimes silent shift: I stopped making my emotions the villain, and instead, practiced staying with them—without making them my identity. I didn’t become “the sad one,” “the angry one,” “the calm one.” I started becoming someone who could be sad, angry, or calm… and still stay seated in the same self.
The deeper tension, I now see, wasn’t between me and my feelings. It was between who I was while feeling and who I feared I might become if I let the feeling finish its sentence.
So I developed eight practices—not to control my emotions, but to create space to remain human within them. They’re not secrets, and they’re not steps. They’re invitations. Some days I forget them. But they’re always waiting.
1. I named the feeling before narrating it.
It’s easier to build a story than to sit in a sensation. “They don’t respect me” sounds more resolved than “I feel overlooked.” But stories rush to closure. Feelings want to be felt. Now, I pause. Is it shame? Resentment? Loneliness dressed as sarcasm? I name the feeling without turning it into a plot.
2. I practiced stillness after the impulse.
The moment after an emotion crests is where agency lives. Not in the middle of the rage or the shame or the jealousy. That’s weather. But the moment after—when you want to send the text, slam the door, scroll for numbness—that’s where you can sit still for just 10 seconds. In that stillness, I met a version of myself who didn’t abandon me.
3. I asked: “What would I feel if I didn’t resist this?”
Pain intensifies when we brace against it. The fear of crying is often worse than crying. I stopped trying to outsmart sadness, and asked: “If I didn’t fight this—if I trusted I could hold it—what would be left?” The answer was often silence. Sometimes tears. But never destruction.
4. I let the body speak without fixing it.
I stopped trying to “calm down” every flutter in my chest or ache in my gut. I let it be. I learned that emotions begin as physical signals, and healing sometimes means letting the body complete the message. I laid on the floor. I breathed into clenched fists. I let the wave pass.
5. I treated anger like a message, not a monster.
Women, especially, are taught to fear their anger. To label it as drama, immaturity, or danger. But anger is often just grief with its armor on. When I stopped judging it, I started listening to it. What is this anger trying to protect? What truth does it refuse to betray?
6. I made joy a discipline, not a reward.
I used to wait for life to be peaceful before letting myself enjoy anything. But joy, I learned, is not a sign that the hard part is over—it’s the breath you take in the middle. I practiced letting joy in without waiting for permission. Dancing while anxious. Laughing while grieving. Lightness became part of the work.
7. I replaced self-talk with self-relationship.
Self-talk is useful, but incomplete. I didn’t want to coach myself anymore—I wanted to companion myself. Not just pep talks, but presence. When I was overwhelmed, I said, “I’m here.” When I was scared, “Of course you are.” No fixing. Just staying.
8. I let things be unfinished.
Emotions don’t always resolve. Sometimes, they just move. Or soften. Or come back differently. I stopped demanding closure from every feeling. I let them leave mid-sentence. I trusted they’d return if needed. This took practice—and more importantly, self-trust.
These practices didn’t make me invincible. They made me porous, honest, more able to stay intact inside a storm. But the world outside often has no patience for slow emotional work. That’s where the noise begins.
Because online, the conversation around emotional mastery has been warped. Healing is now something to brand. Perform. Track. You’re either “working on yourself” or you’re a red flag. Emotional presence becomes emotional optimization. Suddenly, you’re not feeling—you’re managing a persona who is feeling.
Wellness influencers trade self-help scripts that read like customer support manuals for the soul. “Regulate your nervous system” is the new gospel, but often reduced to breathwork checklists and cold plunges without the slower work of staying emotionally available to oneself.
In this noise, feeling something deeply gets confused with emotional regression. “Don’t spiral,” “Don’t overthink,” “Stay high-vibe.” The message underneath: Your emotions are liabilities unless they can be weaponized for productivity or content.
Even worse, people are praised more for how they talk about their emotions than for whether they can stay present inside them. You can be dissociated but eloquent and still be rewarded with applause for “growth.” Clarity has been replaced by fluency. Feeling something has been mistaken for packaging it well.
But there’s no shortcut through real emotional presence. It’s not branded. It’s not linear. And it’s not a performance.
The direct message
Emotional mastery is not about controlling feelings—it’s about choosing not to abandon yourself in their presence.
When I stopped abandoning myself, everything changed.
I didn’t stop feeling heartbreak. But I didn’t ghost myself during it. I didn’t stop feeling rage, but I learned to hold it without letting it speak for me. I didn’t stop crying in inconvenient places. But I stopped being embarrassed by the part of me that needed to.
Each of the eight practices is just a way back to myself. A way to stay in the room—metaphorically, sometimes literally—when my emotions want to run. A way to say, “I’m not going anywhere,” to the parts of me I used to exile.
Maybe emotional strength isn’t how well you can silence a feeling, but how gently you can stay with it while it speaks. Maybe it’s not about feeling better, but about being better at feeling.
So now, when the wave comes, I don’t fight it. I breathe. I stay. I feel. And I remember: Wholeness was never the absence of pain. It was the presence of me.
