Staying Present with Emotions When Everything in Me Wanted to Leave

Monday’s therapy was hard.

I was sitting in my body, trying to stay present with my emotions, and

everything got stuck.

My throat. My jaw.

Tight. Heavy.

Not moving.

Nothing was released.

No insight. No shift. Just… stuck.

And underneath that, there was grief.

A lot of it.

The kind that makes you want to get out.

Out of your body.

Out of the feeling.

Out of the moment.

That’s where I usually leave myself.

I would have reached for something—

food, distraction, anything to not feel that.

But this time, I stayed.

Not perfectly. Not peacefully.

Just… there.

I stayed present in the tightness.

I stayed with the grief,

even when my body didn’t want to let it move.

Later that night, I didn’t want to go to my ACA meeting.

Everything in me said: stay home, shut down, don’t deal with this

But I went.

And I shared.

And I wasn’t alone.

A space where it felt safe to say what was real—

not to fix it, just to be in it.

That matters.

I didn’t binge.

I didn’t shop.

I didn’t check out.

I didn’t leave.

There’s a difference between staying with something…

and getting pulled under by it.

I’m still learning that line.

But this felt like staying.

And it didn’t fix anything right away.

The heaviness didn’t disappear.

The grief didn’t resolve.

But something shifted.

Not in the feeling…

in my relationship to it.

I didn’t abandon myself.

And right now, that feels like enough.

Messy. Bumpy. Possible. --- Leigh