Stop Resisting, Start Allowing: Allow Your Emotions to Calm Your Nervous System
Stop Resisting Your Emotions: The First Step Toward Nervous System Calm
Resisting your emotions doesn’t make them go away…
It just makes you feel at war with yourself.
We all have a natural reaction to uncomfortable emotions.
Painful feelings like sadness, fear, anger, or shame often trigger a reflex in us: move away, push down, numb out. This is completely normal. Biologically, we are wired to avoid pain. And emotionally, many of us have been conditioned through families, culture, or trauma to judge, suppress, or ignore what we feel.
We are taught early on that some emotions are too much. That sensitivity is a weakness. That strong emotions need to be managed, hidden, or fixed. So we learn to minimize, deny, or bypass what we are feeling - even though those emotions are very real and natural responses to life.
But here’s what happens when we do this:
We end up in an internal tug-of-war between what we actually feel and what we are “allowed” to feel.
The emotion is still happening inside us. But our resistance creates a kind of internal conflict, an invisible tension between the truth of our inner experience and the parts of us that are trying to shut it down. We lose connection with our inner world. And over time, we lose connection with parts of our authentic self.
This creates suffering - not just emotionally, but physically.
Because when we resist or reject our feelings, they don’t go away.
They get louder.
They tighten in the body.
They drive patterns of anxiety, avoidance, emotional reactivity, or freeze.
And yet, none of this makes us bad or broken.
It simply means our nervous system is doing what it learned to do: protect us.
The Hidden Cost of Resisting Our Emotions
Carl Jung once said, “What you resist persists.” And somatic psychology shows us exactly how and why.
When we resist something we’re feeling - whether it’s physical discomfort, emotional pain, or a rising wave of anxiety - we’re often doing so because it feels overwhelming, unfamiliar, or unsafe. We tighten, we distract, we try to push it away.
This is a completely human response. In fact, it’s often a learned survival strategy.
But here’s the paradox: The more we fight a sensation or emotion, the more the brain interprets it as danger.
For example, if you feel a tightness in your chest and immediately think, “This is bad. I need to make this stop,” your brain flags that sensation as a threat. That activates your stress response.
And when the body enters a stress response, it doesn’t just stay neutral - it amplifies the very thing you were trying to avoid.
And suddenly the feeling you're trying to avoid… feels even worse.
The tightness grows. The emotion intensifies. The distress amplifies.
Not because the emotion itself is dangerous, but because your nervous system is now caught in a loop of resistance equals threat.
This is how resistance keeps us stuck in cycles of dysregulation.
How Allowing Calms Your Nervous System
Allowing doesn’t mean liking what we feel. It doesn’t mean getting swallowed by it. And it’s definitely not about passivity.
Allowing is simply saying to ourselves: “This is here. I’m not going to fight it.”
That moment of softening (even just a breath or two) can be profound because it ends the inner war.
Instead of judging or overriding your feelings, you begin to witness them. You give them permission to exist. And in doing so, you create something that many of us have rarely experienced: inner belonging.
When you allow an emotion, you’re no longer split inside. You’re no longer one part feeling something real while another part tries to shut it down.
That internal coherence - where your emotional truth is met with acceptance - is what helps the nervous system begin to settle.
The conflict eases. The tension begins to melt.
Your body is no longer bracing against itself.
And your nervous system receives a new message: This doesn’t have to be dangerous. I can feel this and still be safe.
Because remember, your emotions are already happening.
They are real and natural reactions to life, whether or not you approve of them.
When you resist them, you disconnect from your own reality.
They get louder, more confusing, harder to understand.
You lose touch with the clarity and truth that lives in your body.
But when you allow what you’re feeling - when you just let it be - you restore that connection.
You begin to understand yourself with more compassion and wholeness.
You can feel what’s true inside, and care for yourself in a way that’s attuned, not reactive.
That’s not just emotional growth.
It’s a nervous system recalibration.
It’s how the body begins to shift from protection into presence.
And it all begins with allowing.
Your nervous system doesn’t calm when you suppress your emotions.
It calms when your emotions are allowed to belong.
Allowing Is an Act of Self-Love
A lot of people worry that if they let themselves feel what’s really there, they’ll spiral, or fall apart, or get stuck. But in practice, the opposite is usually true.
When we stop bracing against our emotions, they tend to soften.
They move.
They show us what we need.
And often, they begin to release.
This doesn’t mean every emotion will pass quickly, or that deeper wounds don’t need more support.
Some feelings are layered. Some come with old pain or protective patterns.
But allowing - simply acknowledging what’s here - is always the first step.
Allowing says to your system:
“Even this part of me belongs.”
“Even this feeling deserves my care.”
“Even in discomfort, I can stay with myself.”
And that’s the kind of self-love that matters most.
Not the version that’s tidy or polished, but the kind where you choose to stay with yourself, even when things are uncomfortable, uncertain, or unresolved.
It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being real with what’s here, and meeting it with care.
(Learn more about my paradigm of real self-love here: Meditation for Secure Attachment with Yourself (Because Self-Love Isn’t a Feeling. It’s a Relationship) )
Try This Somatic Meditation for Allowing Your Emotions
Understanding that allowing your emotions can calm your nervous system is one thing. But actually knowing how to do that (especially in the middle of a difficult moment) is something else entirely.
That’s what this meditation is here to help with.
In today’s practice, you’ll be gently guided through the process of shifting from resistance to allowing, step by step. We’ll begin with self-havening to calm your nervous system and create a felt sense of safety in your body. From there, we’ll pause to acknowledge what’s actually present - what you’re really feeling, beneath the surface. And finally, we’ll use iffirmations to support you in softening even more deeply into allowing, with compassion and care.
This meditation is soothing and regulating on many levels.
It’s designed to help you feel the relief that comes when you stop bracing against what you feel, the calm that comes from making space for your inner experience, and the wholeness that begins to return when every part of you is allowed to be here.
Try the Somatic Meditation to Allow Your Emotions now!
Episode timing:
00:00 - How Allowing Your Emotions Calms Your Nervous System
06:19 - Somatic Meditation To Allow Your Emotions: Self-Havening explained
09:36 - Somatic Meditation To Allow Your Emotions: Gently dropping in
14:39 - Somatic Meditation To Allow Your Emotions: Feeling your emotion in your body
19:25 - Somatic Meditation To Allow Your Emotions: Iffirmations To Allow Your Emotions
30:49 - Conclusion
Havening Techniques® is a registered trademark of Ronald Ruden, 15 East 91st Street, New York. www.havening.org
Learn more about Havening Techniques and the science behind them
Want Support Putting This Into Practice?
If this kind of gentle, body-based healing speaks to you, I’d love to invite you into Somatic Healing Hub - my membership community where we practice this work together.
With live classes, workshops, and coaching you’ll:
Create a steady rhythm of nervous system regulation, so you can feel calmer, clearer, and more grounded in daily life
Gently process the emotions held in your body, instead of getting stuck in reactivity, overwhelm, or shutdown
Break free from chronic stress patterns by addressing what’s underneath - not just managing the surface
Reclaim your attention from spiraling thoughts or anxiety, and reconnect with what your body is truly asking for
Feel supported and not alone, inside a community that honors your sensitivity and your pace
BONUS: You’ll also get AD-FREE ACCESS to my entire podcast library! (Somatic Healing Meditations)
Iffirmations to Allow Your Emotions
What if it’s okay to feel this way right now?
What would it be like to make space for what I feel, without needing to resist it?
What would it be like to make space for what I feel, without needing to deny it?
What would it be like to make space for what I feel, without needing to fix it?
What if all of my emotions are valid and worthy of care?
What if it’s safe to feel whatever I’m feeling?
What if I don’t have to push my feelings away? What if I can meet them with compassion?
What would it be like to meet this emotion with softness instead of judgment?
What if I am allowed to feel it all, gently and at my own pace?
What if the more I allow my emotions, the more I reconnect with myself?
What if every feeling I have is trying to guide me back to myself?
What if allowing my emotions is a good step toward deeper healing?
What if allowing my emotions is a good step toward greater peace?
What if allowing my emotions is part of accepting and loving myself as I am?
More and more, I choose to allow my feelings
More and more, I choose to come home to me.
How did that Somatic Meditation to Allow Your Emotions feel to you?
What shifted within you? And what do you understand now that you didn’t understand before?
Please let me know in the comments!
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And please join me every Friday on this beautiful journey out of your head, and into your more embodied and authentic self. 🩷🩷🩷
Thanks so much for joining me today!
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Enjoy more like this: Havening Exercises, Iffirmations, Regulation Exercises, Allow Your Emotions
About me
Hey, I’m Karena!
I’m a somatic emotional healing coach here to help you quickly identify and heal the subconscious blocks, old emotional wounds and self-sabotaging core beliefs that are holding you back!
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