“Being okay with not being okay helps you let go.”
🩵 A Note from Me
Hi, I’m Jessica.
I write NP Fellow Become The CEO of Your Health— a weekly mental health and functional medicine newsletter about building a healthier relationship with your mind, your body, and yourself.
You’re irritated.
Almost immediately, another thought arrives:
I shouldn’t be this annoyed.
You’re exhausted.
Come on. You’re fine.
Someone you love is upset.
You start trying to make them feel better before they’ve even finished telling you what happened.
You’re disappointed about something that probably shouldn’t be that big of a deal.
So you explain to yourself why it isn’t or maybe you don’t even get that far.
You reach for your phone, open another tab, find something to do, and keep moving.
→ Anything that keeps you from sitting with whatever just showed up.
We spend a surprising amount of time responding to our feelings before we’ve actually experienced them.
And eventually, there isn’t much room left to hear ourselves.
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We’re Very Good At Filling The Space
Most of us know what it means to need physical space.
A quiet room.
An afternoon without plans.
Ten minutes when nobody needs anything from us.
Emotional space can be harder to recognize because you can have an empty house and still have absolutely no room for yourself.
Your mind can be crowded with what you should be feeling, what needs to get done, what someone else needs, and whether your reaction makes sense.
→ Before you’ve had a chance to notice what you feel, you’re already cross-examining it.
That’s a different kind of crowded.
A Feeling Doesn’t Require an Immediate Response
We’re taught to do a lot with uncomfortable emotions.
Manage them.
Regulate them.
Reframe them.
Distract ourselves from them.
Figure out where they came from.
Sometimes those things are useful, but sometimes the first thing a feeling needs is enough room to exist.
You can be disappointed without immediately finding the bright side.
You can be anxious without treating the anxiety as proof that something is wrong.
You can be angry without sending the text.
You can be tired without building a legal case for why you deserve to rest.
A feeling can be real without being an instruction.
That matters because when we forget it, we tend to either obey the feeling or try to get rid of it.
There’s another option.
→ Let it be there for a minute. See what it has to say.
Then decide what you want to do.
We Often Give Other People More Room Than We Give Ourselves
Think about how you respond when someone you care about is struggling.
Of course you’re tired.
That makes sense.
You don’t have to figure this out tonight.
Take your time.
Then notice what happens when you’re the one struggling.
Get over it.
Other people have it worse.
Why am I still thinking about this?
I should be able to handle it.
Apparently compassion has a guest list and somehow, we keep leaving ourselves off it.
We can be remarkably generous with other people’s humanity while treating our own like an inconvenience.
→ Making emotional room for yourself means extending some of that same patience inward.
Not because every feeling is reasonable and not because every feeling needs to be followed, but because you’re allowed to know what you’re experiencing before deciding what to do with it.
Other People Need Room Too
Spaciousness goes both ways.
Someone else is disappointed?
→ We fix it.
They’re angry?
→ We defend ourselves.
They’re sad?
→ We try to cheer them up.
They disagree with us?
→ We explain harder.
Sometimes care looks like letting another person have an emotion without immediately trying to change it.
→ You can listen, you can care, you can stay present, and you can let their feelings belong to them.
You don’t have to make everyone okay in order to be okay yourself.
You Have To Be Able To Hear Yourself
Last week, we talked about letting your values have a vote, but you have to be able to hear yourself first.
→ When every feeling gets covered by a should, a distraction, or someone else’s opinion, that gets harder.
Maybe underneath the irritation is exhaustion.
Maybe the resentment is telling you that you keep agreeing to something you don’t want.
Maybe the disappointment matters more than you wanted to admit.
Maybe you don’t know what you think yet.
That last one deserves room too.
Spaciousness Can Be Very Small
You don’t need a silent retreat or an empty calendar and you definitely don’t need to disappear into the woods and become someone who makes their own soap.
→ Sometimes space is ten seconds.
Someone asks you for something and you say: “Let me think about it.”
You notice yourself getting defensive and don’t immediately respond.
You’re sad and resist the urge to explain why you shouldn’t be.
You sit in the car for a minute before walking into the house.
You let someone finish being upset without trying to make the feeling go away.
You notice what’s happening inside you and stay there for one beat longer than usual.
That counts because spaciousness isn’t measured in hours.
Sometimes it’s simply the distance between what you feel and what you do next.
Final Thoughts
Notice the moments when you rush yourself.
When you judge what you feel before you’ve even felt it.
When you hurry to make someone else okay.
When you reach for noise before you know what you’re trying not to hear.
Maybe you don’t need an answer yet.
Maybe you need a little more room.
Thank you for reading this article.
Until next Sunday,
—Jessica
Your 2am friend who actually gets it
“Don’t run away from heavy emotions. Honor the anger; give pain the space it needs to breathe.” —Yung Pueblo
🪩 A Gentle Invitation
If this article resonated with you, you may appreciate my new product called Weekly Skill, a paid NP Fellow series focused on one real, grounded internal skill each week regarding attention, impulse control, emotional regulation, presence, and learning how to work with your nervous system instead of against it.
No pressure. Just an invitation.🤝
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MEDICAL DISCLAIMER
This content is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of such advice or treatment from a personal physician. All readers/viewers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health questions. All viewers of this content, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition, supplement or lifestyle program.
Good morning 🌞 the kids have volunteered for me today daylight