“Sit with your feelings.”
This is something that I’ve heard Mag and Gary say more than a couple of times in the months that I’ve been working with them as their content strategist.
Mentally, I know what they mean. I know that it means to let yourself feel what you’re supposed to be feeling without trying to “correct” or “fight” it. But I’ve never actually done
that.
So, it was a new experience when I found myself doing just that the other day. I sat and just felt what emotions I had in that moment. And that led me to writing this piece out of nowhere. Just to clear my thoughts.
To give you some context as to how I got here, I was actually recently scammed of money because I was desperate to get some tickets for me and my sister for a concert next year. The amount I lost made a dent in my savings. I found myself in tears when I realized what happened then but right after the incident, I just turned off any thoughts or feelings about it.
You see, I have this tendency to just ignore things. I deeply believed in the quote “Ignorance is bliss” and took that at a literal sense. At that point I just wanted the mix of ugly emotions I felt to disappear so I turned off my head to any thoughts. Then, I just found myself floating throughout the days after.
Working habitually, automatically without any direction, like I was waiting for some instruction on what to do next. Wake up. Chores. Work. Sleep. Repeat. Not really thinking. Not really feeling. Just moving.
Finding myself in that state felt wrong. I didn’t know why. But it did feel wrong, like I was doing something I shouldn’t.
Anyway, because of that I later on found myself just sitting at my home office chair, staring at a wall, and attempting this “sit with my feelings” for the first time.
What now?
Do I start thinking about the money I lost? But the anger, regret, and shame that surfaced won’t really do me good, would it?
That’s when I picked up my phone, opened my notes app, and started writing. The one thing I loved doing the most.
Writing about it now helped align my thoughts into something close to what I’ve also read about from some of Mag and Gary’s newsletters as we produced them.
It’s that sitting with your feelings isn’t about fixing them or explaining them away. It’s just about being there with them, without needing them to mean something right away.
So, I let myself sit.
Not thinking about solutions, not planning my next move, just noticing what was actually there. And underneath the anger and the shame, I found something quieter. A kind of grief, really.
Not just for the money, but for the version of myself that got fooled, that ignored the red signals, that was so easily trusting. The one who was excited and hopeful and just wanted to do something nice for her sister.
Then, thought pieces started falling in place as a few things started coming back to me. Thoughts I’d heard Mag and Gary talk about before, but never really understood until I felt them for myself.
The first was this idea that we don’t just react to what happens to us, we choose how we relate to it. I couldn’t undo the scam. I couldn’t get the money back. But I could choose whether I let it define the rest of my week, or whether I let myself feel it fully and then put it down.
The second was about freedom and responsibility. From what I’ve learned so far, Existential Therapy talks a lot about how, even in situations we didn’t choose, we’re still the ones who decide what to do with them.
I didn’t choose to get scammed. But I did choose to shut down afterward, to go numb, to float through my days without really living them. Realizing that was uncomfortable, but it also gave me back a strange sense of control. If I could choose to shut off, I could also choose to turn back on. The hard part was just choosing to do so and realizing that I had the power to do so.
And the third was simpler, but it hit the hardest. Avoiding pain doesn’t actually make it disappear. It just puts it somewhere else, waiting. “Ignorance is bliss” felt true for a while, but the bliss was hollow. I wasn’t at peace, I was just absent. And I felt the difference.
I don’t think sitting with my feelings fixed anything.
The money’s still gone. I still won’t be able to attend the concert next year. And I do still have the artist blocked on my social media platforms just to avoid thinking about it again.
But I don’t feel like I’m floating anymore. I feel like I’m back in my own life, even the parts that hurt a little. And, maybe that’s what sitting with it means all along.
About the Author
Faith Yuen Wei Ragasa
Cats and books — If you asked me to sum myself up in two words, I’d happily stop there. Everything else tends to unfold through the stories I write.
I began writing as a journalist who worked as a digital producer for news organizations based in the Philippines, including the now-closed CNN franchise in the country.
As I step beyond the newsroom and attempt freelancing, I’m giving myself room to learn, try new things, and keep discovering new stories and other ways of telling them.
