Set a timer for 15 minutes, turn on some sad crying music, and lean into the grief. When the timer dings, you’re done. Move on with your life.
This is a trick I first heard about on the show Shrinking, and I have to say it works pretty well.
I can give you a trick to get through it. Takes about 15 minutes. Pick a piece of music, something sad as hell, and just feel your feelings. Look, I know you think it won’t work, but it will - if you really open yourself up and aren’t complete chicken shit for once.
The music creates a norm: Here are other people being sad, it isn’t a big deal if I join them.
The Time Boxing creates context: It allows your brain to Hyperfocus on the emotion without being distracted by other things that come up. It’s similar to setting a meditation timer. If your brain starts thinking about chores, it’s easy enough to remind it you only have 5 minutes left and can deal with the chores after.
All of this creates a safe place to grieve, to be “not ok”. This makes it useful for dealing with Emotional Blockage, which is often caused by not having a safe context to let out trapped emotions.
