“Can you distinguish your feelings from your emotions? Oftentimes this skill can help you navigate stressful situations more successfully, & with less effort!”
Dear Integral Meditators,
This week’s article looks at how to distinguish feeling states from emotional states, & use it to navigate difficult circumstances more easily. If you enjoy it, then I invite you to my Mindfulness for emotional intelligence masterclass this Saturday 25th April, 2.30-4.30pm, live or online!
This week’s Wednesday & Saturday class continue our inner-smile meditation series, which is also focused on mindfulness around emotions. All welcome.
In the spirit of ease,
Toby
How to stop difficult feelings becoming negative emotions
The difference between feelings and emotions
One of the most useful distinctions in Buddhist insight meditation that I have found is the distinction between feelings and emotions. Broadly speaking feelings are simply the experience of that which is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. By contrast emotions arise from a psychological process that involves thinking in a particular way about a feeling. Here are two simple examples:
- I see a person who has wronged me in the past, instinctively an unpleasant feeling arises. I then start to reflect on the harm that they have caused me and develop anger or anger. This anger is the emotion, arising from the psychological process of paying attention to the harm done in combination with the initial unpleasant feelings.
- I am sick, giving rise to unpleasant feelings in my body. I start to think about how this sickness is ruining my only two weeks of holiday in the year and I start to develop the emotions of frustration, despair and sadness.
Here we can start to see the basic distinction; pain is simply the feeling arising within the moment. We experience emotion when we combine a feeling with a psychological process of focusing on the feeling in a particular way.
With regard to painful feelings, often we compound the pain they cause us by focusing on them in a way that causes us to experience emotional suffering, as in the examples above. The key therefore in preventing painful feelings becoming full blown emotional suffering is to avoid thinking about them or focusing on them in such a way that negative emotions are stimulated.
Some sources of painful feelings
The five sources of painful feelings below are a non-exhaustive list, but it gives an idea of the variety of different sources that can cause painful feelings within us. Any of them if focused on in the wrong way can cause negative emotions to arise:
- Physical pain arising from sickness or injury
- Pain or irritability arising from hormonal or other biological or energetic imbalances within the body
- From people who say or do harmful things to us or have done so in the past
- From psychological and/or existential anxiety, e.g.: Worried about not being good enough, fear of dying, fear of stepping out of comfort zone etc…
- From spiritual crisis; for example, when the old self or ego structures are collapsing in order for a new level of self-sense to arise.
An insight meditation for acknowledging and releasing negative feelings
Here is a brief insight meditation form that we can use to prevent difficult feelings turning into negative emotions:
Stage 1: Breathing in I am aware of my painful feelings,
Breathing out I acknowledge those feelings fully.
Stage 2: Breathing in I experience my tight grasping at those painful feelings,
Breathing out I relax my grasping at those feelings,
Stage 3: Breathing in I detach from those feelings,
Breathing out I extend compassion and understanding to those feelings.
In stage one as we breathe in, we become consciously aware of any painful feelings we may be experiencing, as we breathe out, we acknowledge them fully. Often, we try and repress or deny negative feelings, which in turn allow them to build and transform into negative emotions. Fully acknowledging what is there and gives feelings the attention they need in order to be addressed.
In stage two we observe how we are clinging to these painful feelings, grasping at them tightly. Then, as we breathe out, we consciously release that tight grasping, energetically relaxing our body and mind.
In stage three we detach from those painful feelings, at the same time as extending a feeling of compassion and understanding toward them. We combine the objective experience of detachment with the positive emotional tonalities of compassion and understanding.
Suggestions for Daily Practice
The essential point is that feelings can be distinguished from emotions, and we can prevent negative emotions from arising by avoiding focusing on painful feelings in the wrong way.
The brief meditation technique I describe above can be done as a two-minute exercise or as an extended meditation, taking a few minutes to focus on each of the stages. It is a meditation that is worth doing sometimes even if we are not fully aware of any negative feelings inside us, as often it will bring to light feelings within us the need a bit of tender loving care.
Of course if there are also practical things that we can do to alleviate the negative feelings, like taking medicine, or having a conversation to clear the air with our partner about a hurt we have then this should be done to!
Related reading: “Insight Meditation – Improving Your Subjective Experience by Developing Your Objective Perspective”
© Toby Ouvry 2026, you are welcome to use or share this article, but please cite Toby as the source and include reference to his website www.tobyouvry.com
Upcoming classes & workshops
Ongoing on Tuesday’s & Wednesday’s (live & online), 7.30-8.30pm – Weekly integral meditation classes
Ongoing on Saturdays, 5.30-6.45pm SG time – Saturday Integral meditation deep-dive sessions with Toby
Ongoing on Wednesdays – The inner smile – Meditations for inner regeneration & connecting to the Earth – An 8-week course
Ongoing on Saturdays – The inner smile & Earth healing deep-dive – An 8 session practice series
Saturday 25th April, 2.30-4.30pm – Mindfulness for emotional intelligence masterclass
Follow Toby on: LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram
Integral Meditation Asia
Online Courses * 1:1 Coaching * Books * Live Workshops * Corporate Mindfulness Training *Life-Coaching * Meditation Technology