Emotions Versus Thoughts
Let’s have a vocabulary moment.
Ever heard someone say it’s important to sit with an emotion? This is true — but it’s misunderstood a lot. So let’s make sure you understand the message before integrating something that could trap you in a storm of thoughts.
Thoughts
Thoughts are words, phrases, and sentences that pass through our minds. I like to think of them as ribbons shooting through the sky.
Here are some types:
- Intentional thoughts — the central self thinking things through deliberately.
- Passive thoughts — thoughts that simply pass by without much charge.
- Intrusive thoughts — the ones that arrive in ALL CAPS and come barreling in uninvited.
- Racing thoughts — a tornado of rapidly moving thoughts, one after another.
Something important to remember: analyzing, restructuring, and reflecting on thoughts with intention is really rewarding work. But you really don’t need to work with every single thought.
Some thoughts don’t originate with you. They come from society, childhood experiences, from someone who said really awful things to you once. Some thoughts can simply be let alone to drift into the abyss. You don’t owe every thought your attention.
Emotions
Emotions live in the body. They aren’t strings of words or sentences — they consist of energy that moves through and lives in the physical self.
Many of us learn to avoid and repress emotions because we’re scared to feel them. Scared we’ll lose control. But suppressing an emotion is like trying to hold a balloon underwater. You can keep it down — but the moment you need your hands for something else, that balloon is rising to the surface. And sometimes it’s not pretty.
That’s why when you try to get rid of an emotion, it often comes back stronger. The energy of the emotion needs to move through you, not be pushed away.
When you stop fighting and instead stay with an emotion, the body realizes it’s safe to let it pass. The body doesn’t actually want to hold onto emotions. Many times it takes about a minute — just one minute — to fully feel and release an emotion.
Thought Spiral or Processing Emotions? Here’s How to Tell
I mentioned the importance of sitting with emotions — and why it’s risky to misunderstand that message. Because sitting with an emotion is very different from sitting in thoughts.
Sometimes “sit with your emotions” gets interpreted as permission to surrender into a rabbit hole of thinking that consumes and tortures rather than moves through and processes. That’s not sitting with an emotion. That’s a thought spiral wearing the costume of emotional processing.
Here’s a quick way to tell the difference in real time:
Ask yourself: where is this living right now?
If it’s in your body — a tightness in your chest, a heaviness in your stomach, a lump in your throat — that’s an emotion. Stay there. Breathe into it. Let it move.
If it’s in your head — a story on repeat, a conversation you’re replaying, a worst-case scenario you keep constructing — that’s a thought spiral. That’s not the place to sit and marinate. Notice the thoughts, and let them pass while you work through the emotion.
The goal of sitting with an emotion is to feel it — not to narrate it, analyze it, or follow it down a tunnel. The body processes. The mind spins. Learning to tell the difference is one of the most useful things you can do for your mental health.
Curious about what this looks like in practice? Read this blog on processing emotions in the body.
Key Takeaways
- Thoughts and emotions are not the same thing. Thoughts are mental — words and sentences moving through your mind. Emotions are physical — energy that lives and moves through the body.
- You don’t have to engage every thought. Some thoughts are worth catching and working with. Many others can simply be let go, especially the ones that were never really yours to begin with.
- Sitting with an emotion means feeling it in the body — not replaying it in your mind. Ruminating on the story around an emotion is not the same as feeling the emotion itself.
- Suppression makes emotions louder, not quieter. The more you fight an emotion, the stronger it tends to return. Allowing it to move through you is what actually releases it.
- The body wants to let go. It doesn’t want to hold onto pain. When you give an emotion space and safety, it often passes much faster than you’d expect — sometimes in as little as a minute.