What Does It Mean to “Sit With Your Feelings”? Try the AED Framework
- Stacey Bessard
- 24 minutes ago
- 7 min read
Stacey Bessard, LMFT
“Let’s sit with that.”
It is a phrase we hear often—from therapists and non-therapists alike. You may have been encouraged to “sit with your feelings,” or perhaps you have offered the same advice to someone else. But how do you sit with your feelings when the experience feels uncomfortable, abstract, or overwhelming?
As beautiful and compassionate as the phrase sounds, what does it actually mean?
How long is a moment?
When can I get up?
What am I supposed to do while I am sitting there?
And after I sit with the feeling—then what?
These are often the questions that follow when we are asked to sit with—or in—an emotion we have been avoiding like the plague.
For an anxious or avoidant mind, “sit with it” can feel too abstract and far too large. For the high-achieving person who is accustomed to solving problems, completing tasks, and moving forward, sitting with a feeling may be one of the most overwhelming assignments of all.
It can sound like one more thing that requires time, attention, and energy you do not have available.
At Color Me Therapy, much of our work involves helping individuals and couples find practical ways to experience their feelings without becoming consumed by them. We help clients move beneath surface reactions so they can understand the emotional and relational patterns that continue to repeat.
To make this process more concrete, we developed a three-part framework:
Acknowledge. Explore. Decide.
We call it the AED Framework.
An automated external defibrillator, or AED, is designed to help restore a life-sustaining rhythm during a medical emergency. In a different context, Color Me Therapy’s AED Framework helps bring awareness, movement, and color back to the parts of a person’s emotional life that may have become disconnected, avoided, or stuck.
Here is what each part of the AED Framework means—and how you can begin applying it to your life today.
1. Acknowledge: What Am I Feeling Right Now?
Acknowledging means noticing the strongest feeling or emotional response present in this moment.
Research involving more than 11,000 participants found that people reported experiencing at least one emotion during approximately 90% of the moments sampled. Positive emotions were reported more than 2.5 times as often as negative emotions, and people also frequently experienced positive and negative emotions at the same time.
In other words, emotional experiences are not occasional interruptions. They are a consistent part of being human. You can read more about the study in Emotions in Everyday Life.
Why does this matter?
Because feelings are a significant part of the human experience, yet many of us have learned not to experience them fully.
When someone asks, “How are you feeling today?” the response is often:
“I’m fine.”
“I’m tired.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“A lot is going on.”
These answers may describe what is happening, but they do not always reveal what we are actually feeling.
Acknowledgment begins by noticing what is present without immediately trying to explain, criticize, minimize, or change it.
Ask yourself:
● What feeling is strongest right now?
● What sensations do I notice in my body?
● Where am I holding tension?
● What might my body be trying to communicate?
Your body may notice the emotion before your mind finds language for it. Tight shoulders, a clenched jaw, a heavy chest, a restless stomach, or furrowed brows can all provide information about your internal experience.
Practice intentional noticing
Each morning, take a brief moment to notice what is happening inside and around you. This is a practice—not something you are expected to master.
Try the following:
Use your senses. Identify three things you can see, three things you can hear, and three things you can physically feel or smell.
Notice without criticizing. Observe what is happening without labeling it as good, bad, dramatic, weak, or irrational.
Scan your body. Notice tension, heaviness, warmth, numbness, restlessness, or any other physical sensation.
Look for a low-hanging joy. Find one small thing that adds goodness to your day: sunlight through a window, your favorite drink, a song, a quiet moment, or a conversation with someone you love.
When you acknowledge an emotion, you are not solving it. You are simply saying:
Something is happening within me, and I am willing to notice it.
That awareness prepares you for the second part of the AED Framework.
2. Explore: What Is Happening Beneath This Feeling?
Exploration is where the deeper work begins.
It can be met with resistance, frustration, discomfort—and, if you remain curious long enough, a flicker of light at the end of the tunnel.
This is the “sitting” part.
It is where you become curious about the feeling instead of immediately running from it, reacting from it, or criticizing yourself for having it. You begin patiently pulling back emotional layers that may have gone unexplored for years.
Many clients enter therapy asking questions such as:
“Why do I keep feeling this way?”
“Why do I keep choosing the same kind of relationship?”
“Why do I react so strongly?”
“Why do I keep repeating the same pattern?”
At Color Me Therapy, we teach our clients that feelings are valid—but feelings are also information. They deserve exploration, not judgment.
Your feelings can tell you that something needs attention. However, they do not always tell you the complete truth about what is happening in the present moment.
After acknowledging an emotion, explore what may have activated it. Without this step, you may continue cycling through the same feelings without understanding why they persist.
Questions to help you explore your feelings
Ask yourself:
● Where might this feeling be coming from?
● What happened immediately before I noticed it?
● If this feeling could speak, what would it say?
● What am I afraid this feeling might mean?
● What might this feeling be trying to protect me from?
● Does this feeling seem familiar?
● When have I felt this way before?
● What do I need in this moment?
● Is this response connected only to what is happening now, or is something from my past also present?
Try a no-judgment emotional dump
Write the feeling in the center of a blank sheet of paper.
Around it, write whatever comes to mind: words, memories, body sensations, fears, questions, images, beliefs, or urges.
Do not organize it. Do not correct it. Do not determine whether it makes sense.
Simply allow what is inside of you to become visible.
This exercise can take five minutes. Sitting with your feelings does not have to mean spending hours lost in emotional analysis. The goal is not to force an immediate breakthrough. The goal is to make enough room for curiosity.
Exploration should be approached with patience and intentionality—not judgment.
3. Decide: Is This Feeling Based on Present Facts or Familiar Fear?
The final stage is Decide.
This is where awareness begins to move toward change.
After acknowledging and exploring the emotion, you decide whether the story attached to that feeling is supported by present facts—or whether it has been shaped by familiar experiences from the past.
This does not mean deciding whether the feeling is “right” or “wrong.” The feeling is already present, and it deserves acknowledgment.
Instead, you are asking:
What will I allow this feeling to mean, and what will I choose to do next?
This can be the most difficult part of the process because it often confronts us with old wounds that have been shaping our understanding of present-day reality.
A delayed text might activate the belief that you are being abandoned.
A partner’s need for space might activate the fear that you are unwanted.
Constructive feedback might activate the belief that you are not good enough.
Conflict might make your nervous system believe that the entire relationship is unsafe.
The emotion is real, but its interpretation may be influenced by an older emotional system.
Questions to help you decide
Ask yourself:
● What are the facts of the current situation?
● What story am I telling myself about those facts?
● What evidence supports that story?
● What evidence does not support it?
● Is this response rooted in the present, the past, or a combination of both?
● What would I choose if I were responding from safety rather than fear?
● What action would support the person or partner I am becoming?
● What is one small, healthy next step I can take?
Deciding is where you begin choosing a response instead of automatically repeating a reaction.
Sitting With Your Feelings Does Not Mean Staying Stuck
To sit with a feeling does not mean allowing it to take over your entire day.
It does not mean endlessly analyzing your childhood, ignoring your responsibilities, or remaining in emotional pain without support.
It means slowing down long enough to:
1. Acknowledge what is present.
2. Explore what may be underneath it.
3. Decide what is true and how you want to respond.
This process helps create space between what you feel and what you do next.
Over time, these small decisions can strengthen a new emotional and relational system—one that moves you closer to secure connection, healthier boundaries, greater self-trust, and the healing you desire.
You Do Not Have to Explore the Pattern Alone
At Color Me Therapy, we spend much of our work helping individuals and couples identify the emotional systems operating underneath their reactions, relationship patterns, and beliefs about themselves.
We do not simply help clients talk about what happened. We help them understand why the pattern continues—and practice the series of choices necessary to create something new.
Our attachment-informed approach may support you if you are:
● Repeating the same relationship patterns
● Struggling with anxiety or overthinking
● Feeling disconnected from yourself or your partner
● Having difficulty trusting your emotions or decisions
● Navigating people-pleasing, boundaries, or hyper-independence
● Carrying old wounds into present relationships
● Ready to build healthier emotional and relational patterns
Learn more about our individual therapy services or explore couples therapy at Color Me Therapy.
Are you ready to discover what has been running the show underneath your feelings?
Schedule a consultation with Color Me Therapy and begin your journey toward healing what has been on repeat.
This article is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for individualized mental health care, diagnosis, or treatment.
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