This is the second part of a two-part series exploring emotional body sensations.
When Some Small Part of You Feels Okay
Emotional discomfort understandably captures our attention more effectively than pleasant feelings. That imbalance helps fuel an economy packed with promises of relief. Physical pain, emotional distress, and uncertainty make us especially receptive to anything that promises to make them go away.
Much of what I read about navigating difficult emotions focuses on what caused them, what they mean, and what to do about them. When I talk about developing mindful awareness of emotional feelings, I mean something different—something that remains confusing until it moves from conceptual understanding into direct experience: noticing the sensory components that convey our feelings before we analyze or address them.
The day after my granddaughter Quinn was born, I was taking care of her older brother, Frankie, along with four dogs: our dog Baxter and Alex and Derek’s dogs, Ginger, Cookie, and Sophia.
Frankie and I were getting ready to leave for the hospital to meet his new sister. I had backed the car out, strapped him into his car seat, and ran back into the house for something he wanted to bring along.
A minute or two later, I noticed something was wrong.
The house was way too quiet.
A quick scan revealed that I had left the sliding door open. The gate across the driveway was open so we could back out, creating a perfect opportunity for four-legged family members, overshadowed by the new baby, to go on an adventure.
I grabbed the leashes, got Frankie out of his car seat, and we started looking. Baxter and Ginger came running back almost immediately. Cookie hadn’t gone far, but little Sophia was nowhere to be found.
So instead of heading to the hospital, Frankie and I started walking around the neighborhood, peeking into backyards, calling Sophia’s name.
This is exactly the kind of situation my mind knows how to make worse. I had caused the problem. I desperately wanted to rewind the past few minutes and close the door. I imagined having to tell Alex and Derek that I had lost their dog while they were at the hospital with their newborn daughter. I could practically hear the family story being told for years: Remember the day after Quinn was born, when Grampy let the dogs out and we never saw Sophia again?
And there was another, subtler pressure. If I wasn’t visibly distressed enough, would people interpret that mean I wasn’t taking the situation seriously enough?
The uncertainty plus the high emotional stakes threatened to convince me that suffering in advance was the most sensible use of my energy and attention. Not freaking out would be irresponsible, right? But part of me knew that making myself miserable wouldn’t help us find her.
So I tried something else.
I paid attention to what was actually happening.
It was a pleasant May day. I was walking around the neighborhood with my grandson. Sometimes I carried him on my shoulders. We had a mission. We called Sophia’s name, poked our noses into places we normally wouldn’t, talked with neighbors, and explored familiar streets from an unfamiliar perspective.
I wasn’t trying to convince myself that the situation was okay. I was trying to notice whether some small part of me felt okay within it.
That distinction changed everything.
The fear didn’t disappear. Neither did my concern for Sophia or my responsibility for finding her. But when I stopped feeding the imagined ending and focused on what was actually happening, my distress dropped dramatically. The situation was urgent, but it no longer felt like a crisis. I was looking for a lost dog.
Eventually I called Derek at the hospital and asked him to come help. We kept searching.
After about 90 minutes, another bodily sensation finally became impossible to ignore: I really had to pee.
So Frankie and I headed back to the house. And for the first time, it occurred to me to check the car.
I opened the door.
There was Sophia, staring back at me.
Apparently, in those frantic first seconds after realizing the dogs were loose, I had closed the car doors without noticing that Sophia had climbed inside. She had been safe all along.
I treasure this memory partly because of that ridiculous ending. But I also remember it as an unusually clear demonstration of something I’d been practicing for years.
Feeling okay in some part of your body doesn’t mean indifference to the situation.
It doesn’t mean the unpleasant feeling has disappeared. It doesn’t mean you’ve decided the problem isn’t important. And it certainly doesn’t guarantee that the story will have a happy ending.
It means that unwanted possibilities don’t necessarily occupy every square inch of your awareness.
This can feel surprisingly counterintuitive. We tend to treat distress as evidence that we understand the seriousness of a situation. Sometimes there’s even social pressure to perform it. If I’m laughing, enjoying the sunshine, or noticing the pleasant sensation of a child riding on my shoulders while something important remains unresolved, perhaps I’m not worried enough.
But worry and caring aren’t the same thing.
The attentional move I’m describing doesn’t require replacing unpleasant feelings with pleasant ones. It asks whether, while the unpleasant feelings are present, something else is present too.
A relaxed forehead. Warmth in your hands. The beginnings of a smile. Interest. Affection. A little spark of amusement. Or perhaps nothing recognizably pleasant at all, just some small region of the body that, for this particular moment, doesn’t hurt and isn’t afraid.
That’s enough.
The point isn’t to manufacture a better experience. It’s to become more accurate about the experience you’re already having.
Today’s attention exercise invites you to temporarily set aside the story you could tell about how you’re feeling and investigate the component sensations beneath it.
Here are some fun ways to investigate the subtly pleasant feelings we easily overlook:
Notice the glee mixed with fear when watching a scary show. The recent hit Widow’s Bay gives you the opportunity to play with a wide variety of pleasant feelings in the diabolical stew of fear, frustration, and cringe.
Try to feel the quiet shiver of delight when someone voices an opinion that lines up neatly with your own. Before rushing into disdain for people who disagree, see if you can recognize what certainty itself feels like in your body.1 Surprise, it feels good.
Music makes this challenge a lot easier. I find that the feelings percolate so quickly that trying to pin them down or name them becomes pointless. Instead, let the emotionality wash over you like a warm shower. For extra credit, notice whether an emotional flavor or tone lingers after the song ends.
The next time you plan to get together with someone who tends to make you laugh a lot, try to mine some of the laughter to help you map the shape, spread, and other characteristics of your body’s sensory response to humor.
Erotic feelings seem to play a similarly sneaky function as humorous ones. The next time you find yourself lured—willingly or unwillingly—into a thirst trap, scan for affective sensations unique to this kind of human arousal.
There’s a reason to play with this when nothing much is at stake. In a recent Science of Perception Box conversation, neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett made a related point: we may have more influence over our experience than we think, but that influence develops like a skill. It works better when we practice before the heat of the moment rather than waiting until we desperately need it.
That’s what exercises like this are for.
Exercise
This body-based attention exercise invites you to notice pleasant and neutral sensations that can be easily overlooked when something feels unpleasant—and to discover that different emotional flavors can coexist.
You don’t need to make an unpleasant feeling go away. The practice is simply to notice whether some small part of you feels okay within it.
When to use this attention exercise:
When an unpleasant mood starts to feel like the whole experience
While you're waiting for an outcome you can't control
During ordinary low-stakes moments, to strengthen the skill before you need it
