Disclaimer: if you are struggling with suicidal/homicidal feelings please do not try this exercise without a professional and please consider contacting a professional now for these feelings. If you are experiencing these feelings right now, that is an emergency - please call 911 or suicide hotline: 1 800 273 8255.
Whenever you resist a feeling you are only making it stronger. Resistance is persistence. But...
I don't want to feel..
I should feel...
I definitely shouldn't feel...
I don't like feeling....
So we hold it in, and we simmer. The feeling comes out in ugly spurts in places it doesn't belong. Crying, yelling or feeling scared over seemingly nothing! Can you relate to this?
That's because none of these thoughts are going to change the fact of what you're feeling.
So take a deep breath and just be whatever you are feeling. Feel it as strongly as you can. As if you are feeling all of the world's experience with that feeling. Exaggerating it as if you were representing that feeling in the movie Inside Out.
I know this can be scary and unpleasant. Contrary to what you've been told your whole life.
You aren't indulging it by acting on it.
You aren't resigning yourself to a lifetime of this feeling.
You are just acknowledging that feeling's presence and respecting yourself for feeling it.
Meanwhile you are also processing this emotion much effectively through this exercise.
So keep breathing and feeling the emotion as deeply as you can without resistance!
It can be helpful to use touch to engage both sides of your body and therefore brain. Try tapping one knee, and take a deep breath with the emotion, then the other. Or do the same thing using acupressure points like the spot where the bridge of your nose and eyebrow meet.