I learned to process difficult emotions with meditation (here’s how)

Hey legend, it’s Josh here.

In this blog I’m going to talk about how I learned to process difficult emotions with meditation.

Let me start by saying, when I first started meditation, I was scared of the world.

I was an anxious 17 year old who didn’t know who I was, I was scared of the world and I was also scared of my mind because I didn’t know how to control it.

I was always overthinking and riddled with fear.

Fear of people in my life passing away.

Fear of what I would do when I was met with challenges through life.

Fear of myself and if I could handle life or if I was going to go crazy.

Fear of becoming an addict.

Fear of relationships.

I had a lot of fear.

I also wanted to get that fear under control because I thought to myself back then, “if this is what life is going to be like then I’m fucked”.

That’s when I found meditation.

I didn’t know it at the time but I had just stumbled upon a practice that would shape the rest of my life.

That was 15 years ago. 

Now I don’t have much fear at all and any fear that does come up for me, I know is a natural and normal part of life.

I don’t try to avoid fear anymore (or any other emotion for that matter).

Therein lies one of the biggest lessons I’m going to teach you right now.

Stop Avoiding Your Emotions

Most people try to avoid their emotions.

They’re always trying to figure out a way to reject, change or fight their own emotions.

Your emotions are part of your experience.

When you try to fight your emotions, you’re really trying to fight yourself.

Now if you’re like most people, you have your “likes and dislikes”.

You have emotions or feelings you like to experience and emotions or feelings you don’t like to experience.

For example, you prefer to experience happy emotions and you try to avoid sad emotions.

This way of thinking keeps you stuck because “What you resist persists”.

Avoiding negative emotions is called suppression.

You suppress your emotions.

When you suppress your emotions, they stay stuck in you and they never get resolved.

You need to learn to feel your emotions.

Meditation is a safe place for you to learn to feel your emotions.

A lot of people avoid meditation because they can’t handle sitting with their emotions.

You sit down, try to be still but then you have thoughts coming to your head and then you start feeling uncomfortable or frustrated and so you give up.

This is all an internal experience you’re having. Nothing has changed outside.

You have to see this clearly.

You are not allowing yourself to sit with yourself, your thoughts and your emotions.

You are trying to avoid or suppress the experience you’re having.

It’s blocking the free flow of your energy.

It’s kinda like if you turn on a garden hose but then kink the hose so the water can’t come out.

The pressure builds up.

This is what happens when you avoid your emotions.

Your emotions are supposed to flow freely like water through the garden hose. 

When you avoid or suppress your emotions, you are kinking the hose which leads to a build up of pressure, stress and tension in your body.

This is when people become dysregulated and enter heightened states of anxiety.

Allowing Your Emotions

The amazing thing I learned to do through meditation was to simply sit with and allow my emotions to flow through me.

This is not about going and having a cry about your emotions.

It's not about throwing a tantrum and telling everyone how you’re feeling.

It’s not about seeking external validation for your emotional state.

It’s about learning to be present with what you’re experiencing without trying to change it.

It’s about FEELING without judging yourself.

Feeling without attaching yourself to preferred outcomes.

It’s simply about understanding that you are a human and it’s normal for you to experience a range of emotions.

When you learn to meet your full range of emotions with courage, love and acceptance, your life will start changing quickly.

You’ll begin processing your unresolved emotions and healing your mental, emotional and even physical health.

When you stop avoiding and start allowing, you unkink the hose of your own emotional system and the flow of your energy will return.

If you’re experiencing a deep state of anxiety or depression, it’s really a build up of unprocessed emotions that create this dense feeling of being “stuck”.

You want to get yourself moving and get the energy flowing again.

The universal Law of Inertia states “an object at rest will stay at rest and an object in motion will stay in motion”.

You have to get yourself moving, stop avoiding and start allowing.

In the beginning this might feel hard because you have to build up your momentum like a car that is warming up to get going or a bicycle that needs you to pedal to gain speed.

The start always requires a bit of a push but once you get the ball rolling, it starts getting easier.

“Do the thing and you will get the energy to do the thing”

Meditation Science & Proof

Admittedly, I didn’t know any of this when I first started meditation 15 years ago. I had to figure it out by myself.

Now, there are countless studies which speak to how this all works from a neurological perspective.

When you meditate, you’re literally changing the way your brain processes emotions.

Most people spend their lives stuck in the amygdala, the part of the brain that’s responsible for emotional reactivity, fear, and stress responses.

When the amygdala is overactive, you feel anxious, reactive, and overwhelmed. Your mind gets hijacked by old emotional patterns before you even realise what’s happening.

Meditation helps bring you out of that survival state and back into the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that regulates your emotions, makes conscious decisions, and allows you to respond instead of react.

Multiple studies show that even short periods of mindfulness or meditation increases activity in the prefrontal cortex while decreasing activity in the amygdala.

One study showed that after just eight weeks of meditation training, the connection between the prefrontal cortex and amygdala strengthened, allowing people to recover from stress more quickly (this is why I guarantee results within 12 weeks in my coaching program).

All of this proves meditation doesn’t just help you “feel calmer”, it’s literally rewiring your brain to process emotions in a healthier way.

Over time, the more you practice, the stronger these neural pathways become.

You start to move from automatic, reactive patterns (amygdala-driven) to conscious, regulated responses (prefrontal-driven).

This is why long-term meditators tend to feel more grounded, clear, and emotionally stable, not because they don’t feel emotions, but because they’ve trained their brain to hold them differently.

So when I say meditation helps you process difficult emotions, I’m not talking about a metaphor. 

It’s neuroscience.

You’re strengthening the part of your brain that helps you stay calm and aware, and weakening the part that keeps you trapped in fear.

The Mind Launch Method

This is how I’ve helped 300+ business professionals find freedom from anxiety and other difficult emotions over the last few years.

I use a 3-step system called the Mind Launch Method.

Step 1. Regulate - Reduce stress and anxiety quickly (0-30 days)

Step 2. Reprogram - Rewire the neural pathways and change your beliefs (30-60 days)

Step 3. Reset - Experience a complete mind, body, spirit reset to find inner peace (60-90 days)

This can be done in 3-months if you’re ready to put in the work. If you want to learn more about how this method works, check out the short explainer video here.

With Optimism,

Josh