Short reflection: Those feels you’d rather not feel

Lucy Newport • June 5, 2025

Reading time: 2 mins

Originally shared as part of Inbox Reflections - my honest, heartfelt emails to support your binge eating recovery as a highly sensitive woman. 



There’s no point in trying to hide the fact that emotional discomfort is uncomfortable.

Things happen throughout life, big and small, that evoke a whole range of emotions we’d rather not feel. And this is a lot for anyone - especially a Highly Sensitive Person.

Through all of my attempts at avoiding this discomfort - with food, keeping myself busy, scrolling, daydreaming, working, watching shows and everything else - I’ve learnt that;


1. The thought of feeling something tends to be more threatening than actually just feeling it

2. Avoiding discomfort creates more discomfort (my years of binge eating is a perfect example)

3. I’m always surprised how quickly the discomfort subsides when I do feel it 


I know this post may be a little heavier than my usual (eek, sorry! 💗)

But understanding emotional discomfort is so important and something very few of us are taught.
And yet this understanding can actually bring with it much more lightness.

It’s not to dismiss any discomfort you feel or to say that it’s just “not that bad” - not at all.

I know that you’re a deep feeler, that you’re easily moved by your experiences and what’s happening in the world.


It’s to say that despite how uncomfortable something may feel, you are capable of feeling it.


Of being with it and allowing it to move through. 


And the more you show yourself that you can feel something without running from it - the more your nervous system learns that you are safe and able to be with what is. 


That’s how we build resilience - not by avoiding hard moments, but by meeting them with openness and self-trust.


So if an emotion you’d usually try to avoid stirs within you today, see if you can breathe into it - just a little.


You don’t have to fix it…

Just give it some space and let that be enough.




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Hungry for more? Here are some extra resources for you


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Reading time: 1 min Originally shared as part of Inbox Reflections - my honest, heartfelt emails to support your binge eating recovery as a highly sensitive woman. Most women in binge eating recovery have a challenging relationship with exercise. And as a Highly Sensitive Person, it’s likely there are extra layers of complexity for you… Maybe you’ve really pushed yourself in the past, exercising in ways that were too intense for you and further disconnected you from your body, all in the name of weight loss. Perhaps you feel guilty that you don’t do certain types of exercise simply because they don’t feel good to you. Or maybe thoughts about how you “should” be exercising stop you from moving your body as much. If so, there’s a recent piece of research into HSPs and their relationships with exercise that you might find insightful… The researchers found from those who took part (students and employees at a university in the USA, mostly female) that HSPs are just as likely to exercise as anyone else, but that they prefer less intense exercise. And that makes absolute sense knowing what we know about HSPs ✨ It’s just one small study, but it totally resonates with me. How about you? If so, I hope knowing this helps you to quieten the “but I should be…” thoughts, and enjoy moving your body the ways you like to!




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