When You Stop Trying to Fix Your Feelings, Something Else Happens

How staying with sensation can create relief without insight

For anyone standing in the middle of the mess — Mindful Messes, a creative, nervous-system-first approach for overwhelmed and neurodivergent moms who want to feel like themselves again.

Most of us have been taught that uncomfortable feelings are problems to solve.

If something feels tight, heavy, or restless, the instinct is to name it, understand it, and move past it as quickly as possible. We look for clarity, insight, or a takeaway that will make the feeling easier to manage.

But there’s another option that often gets overlooked.

Sometimes, relief doesn’t come from understanding at all.
It comes from staying.

Not staying in your head.
Staying with your body.

The reflex to fix

For many overwhelmed adults, especially parents, caregivers, and neurodivergent folks, the urge to fix feelings shows up fast. It can look like:

• overthinking what something “means”

• searching for the right explanation

• turning emotional experience into mental work

That reflex makes sense. It’s often how we’ve learned to cope.

But when fixing becomes the only option, feelings don’t actually get space to settle. They just get managed.

What happens when you stay instead

Staying doesn’t mean forcing yourself to sit in discomfort. It means giving sensation a small, supportive place to exist without requiring a solution.

This can be as simple as:

• making slow, wandering lines on a page

• noticing pressure and repetition

• softening intersections without trying to create an image

Nothing needs to be finished. Nothing needs to be symbolic.

Often, what shifts isn’t clarity but something quieter:

• breath lengthens

• shoulders drop

• urgency softens

Nothing has been resolved. And yet, something feels different.

Relief without explanation

This is the part many people miss.

We’re trained to look for meaning in words. But the nervous system often responds first to rhythm, containment, and repetition.

Relief can arrive without a story attached to it.

When you allow marks to just be marks, when you let repetition be enough, the body gets information that the mind doesn’t need to analyze.

That’s not avoidance.
That’s regulation.

A small practice you can try

If you’d like to experiment with staying rather than fixing:

• Take one piece of paper.

• Make one continuous line across the page.

• When the line crosses itself, gently round the corner.

• Stop whenever you want.

You don’t need to notice anything special.
If all that happens is a slight slowing, that counts.

Why this matters

Staying with sensation without fixing builds a different relationship with your inner world. Over time, it can reduce urgency, soften self-criticism, and make emotional experience feel less demanding.

Not because you figured something out.
But because you didn’t rush away.

If this kind of body-led, low-pressure creative practice feels supportive, you might enjoy The Scribble Sessions, a monthly membership built around gentle, returnable creative regulation.

If you’re craving more grounding, creativity, and connection, you’re welcome in this growing community of moms learning to feel, make, and become themselves again.

I offer in-person parent–child art groups, creative workshops and trainings throughout Monmouth County and across New Jersey, as well as The Scribble Sessions — my online Substack platform where we explore creative rituals, nervous system support, and ways to soften the messiness of everyday life.

You don’t have to do this alone. Come create alongside us.