A feeling becomes easier to understand after you stop demanding that it leave immediately.

A feeling that you are fighting cannot be examined, because all your attention goes to making it stop. The struggle also adds a second layer, distress about being distressed, which usually outweighs the original thing. Once you stop demanding that it leave, the feeling becomes something you can look at, and looking at it is what reveals what it is actually about.

Try giving a difficult feeling a defined stretch of time this week. Sit with it for a while without fixing, without analyzing it into submission, without distracting yourself. Ask what it is about and let the answer be slow. Feelings that are allowed to stay tend not to overstay.