Chapter 7: Let Your Feelings Eat

Read Chapter 5 Read Chapter 6

We are sharing this chapter of Act, Rest, Reset, Repeat by Katie Hodgetts for members of our Hopeful Book Club.

Find out more about the Katie and the Book, or buy a copy here.

The right of Katie Hodgetts to be identified as the Author of this text  has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this text may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Chapter 7

The Guest House
This body, O youth, is a guest-house: 
every morning a new guest comes running. Beware, do not say, “The (guest) is a burden to me,” for presently it will fly back into non-existence. Whatsoever comes into thy heart from the invisible world is thy guest: entertain it well!
Rumi

We are overwhelmed and overstimulated by things that shouldn’t be: the glow of constant LED lighting, the exorbitant wealth of billionaires, the mercilessness of war, the apathy of our elected leaders. And we have enabled things our ancestors once strived for: choice, chemotherapy, the belief that we can seize any and every opportunity, a larger pool of potential life partners. The carousel of emotions that modern living exposes us to can move us from gratitude and awe in the morning, to burnout in the afternoon. Put simply, it’s an emotionally volatile time to be alive and our statistics reflect that. We are having a lot more “Big Feelings”, and these feelings now have big names. As mentioned, rates of depression and anxiety have risen by 25 per cent globally since the COVID-19 pandemic.³⁰ In the UK, the likelihood of young people aged 5 to 16 experiencing a mental health problem has risen by 50 per cent over the past three years.³¹ In the US, in 2023, 40 per cent of high school students reported feeling so sad or hopeless for two weeks or more in a row that they had stopped doing some of their usual activities in the past 12 months.³²

In a clinical setting, these names and diagnoses are both fundamental to getting the correct support and validating our experiences. However, much mental health rhetoric now comes from those who are not professionals, with a rise of self-diagnosis of mental health conditions through social media rather than GP referrals.^33,** While self-diagnosis may feel helpful to the individual and override the eye-watering waiting lists for meaningful support, it can amplify the idea that there are “good” and “bad” feelings, creating a strict emotional hierarchy that leaves us craving some states and feeling shame for others. This hierarchy is emboldened by capitalism and individualism, with the social narrative running that if you’re sad, you’re not productive, which makes you unworthy. In fact, sadness might be the appropriate response to your given life circumstances. Sadness might be an important container to sit in for a while. We aren’t taught how to hold sadness. So, we compare ourselves to others and feel shame that something is wrong with us, adding unwanted layers of complexity to the picture. We feel emotions about the emotions. That’s a lot to hold.

Another complexity is the narrative that the Big Feeling is a life sentence, encouraging a modality that we “are” something rather than it being a temporary guest in our home. For example, we might say, “I have social anxiety”, rather than, “I feel anxious among new people I haven’t built trust with”, or, “I have depression”, rather than a more amusing take like, “I am in a season of great emotional decline”. Words carry power and impact our sense of resilience. Using language to signify that we embody one emotional state misunderstands us as humans with different parts. One part of us might feel anxious when we speak in large groups, but another part of us might feel exceptionally confident with those we love. “I am . . . ” robs us of the many ways we show up and the potential for experiencing multiple emotions simultaneously, or “both/and”. You can feel anxious in life and feel a great sense of strength in who you are. You can feel depressed about the world and experience joy in the moments of your day. Emotions can co-exist.^***

** A survey reported by Tebra indicated that 1 in 4 people had diagnosed themselves with an illness based on information found on social media. Among these, 48 per cent self diagnosed with anxiety, and 37 per cent with depression.

*** I speak here outside the clinical environment, as I am not a mental health practitioner, therapist or doctor. 

During my second burnout, the sadness felt so consuming that I had no clear roadmap of how to continue functioning on a daily basis. I remember telling my housemate that I didn’t know if I’d ever feel happiness again. We might want to label this quickly as depression, though stating that without a clinical diagnosis corrupted the truth to me that my body and emotional landscape were responding naturally to shock. There was a way forward where I could have felt both depressed and well at the same time. My friend Joey suggested that I could carry the feelings of depression around with me like I was carrying them around in a bag, rather than hiding away with my ailment. It was my accessory, rather than me entirely. So, I changed my story: I didn’t have clinical depression; rather, life had handed me a great chunk of sadness that I now dutifully carried with me. That meant I could still live my life, find soft laughter and connection, navigating the bag, rather than shutting my life down entirely. I could adjust to my new normal and know that depression would enjoy its stay at my guest house and move on in time.

Anxiety is another good example here. I write about resilience and I suffer from panic attacks. After a period without them for almost ten years, last year the weight of leading an international organization, the fundraising, the team management and the public speaking, resulted in more panic attacks. They would come from nowhere. I’d be speaking about the work we do and suddenly the world would spin, my heart would beat rapidly and I felt like I was going to die. My first thought was that I had an anxiety disorder, which Anxiety may be a led me to say no to a few public part of you, but it’s speaking opportunities. When I not all of you. started to self-limit because of an idea of who I was and what I had, I finally asked myself, “At this point, do I have anxiety, or does anxiety have me?” Having panic attacks and anxiety, rather than a diagnosis, was a signal for me to slow down and make big changes in my life. It was a reminder that stress leaves its mark on your nervous system and there is sometimes no mind hack you can do to overcome physical symptoms. I needed to make the changes to re-regulate my nervous system. Anxiety was an unwelcome guest, but one with something to tell me: that I still care what people think of me, that I work a bit too hard, that running makes me feel great but doesn’t downregulate my system, and that unproductive rest is essential. So, accept the speaking gig, do the scary thing, share your mind in class – feel utterly nervous, maybe even fuck up – and be okay with that. Anxiety may be a part of you, but it’s not all of you.

Our next guidepost in building resilience is to redesign our relationship to our emotions, counterintuitively saying yes to our vast – and sometimes uncomfortable – emotional landscape. Changemaking, or stepping into the Arena, is a vantage point for seeing both the best and the worst of humanity. It is volatile, perilous and involves both life and death. It is likely then that you will nudge close to the biggest emotions a human can hold. Depression, yes. Anxiety, absolutely. In trying to do good you will sometimes end up feeling very bad. And that too is okay.

The Emotional Banquet

Picture all your emotions gathering like a council to discuss the happenings of your internal landscape. If you’ve seen Inside Out, you might already imagine your council of emotional archetypes, all with differing ideas on how to respond to any given situation at any given moment. In embracing emotional diversity, I introduce the Emotional Banquet.^**** Imagine that all your emotions – Jealousy, Grief, Rage, Compassion, Anxiety, Joy, Apathy, Sadness and so on – are all invited to a feast. At one end of the table sits Rage, already irritated by the unnecessary amount of cutlery (who needs two forks and who is paying for this?!). Next to them sits Grief, staring idlily at her plate. At the other end of the table you’ll find Despair, curled inside herself, chewing her nails as if that’s the appetizer. Someone nudges their chair an inch closer to Despair and gently whispers, “How has your morning been?” It’s Compassion. Next to them sits Joy, unperturbed that today’s menu is full of cheese – and they’re vegan.

**** This concept has been iterated from Caroline Hickman’s idea of embracing our emotional biodiversity. 

Around this table, each of your emotions is offered a seat. There is no hierarchy. All the guests are invited to share a meal. At a civil banquet, the etiquette holds that each guest serves themselves an equitable amount of food to ensure that everyone gets fed, all are nourished and no one goes hungry. But these guests are not well practised. You can think of a meal as an event that happens to you from the large to the small. At your Emotional Banquet, countless meals are served a day; sometimes these are enormous meals, such as when we go through a major life event; and other are smaller meals like feeling helpless about global tragedy; or a snack, like a difficult exchange with your campaign mate. Imagine a campaign you have poured your heart into doesn’t get the traction you were hoping for. Dinner is served, but before the food even gets to the table, Despair, Anger and Hopelessness have leaped over their chairs to consume it all. Hope, Joy and Inspiration are left hungry.

Inevitably, this will happen many times in our lives. Voracious hunger can take over some of our emotions, particularly Anxiety and Anger, leaving no sustenance for Joy. Sometimes they need to eat the lion’s share. Sometimes they deserve to. But when this happens frequently, we run into trouble. If Anxiety is always eating the majority of our life sustenance, not only will we generally feel atrocious, but other emotions like Joy, Inspiration and Hope become starved. Their power begins to wither and their ability to inform and influence our decisions is inhibited. Conversely, we might be a changemaker where Hope is eating all the food, leaving none for the others for fear that they will grow strong enough to debilitate us. Without allowing Grief, Despair and Sadness also to eat, we could fall into naïve optimism, where we uncritically believe that things will be okay. This phenomenon is called “emotional bypass”, a coping mechanism that involves avoiding, ignoring or suppressing uncomfortable emotions to protect ourselves.

The power of the metaphor is such that every emotion deserves a plate at the banquet, and we run into trouble when one emotion, or a collection of similar emotions, start to eat more than their fair share. If only Hopelessness is eating, he will grow bigger and larger and crowd out all else. We might find that this then leads to mental health challenges such as clinical depression or anxiety. Instead, Hopelessness gets a plate, and on occasion a much bigger plate, because he is a welcome guest at our table. Like Rumi’s powerful poem “The Guest House” (see page 89), the Emotional Banquet attempts to normalize and celebrate each guest. At the dinner of your mind, each has something to reveal to you. In response to the events of our lives and the world, it is appropriate that a variety of emotions need to eat. They all have something to say, something to offer and they are invited to sit in your council and say their piece. They all have This is not a book needs: Grief needs witnessing, about denying your Joy needs companionship, emotions, it’s about Sadness needs connection. If we hosting them. can treat emotions as guests at our banquet or guests in our house, uncomfortable or difficult emotions are no longer problems we need to correct. Instead, understanding their needs becomes part of the art of hosting. This is not a book about denying your emotions, it’s about hosting them.

Fight the Dragon, get the gold

The binary thinking that there are strictly good emotions and bad emotions is a Western fallacy. Rather, some emotions may be more or less serving to our mental health, our campaign work and our relationships. To give an example, Guilt is a prominent and hungry emotion in changemaking. We feel guilty about our lifestyle choices, for not doing enough, for not engaging with the news enough, for moving on too quickly from tragedy or for being inconsistent with allyship. But in some framings, Guilt can be an appropriate response to a situation. It can nudge action, prompt conversations and engender apologies. It can be a positive driver. In other ways, it can stifle action, encourage shame and lead to retreat. Rumi’s invitation is that each emotion-guest, just as the people you bring into your home, has some aspects you relish and others that can feel challenging. So here Guilt becomes an enquiry rather than a debilitating state: someone with questions. What does Guilt want and what does Guilt need? Guilt might need to take positive action on some days and require reassurance on others that we can’t do or be everything.

When we do the uncomfortable work of saying yes to emotions, we understand that they too have many different sides. After years of unstitching the belief that Anger sits ugly with women, it has become one of my most treasured emotions. The fire that lives inside Anger is one of many identities. Fire can be for energy, activation and creation, like that of the hearth. Its ability to create things, make food and warmth fosters hospitable environments for people to gather. This kind of fire, with its boundless energy and gathering potential, is a great attribute for leaders, creators, builders and changemakers. But another fire, an uncontrollable blaze, can become destructive, spreading quickly and causing people to flee. Fire, or Anger, require both oxygen and control in managed doses – or for our banquet analogy, food. Too much food and our fire could cause harm, leading to burnout. Too little food and our fire could become extinguished. Too little control and our fire could cause damage. Too much control and our fire could become suppressed. As Black Feminist Audre Lorde speaks on Anger, “My response to racism is anger. That anger has eaten clefts into my living only when it remained unspoken, useless to anyone.” Anger needs to be spoken with, understood, transformed and used as fuel for action. Without, we host a banquet where some gorge and others are starved. No wonder I ended up with an eating disorder.

Despair as the Chrysalis for Hope

In witnessing that so-called “bad” emotions did not end me or break me but made me stronger, I learned that befriending all emotions is a vehicle for resilience. Understanding rather than rejecting these emotions means that you can process them (and not be consumed by them) the next time they arise. You can bat emotions away for years but eventually they will confiscate that bat and arrive, unexpected and uninvited, at your front door.

Befriending these emotions has made me a better changemaker as I can more easily sit with pervasive loss and not be debilitated. The 73 per cent decline of global wildlife populations in the last 50 years and the murder of an environmental activist every other day in 2023, are two examples of heartbreaking loss we must confront.^34,35 While it may feel bleak to read, and emotional states can arrive with a seemingly never-ending intensity, emotional states are not a life sentence.

To take an example, hidden within Despair is momentum. At a collective level, it moves me away from the small happenings of my own life and plugs me straight back into the reality bigger than myself. It connects me again with my why – why am I doing this? Why am I choosing the path of change? Because of the things that should not be. Truly looking at injustice has propelled me into outrage and action, mobilization and strategy. Without a strong connection to my why, my choices for positive impact might be sporadic, seasonal and temporary, rather than the guiding principles of my life. 

At a personal level, understanding despair invites me to think through how I can minimize its Hidden within despair potency for others. It inspires is momentum. a resolve in me that if I can’t change these massive global happenings tomorrow, then instead each day I can try to model humanity’s innate goodness. I can engage in small and random acts of kindness as a reminder to myself and others that we as a humanity are not eternally lost, we are simply temporarily misguided. This process for me certainly isn’t instant. I often need to sit with despair, seek peer support, then get scheming.

This momentum, just like that of a pendulum swing, moves me toward connection with others first, then action, then potentially to hope. Conversely, the pendulum can also move back. Staying in hope can feel so buoyant and transformative that devastating world news or setbacks give a sense of whiplash. You may feel you’ve misunderstood where we are as a world. You may feel alienated and disconnected and move back to despair. This emotional feedback loop is essential for sustaining our action, as emotional states are not static. Spending too long in one can lead to depression on the one hand and naïve optimism on the other. The dynamic movement between the two is fundamental for movement building. While I’m in despair, someone else’s momentum has moved them to hope, and vice versa. When you’re in despair, you don’t need to be taking action. In fact, knowing that someone else somewhere in the world is in hope, offers you permission to take a moment and exist in the feeling first and foremost. So, what if saying yes to despair is not the erasure of hope, but the chrysalis for it?

My friend Jamie Bristow once said to me, “People can’t decide whether changemaking is a marathon, or a sprint. But really it’s neither, it’s a relay race.” What he meant was that we are passing the baton to one another from year to year and generation to generation. It’s a race of unknown length and unlimited participants, meaning that the burden is not yours alone to carry. This has stayed with me, giving me more permission to feel how I feel, knowing that I’m not dropping the baton, I’m passing it. And in passing it and sitting at my own banquet, I am doing the work of resilience.

Nowadays, when Despair wants to eat a little more at the banquet, I stop, observe and enquire. Firstly, I take a breath or sit still for a moment. Next, I observe, non-judgementally and see who is sitting at my Council today. Finally, I enquire, “Hello Despair, enjoy the food, what do you have to say today?” On hearing what Despair replies, I respond with non-judgement and compassion. “You need ice cream for breakfast? Okay, let me get you a spoon.”

Gardening Our Minds: Emotional Permaculture

Permaculture is an agricultural design philosophy rooted in working with nature rather than against it, to create sustainable and self-sufficient food and land systems. Permaculture insists that we observe and interact with the environment before making changes and that valuing diversity in crops creates resilience. It also champions creatively responding to change rather than resisting it. Emotional permaculture takes these principles and applies them to our emotional landscapes.

Emotional permaculture is the practice of gardening our minds, working with emotions rather than against them. 

It embraces the vast spectrum of human emotions that will be planted in our minds, opting for a diverse ecosystem rather than monocultures of hopelessness or optimism. By observing or softening to what is, through mindfulness, introspection or peer support (Guideposts 1 and 2), we are able to respond creatively rather than impulsively. In this way we build a strong and sustainable inner garden.

Near the halfway point of our eight-week model, we invite circles to host a Climate Café to practise tending to our inner gardens. A Climate Café is an emotionally informed conversation about the climate. Held in groups of strangers, it encourages unstructured open dialogue, deep listening and community-building. Participants are invited to speak openly about how they feel about the climate crisis, to begin the process of sitting with and befriending difficult emotions. Popularized by the Climate Psychology Alliance, they advocate for the therapeutic benefit of facing difficult truths – another variation on “fight the dragon, get the gold”.

While Climate Cafés can be powerful, at The Resilience Project we recognized additional needs from our youth network for community-building and joy. That’s why we developed People, Planet, Picnic, a variation on the Climate I model, with a focus on community-building, decompression and sustenance. We train young people to hold People, Planet, Picnics where other youth can bring and share food, and they’ve been held in more than 15 countries to date. Looking directly at the climate emergency can sometimes feel too confronting, but doing so with passive activities like eating can make difficult conversations easier. Starting with food rather than climate means starting with connection, nourishment, replenishment and energy. Food is also a connection to the planet we are working so hard to save. Considering our dinner plates and all the hands that worked to make a meal possible can not only deepen our gratitude (an essential balance to work that is often harrowing or heartbreaking) but can offer insight into the interconnectedness of global systems. The following exercise invites you to host your People, Planet, Picnic.

EXERCISE: HOSTING A PEOPLE, PLANET,  PICNIC

Objective: A People, Planet, Picnic is a communityled event, where you can invite others to bring and share food while having open conversations about the permacrisis. There’s no fixing, no judging, just open sharing and connection. If you’d like to host your own, you can find more information at  www.theresilienceproject.org.uk

Materials needed:

• A quiet, comfortable space
• A timer (phone, watch or clock)
• Optional: tea, snacks or a symbolic object (e.g. a stone or talking stick) to pass when speaking
• Optional: a notebook each for post-exercise reflections

Step 1: Welcome (10–15 minutes)

• Greet participants warmly and introduce yourself.
• Welcome all emotions into the space, naming nerves, excitement, scepticism, hope.
• Explain what the Climate Café model and emotional permaculture are, reading from the above paragraph in the book.
• State that this is a space to talk about the many shades and complexities of how we feel about the world without judgement, rather than a space to debate perspectives, news or feel pressure to take action.
• Establish ground rules:

˚  Respect and confidentiality (what’s shared in the Picnic stays in the Picnic).

˚  No judgement (there’s no right or wrong way to feel).

˚  Everyone gets a chance to speak (but it’s okay to just listen).

˚  Boundaries (don’t unpack anything you don’t feel you can safely repack afterwards).

Step 2: Icebreaker Activity  (10–15 minutes, optional)

• Example: One Word Check-in or our favourite Resilience Project question: What’s your favourite type of potato? (Chips, waffles, mash etc.)

Step 3: Open Discussion (40–60 minutes)

• Let the conversation flow naturally, but have a few conversation prompts ready if needed:

˚  What emotions come up when you think about the world?

˚  Have you had a moment where you felt hopeful or hopeless about the future?

˚  How do your perspectives on the world affect your daily life or your future plans?

˚  Where do you find hope and resilience?

• As a facilitator, listen actively. You don’t need to respond to each share. Let the dialogue flow between the participants but do contribute your own thoughts and encourage voices who haven’t spoken. Avoid dominating the conversation.

Step 4: Closing Reflection (10–15 minutes)

• Ask participants how it felt to share openly.
• Encourage people to connect beyond the session.
• Plan a joyful activity afterwards, from a group song to going to the cinema together.

Final Tips

• Keep it informal and welcoming – this isn’t a lecture, it’s a shared experience.
• Don’t force action – this is about emotional connection, not problem-solving.
• Be flexible – let the conversation flow naturally, silence is fine and natural!
• Encourage joy – discussing climate emotions can be heavy, so consider joyful activities to finish.