If you’ve not done so already, You can do so here!
Now let’s finish our exploration of why emotions are SO helpful for us, and how we can start to use them to create better lives.
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Managing Our Expression
Finally, the last piece of this is to realize that while we DO want to learn to listen to our emotions and we DO want to learn to adjust our life path where we need to in order to honor truth and what’s really going on for us - we also want to learn how to harness our emotions in a way where they don’t actually take OVER our lives and drive our behavior in unconscious ways.
Many of us have learned to fear our own emotions and the emotions of those around us because we’ve experienced outbursts of uncontrolled and unprocessed anger that made us feel unsafe or that literally led to us being unsafe.
We’ve experienced neglect from our caregivers who were too lost in their own sadness and grief to tend to us.
We’ve experienced friends and other loved ones not being able to see the ways in which they were taking up all the space in the relationship and leaving no breathing for us due to their lack of capacity to healthfully process and own their own anxiety or fear.
We’ve experienced being in situations where we didn’t know how to feel, work through or process our own emotions and it felt like they totally took over our entire experience.
We’ve experienced being in emotional pain, not knowing why and just wanting to get rid of it - just like we looked at above with the example of physical pain we don’t know how to deal with.
Many of us have experienced the excruciating pain of heart-ache, of feeling lonely and rejected, of feeling like we are longing for something we can’t have and of feeling an underlying sense of doom or that something is ‘wrong’ and not knowing how to soothe or comfort ourselves.
We live in a world that deeply shames emotions, that misunderstands them and that tells us that to have emotions that go AGAINST societal logic is a sign that we are broken or that there’s something wrong with us. We’ve been trained to see negative emotions as ‘bad’ and any expression of them as a weakness or flaw.
Many of us were never taught how to process our emotions. How to witness them. How to move through them with intelligence and grace.
Many of us simply get lost in our emotions - trapped in the stories that surround them and the ‘what if’s that often accompany them. Or we live in a perpetual state of running from our emotions on some level - drowning them out with constant activity, with drama, with coping mechanisms and other forms of numbing, suppressing and stimulating ourselves so that we can ‘keep on’ with the lives that we’re living and that we feel like we HAVE to live in order to be good enough.
This is very painful.
Then again, on top of that we have a whole spirituality and self help world that is DEEPLY misinformed around emotions and the intelligence of them, that again perpetuates the myth that the right thing to do with our emotions is to learn to not have them!
So is it any wonder that we are all trying to escape our emotions?
We only know having them and having them dictate our lives and reactions or having them and their expression being shamed, blamed and seen as a problem.
We believe that the worse a thought feels, the more true it is.
We believe that our emotions are getting in the way of our happiness.
We believe that the ways we suppress, deny and push our emotions down are the things we need to ‘fix’ about ourselves instead of seeing them as a symptom of a symptom.
We weren’t given the right skills to process our emotions, and we weren’t given the right PERCEPTION of our emotions - and thus we are stuck in them.
THIS is what we want to learn our way out of.
The task is not to figure out how to get RID of emotions, but rather to learn how to healthfully PROCESS emotions.
How To Process Emotions In A Healthy Way?
Again, the purpose of this article isn’t to give a complete lecture on how to process emotions.
This is something we are going to develop over time - a skill we need to invest in and it’s something that we will get better and better at with practice.
However, to get you started, here are the first few steps you can start to take in your emotional processing journey - remembering that we never ‘get it all done’ and then never have to process an emotion ever again. Rather we need to understand that these are skills and tools we will use for the rest of our lives. That emotions are going to be a part of our experience forever - so we learn these tools to help us navigate those emotions. Forever ????
Step One: Awareness - Most of us living in a perpetual state of emotional suppression and denial. Many of us aren’t even AWARE that we are feeling emotions or that emotions are driving our behaviors - and thus it can be really difficult to process our emotions due to the fact that we aren’t even seeing that they are happening.
In order to start becoming more aware of our emotions most of us need to learn to slow down and witness our FEELINGS. The physical sensations that are arising in our bodies and we need to start to become aware of our reactions/responses to those feelings.
For most of us again, we are going to find that before we are even aware we are feeling an emotion, we’re already ten steps into a coping mechanism.
We are going to notice that we are hours deep into scrolling our phone, we’ve consumed a whole pint of a sweet treat or that we’ve been picking small fights with our friends/partners all night BEFORE we register that we are feeling something.
That’s ok!
This first step of becoming aware that we are feeling an emotion or that we are feeling something at ALL is likely going to start from a place where we need to be SUPER gentle on ourselves and realize that coming into awareness of something we’ve never been aware of before is NOT going to be easy, and it’s going to take a lot of discipline.
So again, all I suggest for this beginning phase is that you try a few of the following things:
- When you are in your coping mechanism - whatever that is for you - can you pause for just 5-10 breaths and check in with your body? What are you feeling? Numb? Racing mind? Discomfort somewhere? Heaviness in your chest? Stress? Fatigue? Can you become aware of the sensations you’re experiencing and how they are impacting your desire to engage in whatever behavior you’re engaging in?
- Can you take 5-10 minutes at the beginning of your day or at the end of your day to notice your body? Before you get into your to-do list or checking your e-mails - can you pause and simply BE in your body and just NOTICE what you’re feeling?
- If you DO notice that you are experiencing an emotion or feeling - can you notice what you label that feeling/emotion? Anxiety? Depression? Sadness? Anger? Are you able to identify what you are feeling? You can use a feelings wheel to help you with this!
- What are the STORIES you have around your emotions and where did those stories come from?
Just see if you can start to bring awareness to your emotions and how and when they show up for you. See if you can notice the judgements or stories you have about them. See if you can just become aware.
Step Two: Noticing/Witnessing: From here - what do you NOTICE about your emotion?
This next step is all about learning to WITNESS our emotions BEFORE we react and respond to them. Again, the point here is NOT to get to a place where we NEVER react/respond to our feelings - that would be again like trying to get to a place where if you are being punched in the face you stop flinching or trying to defend yourself - that’s not the goal nor is that a healthy goal.
Rather, we want to learn how to take some SPACE with our emotions BEFORE we respond to them so that we can gather information. We want to be able to witness our emotions, to lean in, to get curious, to examine our thoughts and stories and to give ourselves ROOM to be curious and expansive vs. simply shoving our emotions down or assuming we know what they mean/what we are supposed to do about them.
We want to get to a place of emotional intelligence so that we can embody and embrace our emotions WITHOUT them taking over our entire experience.
So for this step, all I want to invite you to do is the following:
- Step into your witness perspective: As you become aware of your emotion/feelings - see if you can expand out BEYOND the emotion/feeling to notice that it is only a PART of your experience but it’s not ALL of your experience. It’s not ALL of who you are. It’s not a PERMANENT part of your experience. Can you expand out to see that this emotion is not always present in your life, and to know that it’s not always going to BE present in your life? Can you connect with a larger part of you that can SEE the emotion but doesn’t feel like they ARE the emotion? Practice this step until you can really do it.
- Can you notice any STORIES that you have about the emotion, and see if you can label them as stories rather than TRUTH? Are you telling yourself that anger is bad? Are you telling yourself that your anxiety means that you HAVE to worry about this or that circumstance? Can you witness what you are making your emotion MEAN about yourself or your life?
- Can you notice how that story FEELS in your body? Is is that light, grounded, clear feeling? OR does it feel heavy, fuzzy, confusing, all over the place and lead to thoughts that are scattered and disconnected from anything you can see/feel/touch/actually DO in this moment?
Just take some time witnessing. Witnessing the feeling. Witnessing the stories. Witnessing the meaning you are giving the feeling/emotion.
Notice. Witness. Bring awareness.
Step Three: Questioning: From here, we want to start to challenge our preconceptions about our emotions. We want to start to question the stories we have about our emotions, what they mean and what we should or shouldn’t be doing about them. We want to start to question the judgements we have about ourselves in relation to our emotions and our emotional expression - because all of this is going to help us with the final step which is figuring out what the emotion is trying to tell us.
In this step, we really want to investigate the stories we are telling ourselves about our emotions and see if we can reach for and find better feeling stories if the ones we have now don’t feel good.
So for instance, if you’re telling yourself that ‘anger is bad’ - How does that story FEEL in your body? Does it feel light and freeing or heavy and dense? If it feels heavy and dense - can you challenge the idea that anger is bad? What if you have a GOOD REASON for feeling how you feel? What if anger isn’t bad, but something that is there to help you identify harm and to figure out what you need to feel better?
If you are telling yourself that your emotions are telling you that you ARE incapable/doomed/never going to be happy or get what you want - how does THAT story feel in your body? If it feels heavy and dense - are you open to questioning that story? Could it be that your feelings are telling you something else? What is it that you want? Why do you want it? Why do you believe you can’t have it? What needs do you have that aren’t being met? Can you validate what you’re feeling and what you want, and make room for the idea that you might be able to get it in ways that you currently just aren’t aware of?
If you are telling yourself that your feelings are ‘wrong’ - how does THAT feel? Can you work towards validating your feelings - even if you can’t logically explain WHY you are feeling what you’re feeling right now? Can you move into a state of COMPASSION for yourself and assume that you DO have a good reason for feeling how you feel - and that the answer to your emotional pain is not to try to get RID of the emotion, but rather to INVESTIGATE into where it’s coming from so you can help yourself get your needs met/change whatever is happening that’s causing you distress/challenge whatever belief system you have right now that doesn’t actually feel good for you?
Can you start to notice what thought patterns feel light and freeing and lead to steps, vs the thought patterns that feel dense, heavy and scattered?
Can you start to give yourself the benefit of the doubt that you feel how you feel for a reason, that you’re not broken and even if the feeling is coming from a false perception about yourself or reality, that the first step is always going to be to VALIDATE yourself and THEN step into curiosity?
What shifts for you when you make it OK that you feel how you feel?
Step Four: What Do You Need To Feel SUPPORTED Right Now? From here, we want to open into curiosity.
We want to expand into the idea that our emotions are trying to help us see where something in our environment is off, where something in our thoughts is off OR where we are simply going through something that is inherently challenging and we just need to let the emotion ride through us.
You see, not all emotions are there to tell us that something is ‘wrong’ so to speak.
We are naturally going to get sad when we lose someone we love.
We are going to get scared when life changes in a way we didn’t expect and where we aren’t sure how to move forward.
We are going to get angry when someone crosses a boundary or harms us in some way.
This doesn’t always mean that we need to CHANGE something - sometimes what we need is simply space to EXPRESS our emotions in safety, so we can work THROUGH them.
So the first step is asking ourselves - does my emotion MATCH the situation I’m currently in? Is this a time where what I need is simply validation and a space to move THROUGH my emotions? To be sad and cry? To scream into a pillow? To shake? To dance? To talk someone who I can trust or to journal about how I’m feeling? Do I just need to make ROOM for this emotion?
From there, we can start to look at where we may need to challenge our thoughts - again if we were to VALIDATE our emotion and to know that we have a good reason for feeling it - can we start to ask ourselves where we’re telling ourselves we ‘should’ do something we actually really don’t want to do? Where we are being told that a behavior of someone around us is ‘fine’ when it actually makes US FEEL uncomfortable unsafe? Can we start to look for where our emotions are coming from our stories of being shameful, guilty, inadequate and not good enough - and can we look for what we are feeling under those feelings? Are we lonely? Wanting comfort? Wanting boundaries?
Can you simply start to get curious as to what you NEED right now?
What you want?
What your emotion is trying to HELP you with?
Again, this is no easy process and there’s no one answer.
Rather we are going to have to PRACTICE being curious and investigating.
Breaking through our stories and challenging the thoughts that feel terrible is HARD.
Learning to see our emotions as helpful guides not messengers of our doom or failure is hard.
Learning to validate ourselves vs. assuming we are reacting/responding wrong is hard.
But not impossible.
If we are willing to be kind to ourselves and to take small steps.
So don’t rush this, and don’t expect that this article is all you will need!
Reach out for support, read more books, listen to youtube videos - make this a new exploration project rather than something you intend to ‘master’ today.
Get yourself on the path - and it WILL carry you, I promise.
<3
**Final note - if you are struggling with chronic emotional disruption/anxiety/depression and aren't able to get yourself out or feel you need more support, please do reach out to a licensed mental health care provider. You don't have to do this alone and sometimes we CAN'T do it by ourselves. There's no shame at ALL in asking for support when you need it! Take good care of you.**
Are you sick of the self help roller coaster that leaves you constantly striving and never arriving?
Are you ready for a true spiritual path that connects you to yourself and reality so you can feel good about your life?
Then come check out the Mystery School.
