Why emotions aren’t our enemy
Learning to feel your emotions will help you live an authentic and meaningful life.
Many of us have a difficult relationship with our emotions. Not just people who seek counselling and psychotherapy, but most of us view some emotions as OK, while we try to avoid others. Sometimes we call these positive and negative emotions. A while ago I wrote a blog about anger and why it’s OK to feel it. Anger is certainly one of the feelings that is usually seen as negative. However, many more emotions are deemed undesirable by a lot of people. Most of us have been taught that when these “negative” emotions make an appearance, we better get rid of them as fast as possible. Wouldn’t it be great if learning to understand our emotions and process them in helpful ways was a part of the school curriculum? Hopefully one day it will be, but for those of us who will no longer benefit from that, I'll make a start with some suggestions in this article.
What are emotions
Emotions are whole-body experiences that are triggered as a response to our environment. They are partly instinctual and partly based on our past experiences, many of which we may not have actual memories of. Emotions are also influenced by the beliefs formed around these experiences. Because we are programmed for survival, our brain is constantly scanning our surroundings for signs of threat and danger, as well as for things that will support our thriving. Based on what life has taught us about what is safe, what’s not and what gets our needs met, our body responds to what’s happening around us in ways we can learn to recognise as emotions. They may present as a desire to connect with others or feeling fearful in an unfamiliar environment. There is a large spectrum of emotions humans experience and they provide a rich source of information about our needs, values, beliefs and desires. Emotions therefore aren’t good or bad, right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate. They simply are what they are and they tell us how we feel about what is happening to or around us.
Why we often fear emotions
We learnt a lot about our emotions from the way they were received by our caregivers when we were little. If your emotions were acknowledged, allowed and perhaps even named for you as you were growing up, you’re likely to have much less trouble experiencing them as an adult. For those of us who were distracted from our emotions, told or shown they were inconvenient or inappropriate, might struggle a bit more. If our caregivers found it hard to be present to our emotions, we may have subconsciously learnt that there was something to be feared about them too. It gave us the message that this big strong adult can’t cope with my (little human) feelings, so those feelings must be really scary and I should try to avoid them. We also learn a lot by what is modelled to us. If we were raised in a family where nobody expressed much emotions or only certain emotions were allowed to be shared, we may have developed beliefs around what emotions are welcome and which ones are forbidden. This is by no means an exercise in blaming our parents or a reason to blame ourselves for how we might have damaged our own children. There are many reasons why some of us may struggle to cope with our children’s emotions. It’s our awareness that gives us a chance to make changes. With a bit of work, a lot about our experiences can be repaired and rewired.
What we often do with emotions
Many people who have trouble feeling their emotions don’t know that this is the case until they start having other problems. They may be numbing or distracting themselves using alcohol, food, work, sex, exercise, tv or the internet. For a lot of people it becomes a habit of checking-out in their own learnt way when emotions start to feel either overwhelming or as we mentioned earlier “negative”. Disconnecting from our emotions this way often leads to feeling a lack of any emotions at all, including the enjoyable ones. If emotions start popping up and you’ve been taught that these particular feelings are in some way wrong, you may have also learnt to talk yourself out of them. It is also completely unrealistic to expect to only feel emotions that are pleasant. Emotions such as anger, sadness, grief, loneliness, anxiety and frustration are not necessarily fun, but they are all a part of the human experience. If we often cut ourselves off from our feelings, we risk a build up of unexpressed emotions that may start presenting as depression or anxiety as well as physical illness. We can become quite confused as it’s hard to know ourselves fully and be clear on what we like and want in life. Living an authentic, meaningful and satisfying life then feels quite unattainable.
What to do with emotions
So what do we do with emotions if they’re not to be avoided, distracted from or numbed? There is actually nothing we need to do with them. Most emotions, if we allow ourselves to feel them as they arise, pass all by themselves in their own time. I bet that when you feel joy, you don’t try to talk yourself out of it or suppress it. It’s just the same with all the other emotions. Let them be. Acknowledge them as they come up and allow them to be what they are. For many people, recognizing their emotions can be challenging, especially if they haven’t really been in touch with them for most of their life. Getting a little emotional vocabulary (see my free Guide for processing emotions) can be helpful. Acknowledging your emotions may simply look like saying to yourself: “I’m feeling scared, angry, disappointed, excited…”. If emotions don’t seem to be passing and you’re finding that difficult, having a healthy outlet for expressing them helps. Singing and playing musical instruments, painting or other forms of art, journaling, dancing or other physical activities as well as talking to a friend are all great. Often the emotion itself gives us a clue of what we need. For example anger may feel like we want to be stomping our feet, running or hitting something. Listen to your body’s urges. It’s OK to hit a pillow, scream into it, drive into a field and yell out all that you’re trying to keep inside. Crying is very healing and it’s linked to many different emotions. If you feel like crying, it doesn’t matter why, find a place where you can allow yourself to let it out. It’s a natural acknowledgment and an expression of whatever you’re feeling and you will feel much better afterwards. Most importantly, all emotions are valid, they don’t need to be justified or explained.
How to regulate overwhelming emotions
If you have always disconnected from your emotions, trying to feel them may seem overwhelming. Your emotions may have also become overwhelming if you have experienced significant changes, trauma or a loss in your life. Some of these issues are best to seek help with from a well trained counsellor or a psychotherapist. There are, however, helpful techniques that may support you when you’re first starting to dip your toes in the sea of emotions. What often happens is that the sense of overwhelm has triggered our stress response and we may have gone into a fight-flight-freeze mode. In that case we will first need to help our body know that it’s safe. For this, it may be helpful to do one of the 3 grounding exercises I wrote about in one of my previous blogs. Once we are more present we can start to notice what thoughts, emotions and sensations we’re experiencing. Naming these and separating them into the 3 categories allows us to create a bit of space between ourselves and the experience we’re having - eg. “right now I’m having thoughts about how scary it was to feel so overwhelmed, my body is sweating, I have a sense of my body cooling down after being really hot earlier and I am feeling a bit anxious and confused”. As you name your experience you’re practising mindfulness and you’re no longer fully consumed by your experience. The part of your brain that is responsible for decision making and logical reasoning is coming back online and you will be able to recognise that you are, in fact, safe, but something about what you just experienced felt like too much. The more you can help yourself overcome such moments and return to the present moment, the more you’ll start trusting yourself that you can actually handle feeling your emotions and stay present to them.
Being able to experience your emotions will help you to stay present to your own life. Emotions are a part of being human and your ability to feel them contributes to deepening your connections with others and living a healthier, more authentic and meaningful life.
Download the free Guide for Processing Emotions to help you get started on learning how to process emotions in a healthy way. This will support you in preventing a build up of emotions as well as using coping strategies that can be unhelpful in the long run.
