Emotions

Not a small topic and impossible to cover everything in one therapist’s blog post. The intention is to provide an overview of the importance of emotion, emotion regulation, and ways we experience and use our emotions (in general). At the end of the post I offer resources,  and a mindfulness activity that can help us get to know our emotions a little better. 

As always, take what is helpful, and leave the rest. 

What are they? How do we experience them? How many of them are there? What do they do for us? What do they mean? What is emotional health and how do we take care of it? Emotions are complicated.

What do our emotions do for us?

Emotions do a lot for us. They motivate our behavior. They prepare us for action. They tell us information. They can help us overcome obstacles in our minds and in our environments. They can save us time in getting us to act in important situations. They help communicate to others and ourselves. They deepen our experience of life. Emotions can even help influence other people, and shape their own emotional response. There is a biological basis for our experience of emotions, they serve an important purpose...and we can use the information they bring to us to better understand ourselves and our environment.  

There are 10 emotional categories that generally everyone experiences -  Happiness, Anger, Fear, Guilt, Shame, Envy, Jealousy, Sadness, Love, and Surprise. They all tell us important information, they motivate or influence our behavior, and they are often how we make sense of our world. (check back for individualized posts going more in depth on each emotion). 

How do we communicate through emotions? 

Lots of ways. We communicate with our facial expressions, our body language, and our voice tone. These are hard wired aspects of emotions and they communicate information about our emotions to another person a lot faster than words, sometimes even without our awareness.  When we need to communicate to others, it can be very hard to change our emotions surrounding a situation. And again, whether or not we intend to or not our communication of emotions influences others. For example, we come home from work and before we have even said hello, our partner might already have some information about how we are feeling. Did you race through the door, open and shutting it swiftly, dropping your bag, moving with intensity. Did you come through the door with force, closing it the same way, or did you slump through the door, maybe taking extra long to close it behind you as you move slowly getting your bearings. If we imagine these different scenarios, we can also imagine the very different internal experiences of the person coming through the door in these different scenarios. If we say here and thought about it, we could probably imagine hundreds or thousands of different ways someone could walk through a door - and each of them would communicate something different to us. 

What can get in the way of appropriately regulating our emotions? 

There are lots of things that can get in the way of having a healthy relationship with our emotions. Biology, some people are genetically predisposed to being a certain way in the world. This can mean we tend toward a particular way of expressing, experiencing, and reacting to our emotions. Life experiences and skills and beliefs.  It's hard to learn the appropriate tools needed to effectively regulate our emotions when we have never been taught. Our emotions affect how we relate to others but they also affect how we relate to ourselves. We live in a society where we are conditioned and reinforced to believe that there are good and bad emotions. I bet even just reading that you already had certain emotions come to mind when you saw good, and then bad. Happy, and anger? Love and sadness? Contentment and jealousy? What emotion makes you uncomfortable? What do you try to avoid? Are there any emotions that are banished from your emotional experience?  It is undeniable that we live in a world that favors people who are happy, joyful, and content and we are often uncomfortable around those who are angry, sad, or fearful. We also live in a society where it is more socially acceptable for certain groups of people to more openly express emotions than others. For example it's more socially acceptable for women to express sadness, and men to express anger; women are often chastised for expressing anger, and men for expressing sadness. Things get even more complicated when you bring in other identities and intersectionalities, such as race, sexuality, socioeconomic status, age, religious beliefs, etc. We all have these biases because we have grown up with them, they are ingrained in our family systems and in the foundation of our society as we know it today. In my experience people have a lot of ideas about their emotions, lots of “shoulds” and “oughts” and they are often in a lot of distress because of it. “I shouldn’t be feeling this way” “ I ought to be over this by now” “I should be better at handling this” “He shouldn’t be feeling that way” “She should be over it by now.” ah, It hurts just writing those phrases, I know the impact they can have. The sad part is, we are often the ones saying it to ourselves. 

If we don’t have the proper tools to regulate emotions, and we learn from our environment rules, spoken or unspoken, about our emotional expression, overtime it becomes conditioned. We know that conditioning is a very effective method of human learning. This is not a problem if we are learning healthy and effective ways to regulate emotions, but often the reinforcement happens when emotions are high and our behavioral response to our emotions aren’t always the most eloquent. Which makes sense, right? We don’t have the tools, we are often in reinforcing environments, we have rules about our emotions, and we are highly emotional beings - which in the moment can affect our desire to put in the time and effort to appropriately regulate ourselves because it's HARD WORK that requires time, thought, effort, and practice. Exhale. Phew. 

So what do we do with emotions when they come up? 

The hope is that we allow them in. We welcome them, the information they bring, we experience them, we allow them to flow through us, and then we use the information, and experience they bring to prompt what we do next. Problems arise when we numb or repress our emotions, or try to transform one emotion into another. When we numb our experience of one emotion, we numb our experience to all emotions. Meaning if you do something to lessen the amount that you feel sad or angry, you are going to lessen the amount that you can experience joy and happiness too. We can’t discriminate between the emotions we want to let into our life and the ones that we would rather live without. Like most things in life - emotions come in dualities. It takes great loss to experience great joy and it takes great chaos to experience a deep sense of calm.

There is an interesting phenomena that happens in cats called redirected aggression. Say a cat is looking out the window and they see the birds and squirrels running around. They are frustrated because they want to get the squirrels but they know they can’t because of the screen or window in between them and their target. THen maybe 5 minutes later, maybe a couple of hours later, that same cat suddenly lashes out at the family dog, suddenly swatting, or chasing it, or maybe it suddenly picks a fight with its buddy cat that it lives in harmony with most of the time. Humans do this too, except we call it displacement. A very common example of displacement is when a parent goes to work and gets yelled at by their boss, so they come home and yell at their kid, and the kid then yells at another kid or family pet. Extreme forms of emotional repression can make us more vulnerable to mental and physical health disorders. I like to think of repressing emotions like a volcano. The more we repress, the more tension and pressure is put on the volcano. And we all know what happens when a volcano has too much pressure built up - boom. 

Is expressing emotions better than repressing them? 

Kinda, sorta, maybe? Expressing emotions allows you to live in a more authentic, honest flow of life, but it can also cause both internal and external disarray. If we pour our emotions into the external world and someone is the recipient of that dumping, we not only hurt that person but we give that person the power and control over our emotional state. This can also lead us to feel bad internally later, when we realize the harm caused by our outpouring. 

Aside from deepening our experience of life, one of the coolest things about emotions is what they communicate to ourselves. Emotional reactions can give us important information about a situation. They can be signals or alarms that something is happening that means it's important we pay attention to and how to proceed. Gut feelings are like intuition, it’s a response to something important about a situation. If we approach emotional experiences with curiosity, we can more easily access the information the emotion is bringing us. For example, when we are interacting with someone and we suddenly feel angry, we could choose to pour that anger onto the other person. We can yell at them, we can belittle them, we can give them power over our emotional experience by attributing them as the cause to our anger. My guess is that this approach is going to leave that person feeling bad, it's going to leave you feeling bad (even if it doesn’t feel related to the situation) and it's going to leave the information your anger was bringing you unrealized. Anger is important, we need anger just as we need our other emotions. Anger tells us when a boundary has been crossed, it often feels intense because it’s trying to say “HEY, PAY ATTENTION, something important is happening right now.” If instead, in the above situation, you were to notice that you were beginning to experience anger and you approached your anger with curiosity, asking questions like, Why am I feeling angry right now? Where have I felt this way before? What is this bringing up for me? What about this situation, or this interaction is my anger trying to alert me to? What do I need to notice? Replace Anger with another emotion, sadness, fear, happiness, love, etc. They all carry different information, they are all important, and they all deepen our experience of life. 

A cautionary warning. 

Sometimes we treat emotions like they are facts about the world and our experience in it. The stronger we experience the emotion the more likely we are to believe that the emotion is based on fact. Emotions carry important information, but they are still a subjective experience. If we assume that our emotions represent facts about the world we may use them to justify our thoughts and actions. This can get us into trouble. While emotions are important to our human experience, if we begin to ignore the facts in favor of our emotions, we are not using our emotions for information, we are being run by our emotions.

How to take care of our emotional health? 

We know how to take care of our physical health. We can observe this even in very small children, when they fall down and get a scrape, they know to cover it with a bandaid. Just like when you get sick, you stay home and rest and when you break a bone, you wear a cast until the bone heals properly. But what about when we get emotional wounds? What do we do to take care of our minds when they sustain injury? What happens when we experience a rejection? A failure? A loss? 

We can practice getting to know our emotions better by taking note of when they arise. What makes us feel happy? What makes us feel sad? What makes us angry? Establishing a regular “check-in” routine can also help improve emotional awareness and regulation. Maybe you set an alarm on your phone, maybe there are set times throughout the day you check in with yourself, When you wake up, middle of the day, and before you go to bed. Creating these small habits might seem arbitrary, but if you practice, you will begin to reinforce this neural pathway, you will begin to reinforce the acts of pausing, noticing, and letting go. It can be as simple as, it's 9:00am. Pause. How am I feeling? Tired? Why am I feeling tired? Because it's 9:00am on Monday morning, and I haven’t had enough coffee yet. Pause. And you go on with your day. It seems silly, I know, but like anything, it takes practice. When we practice in low-consequence circumstances, it will better prepare us for the higher consequence circumstance, but if we don’t practice, we can’t expect to see improvement. 

A mindful exploration of our emotions

A more in depth way we can explore our emotional experiences is through mindfulness. If we focus on our breath, and become mindful of our present space and time, we can explore our emotions through curiosity and without judgment. I suggest doing this in a place that feels safe to you. A place where you will not be disrupted. We are all different and can have different experiences, we might not feel like anything happened, or unexpected feelings could arise. As always, you know yourself the best - so do what you need to do to take care of yourself. 

When you are ready… 

Think of an emotion you would like to explore - it can be anything, sadness, anger, joy, envy, guilt, shame, etc. Take a deep breath, filling up your lungs. Exhale. Take another in breath, breathing deep, filling up the lungs, breathing into your belly. Hold. 3.2.1. Exhale. Last time, in breath, hold. 3.2.1. Exhale. Now bring your awareness to your body. What do you notice? Are there any places that are holding tension that you can let go of? Where are your shoulders? Are they up by your ears? Can you relax them down and back. What about your jaw? Can you let go of any tension you might be holding there? Keep scanning the body, noticing any sensations that come up. Now, bring your awareness to the emotion you want to explore. Imagine you are in your house, and you hear a knock on the door. You answer it, and it is your emotion. What would it be like to welcome it inside? What would it be like to sit down and talk to your emotion? Ask it questions? At your own pace, explore any questions that you might have for it. Feel free to stay and talk to your emotion as long as you would like, also feel free to kick it out or not let it inside at all, but try not to place judgment on it. 

Some questions to consider 

• Where is this emotion visiting? 

  • Is it inside your belly or close to your heart? Is it heavy on your back or tucked back away in your mind? Is it in your jaw? Your shoulder? The back of your neck? Where is it? 

• How does the emotion look?

  • Is it small, big, short, medium, or tall? Does it shine or is it cloudy and dark? What color is it? Does it have colors at all? Is it bumpy, rough, ragged, smooth, or soft? Does it take a shape or does it flow more in a free form?

• How does the emotion feel?

  • Is it light or heavy? Soft, hard, or fuzzy? Hot or cold? Sharp, smooth, or bumpy? Is it a faint feeling or does it take a hold? Does it feel different in different parts of your body? 

• How does the emotion sound 

  • Is it yelling, loud, or whispering? Is it scary? Is it fierce? Confident?  Shy? Does it speak to you clearly? Does it speak to you at all? Does it speak in words? Images? Sounds? Is it constant? Is it sparse? 

• What is the emotion saying? 

  • Is it reminding you of something you know deep within? Is it telling you something new? What message is it delivering to you? What could it be trying to tell you? What does it want you to know? 

Bring your attention back to your breath. Inhale. Hold. 3.2.1. Exhale the emotion. Inhale. Hold. 3.2.1. Exhale, thinking about breathing out the emotion. Inhale again. Hold. 3.2.1. Exhale. Continue to breath in this rhythmic pattern until you feel like you have exhaled the emotion out and it feels safe to return to the present moment. 

I would recommend journaling about your experience. Was it easy to talk to your emotions? Was it difficult? Was it painful? Was it scary? Did you learn anything new? Did anything surprise you? 

Resources 

Books

DBT Skills training - Marsha M Linehan https://www.powells.com/book/-9781572307810

Language of Emotions - by Karla McLaren -https://www.powells.com/book/-9781591797692

The Emotional Life of your Brain by Richard Davidson - https://www.powells.com/book/-9780452298880

Emotional First Aid  by Guy Winch -https://www.powells.com/book/-9780142181072

If you Feel Too Much By Jamie Tworksowski - https://www.powells.com/book/-9780399176494

On Being Human by Jennifer Pastiloff - https://www.powells.com/book/-9781524743567

Yoga and Body Image by Melanie Klein - https://www.powells.com/book/-9780738739823

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk - https://www.powells.com/book/-9780143127741

Podcasts

Core emotions  https://overcast.fm/+FDfS7ohUU

Decoding our emotions https://overcast.fm/+HuQJaqvBg

Anger https://overcast.fm/+HuQImLG30

Doing the inner work https://overcast.fm/+FDfRPwYNE 

Forgiveness https://overcast.fm/+HuQLS_nAI 

Videos 

Loneliness Kurzgesagt - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3Xv_g3g-mA&t=18s

How to practice emotional first aid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2hc2FLOdhI

The power of emotional courage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDQ1Mi5I4rg

The antidote to dissatisfaction Kurzgesagt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPPPFqsECz0