Let’s Understand Our Emotions
Do you have control of your emotions or do they have control over you?
Each and everyone of us has emotions, however, society and possibly your upbringing or circumstance has required that you no longer listen to them or experience them. We’ve been taught to either ignore emotions, push them away or treat them like an enemy.
But are they really the enemy and are they really that bad?
Emotions at a basic level are just energy in motion. They are literally a biochemical reaction of the body - so what are they considered so bad to feel and why are we taught not to cry, not to get upset, buck up and essentially ignore one of our most important systems of the body? Going back to emotions as energy, think of the last time you had a heartbreak, got bad news, felt scared or came close to being in an accident. All of those were felt in your body - that’s what we call “felt sense”.
Felt Sense is when you experience the energy of that emotion viscerally whether in your chest, gut or throat etc. That is feeling an emotion. Then comes acknowledging that emotion, yet, this is where a lot of us get hung up. That emotion is going to cause a bodily function to begin, for example, tears. But, wait! You can’t cry! Crying isn’t appropriate, it’s not tough, you shouldn’t cry about that, stop crying, are you kidding - you’re crying about that? Any of those sound familiar?
This isn’t just sadness that gets a bad rap. Anger, frustration, shame and even happiness get pushed down and ignored. Believe it or not, happiness especially gets pushed down because if we’re happy and our friends, family or partner aren’t, we either feel like we can’t express our happiness or we are shunned for being happy when someone else is feeling the opposite.
So now that you’ve felt something and have pushed it down or ignored it, what now? Well, that energy of the emotion, gone unchecked, can actually make you sick or cause pain. Then the more and more to ignore your emotions the more and more it stacks upon itself and eventually you burst. One little thing happens and you blow up at your partner, kids, friends or co-workers. Or worse you go into burnout and your relationships begin to suffer because you’re holding so many painful emotions that you’re not allowing to move through your body and out.
Then you wonder, what happened?
So let’s rewind - how can you make sure this doesn’t happen? First and foremost you acknowledge that you’re feeling not right. Try to name the emotion. Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence states that, “when you name it you tame it.”
Being able to say, I’m angry, acknowledges that emotion and from there you can go deeper asking yourself why you feel that way. What happened that brought you to that feeling? The second step is to feel all of that feeling and then let it go. This is the tough part because if we’re wronged we want to sit with that feeling and allow it to take over our day, week or life. But what does that do for you?
Letting it out is essential to getting over that emotion. You can cry, go sit in your car and yell, go exercise, go walk in nature, do calming breathing exercises and one of the most powerful tools you could do… is have a conversation with the other person (if one is involved). Now there’s a lot more here and we’ll cover that in another article but taking a step back to breath, calm and then share with the other person or people involved will help you let it out and it will be less likely to fester into something bigger.
This doesn’t mean you yell, shout and hit that person. After you take your breaths and calm yourself for a minute or five you share with them… “I’m angry and what I’m experiencing is betrayal because of XYZ. This allows you to take responsibility for yourself and doesn’t put them in the defense. You’re simply stating what you’re experiencing and why. Again, there’s a lot more to this but we’ll cover that in another article and I’ll link it here when that happens.
Emotions impact your behavior, environment, and others. When you can learn to feel them, take responsibility for them, and understand them you can build your resiliency and emotional prowess to excel far past what you thought possible.
But first feel and let those emotions pass without them controlling you.
To recap:
Emotions are energy in motion
Feel your emotion and name it
Ask yourself “why” that emotion is coming up
Let your emotion out as soon as you can safely and appropriately to do so
Get your body moving
Breath and calm
If there is another person/people involved share with them what your experiencing and why in a non accusatory way