What am I feeling emotionally? We aren’t looking for a physical sensation – although physical sensations can help us discover and identify with our emotions. What we want to do is identify what emotions are being felt. This is a great skill to use any time ‘worry’, mind-stress, or physical pain shows up for you – or when you are trying to just learn a little more about yourself.
If you want pain-relief, or wisdom with what to do next in your life, or success with a project or a calm content mind – this is a great tool to use. We can learn it together and you’ll eventually be able to do it yourself too. The goal of this tool is to determine and ultimately know exactly what you are feeling. Once you know what you are feeling you can determine what to do with that information.
So many of us were ‘taught’ to keep our emotions, thoughts and opinions to ourselves. The trend started for me when I was little and continued until very recently. When I was young, I was afraid to show my true colors because I wanted people to like me. When people hurt me or hurt my feelings, I didn’t want to offend or upset them, so I tried not to complain or make a fuss. As a teenager and then again as a young adult, I had people tell me what I should wear, how I should behave and even what was wrong with me! As an adult in Corporate America, people would tell me I was too sensitive and that I should work to develop a ‘thicker skin’. I spent the majority of my life learning how to become the person others wanted me to be, afraid to be me because I did not want to be critiqued or made fun of. I learned to lock my emotions, and my opinions in a box, and I buried the box and typically kept it out of sight and out of mind. Even if your experiences are not as dramatic as mine, it’s quite possible you’ve encountered situations that have caused you to ‘keep your emotions hidden and inside’ too.
Learning to truly ‘feel’ our emotions, and to identify with and understand them, is the first step to realizing what is bothering us, so that we can take steps to improve or potentially remove the situation from our lives. Although we cannot change others, we can make choices that will empower us to determine what we can do to ultimately make our world, and even THE world a better place.
Our bodies have a funny way of communicating with our minds. When our minds don’t listen, our bodies work hard to find methods to force us to pay attention. Emotions are one of the techniques our bodies use to communicate with us. Emotions are meant to ‘flow’. Emotions want to be recognized and acknowledged. It actually takes a lot of energy to ignore emotions but we have taught ourselves how to ignore them for so long, that we think it is easy and we think we are good at it. It’s possible that you do a lot to fool yourself into believing you are ignoring your emotions. You could be keeping yourself really busy, or maybe you shop a lot, drink more than you should, smoke or overeat. You might even exercise excessively, work long hours, go out with friends every night, or worry about and research your health on a regular basis. The bottom line is you could be keeping yourself and your mind so busy that you don’t have time to even consider the emotions that your body is experiencing.
Additionally, by suppressing emotions, by not letting them flow – we create blocks within our bodies that help hold our emotions at bay, so that we won’t identify them or feel them. When we hold our emotions in, we unconsciously tighten muscles in various parts of our bodies, which can lead to discomfort and even pain. As we identify our emotions, we teach our bodies to relax our muscles, removing the block and reducing and eventually removing the majority, and potentially all, of the discomfort and pain. When we are extremely good at repressing our emotions, we may need to start identifying with them by getting familiar with our physical discomfort. We’ll talk more about this later.
Emotions have gotten a bad rap over the years. As I mentioned earlier, we are often told to calm down, don’t cry, or don’t express anger or fear. The reality, however, is that by allowing ourselves to feel sad or angry, afraid or happy, we are helping ourselves learn what is good for us, what is dangerous for us, what we need and what we don’t need in our lives.
Emotions include happiness and joy, sadness, fear, anger, contentment, shame and guilt, surprise and love. We often eagerly embrace what we consider positive emotions, i.e. love, happiness, joy and contentment. We tend to push aside and run from anger, sadness, fear, shame and even surprise because we don’t consider it appropriate to express these emotions to others. If we don’t embrace all emotions, if we don’t experience them, we are ultimately blocking them. By blocking them, we keep them inside, we do not release them and we do not learn from them.
How do I feel all of my emotions? The first step is to give yourself permission to feel all of your emotions. It can be scary, especially if you have buried and ignored your emotions for most of your life. Once you make the decision, though, and give yourself permission to feel all of our emotions, you can take the next steps to learn how to do so. Start by asking yourself, “What emotion am I feeling right now?” Sometimes you will easily recognize the emotion. It may pop into your head without much thought or effort. You’ll think, “I’m happy”, “I’m sad”, or “I’m afraid” or “I’m angry”. Other times, it may be difficult to put your finger on the word(s) that describe the emotions you are feeling; and that is okay. As it turns out, it’s not actually necessary to always name the emotion, although over time, with practice and experience, you’ll be able to do so almost all the time. It’s really about taking a moment, to stop what you are doing, to interrupt your thought process, and to notice how your body feels, physically and emotionally. You may say to yourself, “well gosh, that is a great feeling, and I hope to have this experience again. What is happening in my life that is resulting in this wonderful feeling? Let me keep that going”. You may also, however, notice a discomfort, restlessness or racing or heavy heart. This should result in your asking yourself “what is happening that is resulting in this discomfort? What can I do to limit this, or remove this from my life? If the situation is a topic that you feel strongly about, you may ask yourself “How can I take a stand? What can I do to share my thoughts and perspectives with others, to help make the world a better place?”
By embracing and welcoming all of our emotions, we open ourselves to be true to ourselves, and to participate in and experience all that life has to offer. I believe God has a purpose for each of us, and with prayer, and by learning to open ourselves up to experiencing and understanding our emotions, we are also opening ourselves up to listen to the guidance that God is providing us.
As you learn to welcome your emotions, you should also strive to allow your bodies to truly feel the emotions. If you are sad or scared your may cry, if you are angry you may scream (perhaps into a pillow), or maybe you will prefer to journal in order to work through your fear, disappointment, guilt, shame or anger. These are just a few of the many ways you can acknowledge and allow your emotions to flow through you. Another is to role-play with your emotions, which can be accomplished with the help of your life and wellness coach.
Once emotions are identified and permitted to flow they are given opportunity to help us understand why they are present in the first place. This is where we really need to listen to what our bodies and emotions are saying. It’s so easy at this point to squelch and ignore what are bodies are trying to tell us. Our minds tend to justify the choices we have made by rationalizing our behavior and by telling us we are worried for no reason. Resist the urge to rationalize and justify. You had those emotional feelings for a reason. They are telling you something that is true for you. Perhaps they are telling you that you are in a mentally abusive relationship, if that is the case, please don’t find ways to justify your continued relationship with the mental abuser. Instead, work to surround yourself with supportive friends and loved ones that will help you through the difficult decision to leave the abuser, so you can start the next chapter of your life.
I think of each of my emotions as a friend; a resilient friend who comes back to me time and time again, despite being ignored by me for many years. My emotions help me understand who I am and what I believe in. When I listen to my emotions, I learn a little more about myself, who I am and what I believe in and I am able to live my authentic life.
As with anything, it’s good to practice identifying, acknowledging and feeling your emotions. I started to explore my emotions a couple of years ago, and when I first started, I started small. I tried to take 10 to 15 minutes once a day to ask myself what emotions I was feeling. I would give myself permission to feel my hidden emotions, such as anger, shame, and fear. I would consider what occurred that made me feel this way. It was a slow process at first, but the more I practiced the easier it became. I started to repeat the process several times during the day, working myself up to at least once an hour. Eventually whenever I experienced shortness of breathe, stomach discomfort, tightness in my chest, numbness, shoulder and back pain, or intestinal discomfort, I would take a moment and ask myself what just happened, what did I just experience that resulted in this pain or discomfort. In some cases, I had just read an email that caused me stress, or was preparing for a meeting that I anticipated would be difficult and filled with conflict. Other times I realized I had been going non-stop from meeting to meeting, and from fire to fire for 6 hours straight. I would realize I didn’t even have time to drink my water, eat my lunch or run in the restroom. That’s when it began. That’s when I started to listen to the physical sensations in my body, which triggered me to identify with the emotions that I had been burying. My mind thought I wanted to make “a lot of money” and have “a lot of stuff”, so I endured a high-stress job that did not bring me joy. The truth of the matter is that my body didn’t care about the money or things that my mind thought were important; my body had spent years trying to tell me to find a job that would position me to help people instead of develop software.
The benefit of identifying and feeling your emotions is ten-fold. Asking the question “what emotion am I feeling?” helps get you in touch with your emotion and it helps you think about something a little different that what is bothering you. By stopping to ask the question, you are training yourself to stop focusing on your worries, thoughts, experiences or physical pain. By getting in touch with your emotion, you are also removing the block, allowing them to flow through you instead of getting stuck in you. By allowing emotions to flow you remove the involuntary need to unconsciously tighten muscles and parts of your body to keep the emotions at bay. This entire process results in a more relaxed physical body, which results in reduced chronic pain. I am a poster child for this process working. I have suffered from chronic pain and mental angst for many years. In the past two years, as I’ve learned to listen to my body and my emotions, I have ultimately released much tension, started to live my true authentic life and experience days with zero pain; something unheard of for me 3 years ago. Additionally, as you identify the emotion, and what caused the emotion, you can determine what you can do to alter the situation long term.
Our brains get in habits, and following the above process, changing how you respond to your thoughts, experiences, and physical pain: changes the reaction that is ingrained in your brain. Following this process changes how you will respond to situations in the future. Changing your typical response makes way for a new response. Over time, you’ll see that you can change your response for all of the challenging situations life will throw at you; from reading an email or preparing for a meeting; to financial, family or relationship dilemmas. You can change your response from paralyzing and reactionary to thoughtful, logical planning of your next step.
Remember the more you do this, the easier it will become, the more it will become your automatic response to life and the better you will feel.
~ debbie
