The Challenge
As much as we like to think we are entirely logical and rational, the reality is that humans are inherently thinking and feeling beings. Of course, we all have different levels of sensitivity and perception of the world, which means we all experience emotions differently.
In my experience, learning about emotions or how to regulate them was not taught at home or school, and it seems this is the case with many people I know. In addition, I wholeheartedly believe the repression of my emotions because of the perception they were "wrong" or "bad" (and not knowing how to deal with them) is what led to unexplainable physical health issues and early diagnoses of depression and anxiety disorders.
So here's the reality. As with almost everything we humans experience, feelings and emotions have a purpose.
"Feelings and emotions do not exist to be avoided or condemned."
When we don't know how to recognize, articulate and understand our emotions, they tend to be in control of us. As Carl Jung says,
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate."
It's important to note that embracing our emotions doesn't mean succumbing to them and becoming engulfed in their grasp. Although being positive is essential, it doesn't simply erase emotional pain. Herein lies the importance of acknowledging the whole range of our emotions and what they express.
"The only way out is through. When it comes to being emotionally well, this means acknowledging and allowing emotions to exist within us before releasing them."
So what happens when we suppress and repress our emotions?
The Consequences of Repressing Emotion
Stifling challenging emotions doesn't eradicate them. In fact, it can have some severe consequences for your body and mind.
- The International Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research found that emotional expression is "crucial to physical health, mental health, and general well-being." And that concealing or suppressing emotion is a "barrier to good health."
- A study by the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Rochester showed people who bottled up their emotions increased their chance of premature death from all causes by more than 30%. With their risk of being diagnosed with cancer rising by 70%.
- Further research shows that suppressing your emotions, whether anger, sadness, grief or frustration, leads to physical stress on your body. And resulting emotional stress can impact your blood pressure, memory and self-esteem.
- Longer term, emotional repression can cause an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, anxiety, aggression and depression.
"Not acknowledging our emotions makes them stronger."
According to a study at the University of Texas
The Importance of Emotion
Now that we have shown the gravity of repressing emotions let's discuss why emotions are so important. Simply put, emotions are messengers from the intelligence of our whole being (brain, body, heart and nervous system). They provide essential information to understand ourselves, meet our needs, regulate ourselves through challenges, and develop meaningful relationships with others.
"Emotions are messengers from the intelligence of our whole being. They provide essential information we need to understand ourselves, meet our needs, regulate ourselves through challenges, and develop meaningful relationships with others."
Emotion Affects Every Aspect of Life
Emotions affect almost every aspect of our life, including motivation, learning, growth, development, survival, attention, memory, decision-making, problem-solving, connection and attachment to others, career, passions, fulfillment, creativity and overall well-being.
Emotions Keep Us Safe
Intuition, the fleeting first sign of emotion, often called a "gut feeling," can keep you safe from harm in ways the mind can't always comprehend. Intuition is "unconscious emotional information" from your brain or body. It occurs when decisions are made with emotional information or insight instead of logic or analytical reasoning.
This knowledge or insight is pulled from the intelligence of our whole body and unconscious mind. It picks up patterns to help us predict what will occur in situations. Sometimes it's as slight as a micro facial or body-language expression, tone of voice, gesture, or other pieces of subtle information beyond conscious comprehension.
It's how firefighters know to leave a house a minute before the floor collapses. How investigators or journalists get a "hunch." Nurses and doctors know something is wrong with their patients just by looking at them. Or when parents sense something is happening with their child that they can't explain. These are just a few instances of intuition that can occur in our life.
The Benefits of Feeling & Understanding Emotion
Aside from keeping us healthy and safe, feeling, understanding and expressing emotion can have significant benefits. By tuning into our emotions, acknowledging them, allowing them to arise, and inquiring into their source, we develop a more profound sense of self-awareness. And to know thyself is the foundation to leading a fulfilling life.
In connecting with the emotions alive within us, communicating with them to understand our needs and desires, and being mindful of the context we're experiencing, we can learn to make peace with them. And perhaps heal painful responses. Transforming pain into compassion or even purpose.
Awareness of our emotions and needs is also at the core of effective interpersonal communication. This is a core tenant of Marshall Rosenberg's book, "Non-Violent Communication."
Understanding our emotions and feelings lays the foundation for expressing them openly and authentically to others. And also enables us to understand what another person may be experiencing. This allows us to feel seen, heard and understood and see, hear and understand another.
When developing meaningful relationships with others, whether your partner, spouse, children, friends, family or professional relationships, vulnerability is strength when used with discretion. Showing and expressing emotions in the proper context deepens interpersonal connection and understanding.
And when we know our own emotions and where they come from, it becomes less scary to share them with others. Because we all experience emotions, albeit in different ways. If we don't understand them, there can be fear around showing or expressing emotion because it may seem like they're out of control. But when you're aware of and have the tools to regulate emotions, you can interact from a place of love, openness and curiosity instead of fear, reactivity and defensiveness.
Quick Tips on Feeling Emotion
Awareness
You can feel emotions by connecting to how you're experiencing them in the body. Notice sensations. Breathe deeply. Breathe into them. Feel your breath stoking the fire of your liveliness.
Acceptance & Allowing
Accept your emotions as they are and allow them to exist within you. Notice when thoughts interfere with emotions and guide your attention back to sensations. Watch how they move and shift from moment to moment. Finding moments of stillness throughout the day to check how you're feeling.
Try meditations on the Sprowt App if you'd like guidance on this.
Interoception
Interoception is the perception of sensations inside the body. It is the perception of physical sensations related to internal organ functions such as respiration, heartbeat and satiety, and the autonomic nervous system activity related to emotions.
Strengthen interoceptive abilities by tuning into your breath. How deeply are you breathing? How fast are you breathing? Can you notice the space between inhale and exhale?
Notice your heart rate. Put two fingers on your neck just below your jawbone. Count how many times your heart beats in 15 seconds and multiply by 4 to get your heart rate.
Observe satiety and digestion. The last time you ate, what you ate, how it made you feel and how hydrated you are.
Assess your energy level. High or low, pleasant or unpleasant. Remember how you slept and if food, supplements or medication could influence this.
Using Emotion as Data, Not Directives
While it's important to feel emotions, it's crucial to balance mind and heart to use emotion intelligently. This is why we must use emotions as data, not directives. When you recognize emotion as a piece of information or data at a given moment, you can use this information to move forward.
Be aware of emotions as they arise, their strength and their impact on your thoughts and behaviour. Then use this data in your context to distinguish if it's appropriate to embody and express your emotions or if you need to practice non-attachment and process them later.
Using emotion as data instead of directives can prevent you from lashing out, being reactive, and doing or saying things you regret. It can give you insight into what's making you feel in specific ways and provides wisdom into if it would be helpful or harmful to embody and express emotion at a given time. This takes practice and patience but is doable.
Expressing Emotions
Socially
In a social context, analyze situations to determine if emotions are appropriate to express. Ask yourself, will expressing how I feel be helpful to this situation? Will it deepen understanding or communication? Is this person or group capable of understanding or helping me regulate what I'm feeling? Do I need to take time to process this emotion to gain clarity before expressing it? Getting in the habit of asking yourself these questions will help you distinguish if the context is appropriate to say how you feel.
Creatively
You may also be drawn to creativity as a form of expressing emotions. Drawing, painting, making music, sculpting, writing, dancing and singing are among some methods of creative, emotional expression. Remember, there is no right or wrong way to express yourself artistically. In fact, creating art can be a beautiful method of processing emotions in ways words cannot say. In addition, the discomfort in the creation process can help practice patience, acceptance, allowing, openness, receptiveness and much more.
Mentally
Journaling about emotions, whether negative, positive or somewhere in between, how they're affecting you and where they originate is also a helpful form of emotional expression. Seeing thoughts and emotions on paper or in front of us can help us better understand them. This way, you can learn more about yourself and easily express yourself to others.
Physically
Remember, we are physical beings, and a big part of processing emotion is to move. Emotion is energy in motion, and it helps neurologically and biologically to move our bodies when balancing our energy and managing emotions. Move in a way that feels good right now if you're able. For example, roll your wrists, ankles, or head from side to side. Notice how it changes the sensations in your body, even in the slightest. Listen to your body and ask it what it needs.
Expanding Emotion Vocabulary
An integral aspect of feeling, understanding and differentiating emotion. To quote Brené Brown, a prominent psychologist, researcher, author and lecturer researching shame, vulnerability, and leadership,
"Language is the greatest tool for meaningful connection, and having access to the right words changes everything. It is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning, and self-awareness."
Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brené Brown.
In fact, our vocabulary of emotions directly relates to the depth at which we can experience them.
In Brené Brown'sBrown's research on shame resilience, they asked participants in the training workshops to list all the emotions they could recognize and name as they were experiencing them. Then, over five years, they collected surveys from more than seven thousand people. The average number of emotions called across the surveys was three. The feelings were happy, sad, and angry.
We know our brains are meaning-making machines and strive to categorize experiences to make sense of the world. To do this internally and within our communication with others, having the correct language to describe emotions is integral.
Here's a quote from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein,
"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." What does it mean if the vastness of human emotion and experience can only be expressed as mad, sad, or happy? What about shame, disappointment, wonder, awe, disgust, embarrassment, despair, contentment, boredom, anxiety, stress, love, overwhelm, surprise, and all of the other emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human?"
To expand your emotions vocabulary, you can check out an emotion wheel and maybe make it the background of your phone. I highly recommend the book Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown. And if you're a bitter-sweet kind of soul like me, the book the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is phenomenal for new, more profound, emotional words.
Practice & Patience
Feeling, understanding, expressing and processing emotion takes practice and patience, especially if you've been disconnected from yourself. So give yourself grace, meet your inner critic with compassion, and make time to be still and connect with your internal state.
Allow yourself to feel weird, awkward or embarrassed. Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life. It's how we learn, grow and actualize our potential.
You are a thinking, feeling emotional being, so don't forget to pay attention to your emotions.
The Challenge
As much as we like to think we are entirely logical and rational, the reality is that humans are inherently thinking and feeling beings. Of course, we all have different levels of sensitivity and perception of the world, which means we all experience emotions differently.
In my experience, learning about emotions or how to regulate them was not taught at home or school, and it seems this is the case with many people I know. In addition, I wholeheartedly believe the repression of my emotions because of the perception they were "wrong" or "bad" (and not knowing how to deal with them) is what led to unexplainable physical health issues and early diagnoses of depression and anxiety disorders.
So here's the reality. As with almost everything we humans experience, feelings and emotions have a purpose.
"Feelings and emotions do not exist to be avoided or condemned."
When we don't know how to recognize, articulate and understand our emotions, they tend to be in control of us. As Carl Jung says,
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate."
It's important to note that embracing our emotions doesn't mean succumbing to them and becoming engulfed in their grasp. Although being positive is essential, it doesn't simply erase emotional pain. Herein lies the importance of acknowledging the whole range of our emotions and what they express.
"The only way out is through. When it comes to being emotionally well, this means acknowledging and allowing emotions to exist within us before releasing them."
So what happens when we suppress and repress our emotions?
The Consequences of Repressing Emotion
Stifling challenging emotions doesn't eradicate them. In fact, it can have some severe consequences for your body and mind.
- The International Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research found that emotional expression is "crucial to physical health, mental health, and general well-being." And that concealing or suppressing emotion is a "barrier to good health."
- A study by the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Rochester showed people who bottled up their emotions increased their chance of premature death from all causes by more than 30%. With their risk of being diagnosed with cancer rising by 70%.
- Further research shows that suppressing your emotions, whether anger, sadness, grief or frustration, leads to physical stress on your body. And resulting emotional stress can impact your blood pressure, memory and self-esteem.
- Longer term, emotional repression can cause an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, anxiety, aggression and depression.
"Not acknowledging our emotions makes them stronger."
According to a study at the University of Texas
The Importance of Emotion
Now that we have shown the gravity of repressing emotions let's discuss why emotions are so important. Simply put, emotions are messengers from the intelligence of our whole being (brain, body, heart and nervous system). They provide essential information to understand ourselves, meet our needs, regulate ourselves through challenges, and develop meaningful relationships with others.
"Emotions are messengers from the intelligence of our whole being. They provide essential information we need to understand ourselves, meet our needs, regulate ourselves through challenges, and develop meaningful relationships with others."
Emotion Affects Every Aspect of Life
Emotions affect almost every aspect of our life, including motivation, learning, growth, development, survival, attention, memory, decision-making, problem-solving, connection and attachment to others, career, passions, fulfillment, creativity and overall well-being.
Emotions Keep Us Safe
Intuition, the fleeting first sign of emotion, often called a "gut feeling," can keep you safe from harm in ways the mind can't always comprehend. Intuition is "unconscious emotional information" from your brain or body. It occurs when decisions are made with emotional information or insight instead of logic or analytical reasoning.
This knowledge or insight is pulled from the intelligence of our whole body and unconscious mind. It picks up patterns to help us predict what will occur in situations. Sometimes it's as slight as a micro facial or body-language expression, tone of voice, gesture, or other pieces of subtle information beyond conscious comprehension.
It's how firefighters know to leave a house a minute before the floor collapses. How investigators or journalists get a "hunch." Nurses and doctors know something is wrong with their patients just by looking at them. Or when parents sense something is happening with their child that they can't explain. These are just a few instances of intuition that can occur in our life.
The Benefits of Feeling & Understanding Emotion
Aside from keeping us healthy and safe, feeling, understanding and expressing emotion can have significant benefits. By tuning into our emotions, acknowledging them, allowing them to arise, and inquiring into their source, we develop a more profound sense of self-awareness. And to know thyself is the foundation to leading a fulfilling life.
In connecting with the emotions alive within us, communicating with them to understand our needs and desires, and being mindful of the context we're experiencing, we can learn to make peace with them. And perhaps heal painful responses. Transforming pain into compassion or even purpose.
Awareness of our emotions and needs is also at the core of effective interpersonal communication. This is a core tenant of Marshall Rosenberg's book, "Non-Violent Communication."
Understanding our emotions and feelings lays the foundation for expressing them openly and authentically to others. And also enables us to understand what another person may be experiencing. This allows us to feel seen, heard and understood and see, hear and understand another.
When developing meaningful relationships with others, whether your partner, spouse, children, friends, family or professional relationships, vulnerability is strength when used with discretion. Showing and expressing emotions in the proper context deepens interpersonal connection and understanding.
And when we know our own emotions and where they come from, it becomes less scary to share them with others. Because we all experience emotions, albeit in different ways. If we don't understand them, there can be fear around showing or expressing emotion because it may seem like they're out of control. But when you're aware of and have the tools to regulate emotions, you can interact from a place of love, openness and curiosity instead of fear, reactivity and defensiveness.
Quick Tips on Feeling Emotion
Awareness
You can feel emotions by connecting to how you're experiencing them in the body. Notice sensations. Breathe deeply. Breathe into them. Feel your breath stoking the fire of your liveliness.
Acceptance & Allowing
Accept your emotions as they are and allow them to exist within you. Notice when thoughts interfere with emotions and guide your attention back to sensations. Watch how they move and shift from moment to moment. Finding moments of stillness throughout the day to check how you're feeling.
Try meditations on the Sprowt App if you'd like guidance on this.
Interoception
Interoception is the perception of sensations inside the body. It is the perception of physical sensations related to internal organ functions such as respiration, heartbeat and satiety, and the autonomic nervous system activity related to emotions.
Strengthen interoceptive abilities by tuning into your breath. How deeply are you breathing? How fast are you breathing? Can you notice the space between inhale and exhale?
Notice your heart rate. Put two fingers on your neck just below your jawbone. Count how many times your heart beats in 15 seconds and multiply by 4 to get your heart rate.
Observe satiety and digestion. The last time you ate, what you ate, how it made you feel and how hydrated you are.
Assess your energy level. High or low, pleasant or unpleasant. Remember how you slept and if food, supplements or medication could influence this.
Using Emotion as Data, Not Directives
While it's important to feel emotions, it's crucial to balance mind and heart to use emotion intelligently. This is why we must use emotions as data, not directives. When you recognize emotion as a piece of information or data at a given moment, you can use this information to move forward.
Be aware of emotions as they arise, their strength and their impact on your thoughts and behaviour. Then use this data in your context to distinguish if it's appropriate to embody and express your emotions or if you need to practice non-attachment and process them later.
Using emotion as data instead of directives can prevent you from lashing out, being reactive, and doing or saying things you regret. It can give you insight into what's making you feel in specific ways and provides wisdom into if it would be helpful or harmful to embody and express emotion at a given time. This takes practice and patience but is doable.
Expressing Emotions
Socially
In a social context, analyze situations to determine if emotions are appropriate to express. Ask yourself, will expressing how I feel be helpful to this situation? Will it deepen understanding or communication? Is this person or group capable of understanding or helping me regulate what I'm feeling? Do I need to take time to process this emotion to gain clarity before expressing it? Getting in the habit of asking yourself these questions will help you distinguish if the context is appropriate to say how you feel.
Creatively
You may also be drawn to creativity as a form of expressing emotions. Drawing, painting, making music, sculpting, writing, dancing and singing are among some methods of creative, emotional expression. Remember, there is no right or wrong way to express yourself artistically. In fact, creating art can be a beautiful method of processing emotions in ways words cannot say. In addition, the discomfort in the creation process can help practice patience, acceptance, allowing, openness, receptiveness and much more.
Mentally
Journaling about emotions, whether negative, positive or somewhere in between, how they're affecting you and where they originate is also a helpful form of emotional expression. Seeing thoughts and emotions on paper or in front of us can help us better understand them. This way, you can learn more about yourself and easily express yourself to others.
Physically
Remember, we are physical beings, and a big part of processing emotion is to move. Emotion is energy in motion, and it helps neurologically and biologically to move our bodies when balancing our energy and managing emotions. Move in a way that feels good right now if you're able. For example, roll your wrists, ankles, or head from side to side. Notice how it changes the sensations in your body, even in the slightest. Listen to your body and ask it what it needs.
Expanding Emotion Vocabulary
An integral aspect of feeling, understanding and differentiating emotion. To quote Brené Brown, a prominent psychologist, researcher, author and lecturer researching shame, vulnerability, and leadership,
"Language is the greatest tool for meaningful connection, and having access to the right words changes everything. It is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning, and self-awareness."
Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brené Brown.
In fact, our vocabulary of emotions directly relates to the depth at which we can experience them.
In Brené Brown'sBrown's research on shame resilience, they asked participants in the training workshops to list all the emotions they could recognize and name as they were experiencing them. Then, over five years, they collected surveys from more than seven thousand people. The average number of emotions called across the surveys was three. The feelings were happy, sad, and angry.
We know our brains are meaning-making machines and strive to categorize experiences to make sense of the world. To do this internally and within our communication with others, having the correct language to describe emotions is integral.
Here's a quote from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein,
"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." What does it mean if the vastness of human emotion and experience can only be expressed as mad, sad, or happy? What about shame, disappointment, wonder, awe, disgust, embarrassment, despair, contentment, boredom, anxiety, stress, love, overwhelm, surprise, and all of the other emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human?"
To expand your emotions vocabulary, you can check out an emotion wheel and maybe make it the background of your phone. I highly recommend the book Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown. And if you're a bitter-sweet kind of soul like me, the book the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is phenomenal for new, more profound, emotional words.
Practice & Patience
Feeling, understanding, expressing and processing emotion takes practice and patience, especially if you've been disconnected from yourself. So give yourself grace, meet your inner critic with compassion, and make time to be still and connect with your internal state.
Allow yourself to feel weird, awkward or embarrassed. Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life. It's how we learn, grow and actualize our potential.
You are a thinking, feeling emotional being, so don't forget to pay attention to your emotions.
The Challenge
As much as we like to think we are entirely logical and rational, the reality is that humans are inherently thinking and feeling beings. Of course, we all have different levels of sensitivity and perception of the world, which means we all experience emotions differently.
In my experience, learning about emotions or how to regulate them was not taught at home or school, and it seems this is the case with many people I know. In addition, I wholeheartedly believe the repression of my emotions because of the perception they were "wrong" or "bad" (and not knowing how to deal with them) is what led to unexplainable physical health issues and early diagnoses of depression and anxiety disorders.
So here's the reality. As with almost everything we humans experience, feelings and emotions have a purpose.
"Feelings and emotions do not exist to be avoided or condemned."
When we don't know how to recognize, articulate and understand our emotions, they tend to be in control of us. As Carl Jung says,
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate."
It's important to note that embracing our emotions doesn't mean succumbing to them and becoming engulfed in their grasp. Although being positive is essential, it doesn't simply erase emotional pain. Herein lies the importance of acknowledging the whole range of our emotions and what they express.
"The only way out is through. When it comes to being emotionally well, this means acknowledging and allowing emotions to exist within us before releasing them."
So what happens when we suppress and repress our emotions?
The Consequences of Repressing Emotion
Stifling challenging emotions doesn't eradicate them. In fact, it can have some severe consequences for your body and mind.
- The International Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research found that emotional expression is "crucial to physical health, mental health, and general well-being." And that concealing or suppressing emotion is a "barrier to good health."
- A study by the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Rochester showed people who bottled up their emotions increased their chance of premature death from all causes by more than 30%. With their risk of being diagnosed with cancer rising by 70%.
- Further research shows that suppressing your emotions, whether anger, sadness, grief or frustration, leads to physical stress on your body. And resulting emotional stress can impact your blood pressure, memory and self-esteem.
- Longer term, emotional repression can cause an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, anxiety, aggression and depression.
"Not acknowledging our emotions makes them stronger."
According to a study at the University of Texas
The Importance of Emotion
Now that we have shown the gravity of repressing emotions let's discuss why emotions are so important. Simply put, emotions are messengers from the intelligence of our whole being (brain, body, heart and nervous system). They provide essential information to understand ourselves, meet our needs, regulate ourselves through challenges, and develop meaningful relationships with others.
"Emotions are messengers from the intelligence of our whole being. They provide essential information we need to understand ourselves, meet our needs, regulate ourselves through challenges, and develop meaningful relationships with others."
Emotion Affects Every Aspect of Life
Emotions affect almost every aspect of our life, including motivation, learning, growth, development, survival, attention, memory, decision-making, problem-solving, connection and attachment to others, career, passions, fulfillment, creativity and overall well-being.
Emotions Keep Us Safe
Intuition, the fleeting first sign of emotion, often called a "gut feeling," can keep you safe from harm in ways the mind can't always comprehend. Intuition is "unconscious emotional information" from your brain or body. It occurs when decisions are made with emotional information or insight instead of logic or analytical reasoning.
This knowledge or insight is pulled from the intelligence of our whole body and unconscious mind. It picks up patterns to help us predict what will occur in situations. Sometimes it's as slight as a micro facial or body-language expression, tone of voice, gesture, or other pieces of subtle information beyond conscious comprehension.
It's how firefighters know to leave a house a minute before the floor collapses. How investigators or journalists get a "hunch." Nurses and doctors know something is wrong with their patients just by looking at them. Or when parents sense something is happening with their child that they can't explain. These are just a few instances of intuition that can occur in our life.
The Benefits of Feeling & Understanding Emotion
Aside from keeping us healthy and safe, feeling, understanding and expressing emotion can have significant benefits. By tuning into our emotions, acknowledging them, allowing them to arise, and inquiring into their source, we develop a more profound sense of self-awareness. And to know thyself is the foundation to leading a fulfilling life.
In connecting with the emotions alive within us, communicating with them to understand our needs and desires, and being mindful of the context we're experiencing, we can learn to make peace with them. And perhaps heal painful responses. Transforming pain into compassion or even purpose.
Awareness of our emotions and needs is also at the core of effective interpersonal communication. This is a core tenant of Marshall Rosenberg's book, "Non-Violent Communication."
Understanding our emotions and feelings lays the foundation for expressing them openly and authentically to others. And also enables us to understand what another person may be experiencing. This allows us to feel seen, heard and understood and see, hear and understand another.
When developing meaningful relationships with others, whether your partner, spouse, children, friends, family or professional relationships, vulnerability is strength when used with discretion. Showing and expressing emotions in the proper context deepens interpersonal connection and understanding.
And when we know our own emotions and where they come from, it becomes less scary to share them with others. Because we all experience emotions, albeit in different ways. If we don't understand them, there can be fear around showing or expressing emotion because it may seem like they're out of control. But when you're aware of and have the tools to regulate emotions, you can interact from a place of love, openness and curiosity instead of fear, reactivity and defensiveness.
Quick Tips on Feeling Emotion
Awareness
You can feel emotions by connecting to how you're experiencing them in the body. Notice sensations. Breathe deeply. Breathe into them. Feel your breath stoking the fire of your liveliness.
Acceptance & Allowing
Accept your emotions as they are and allow them to exist within you. Notice when thoughts interfere with emotions and guide your attention back to sensations. Watch how they move and shift from moment to moment. Finding moments of stillness throughout the day to check how you're feeling.
Try meditations on the Sprowt App if you'd like guidance on this.
Interoception
Interoception is the perception of sensations inside the body. It is the perception of physical sensations related to internal organ functions such as respiration, heartbeat and satiety, and the autonomic nervous system activity related to emotions.
Strengthen interoceptive abilities by tuning into your breath. How deeply are you breathing? How fast are you breathing? Can you notice the space between inhale and exhale?
Notice your heart rate. Put two fingers on your neck just below your jawbone. Count how many times your heart beats in 15 seconds and multiply by 4 to get your heart rate.
Observe satiety and digestion. The last time you ate, what you ate, how it made you feel and how hydrated you are.
Assess your energy level. High or low, pleasant or unpleasant. Remember how you slept and if food, supplements or medication could influence this.
Using Emotion as Data, Not Directives
While it's important to feel emotions, it's crucial to balance mind and heart to use emotion intelligently. This is why we must use emotions as data, not directives. When you recognize emotion as a piece of information or data at a given moment, you can use this information to move forward.
Be aware of emotions as they arise, their strength and their impact on your thoughts and behaviour. Then use this data in your context to distinguish if it's appropriate to embody and express your emotions or if you need to practice non-attachment and process them later.
Using emotion as data instead of directives can prevent you from lashing out, being reactive, and doing or saying things you regret. It can give you insight into what's making you feel in specific ways and provides wisdom into if it would be helpful or harmful to embody and express emotion at a given time. This takes practice and patience but is doable.
Expressing Emotions
Socially
In a social context, analyze situations to determine if emotions are appropriate to express. Ask yourself, will expressing how I feel be helpful to this situation? Will it deepen understanding or communication? Is this person or group capable of understanding or helping me regulate what I'm feeling? Do I need to take time to process this emotion to gain clarity before expressing it? Getting in the habit of asking yourself these questions will help you distinguish if the context is appropriate to say how you feel.
Creatively
You may also be drawn to creativity as a form of expressing emotions. Drawing, painting, making music, sculpting, writing, dancing and singing are among some methods of creative, emotional expression. Remember, there is no right or wrong way to express yourself artistically. In fact, creating art can be a beautiful method of processing emotions in ways words cannot say. In addition, the discomfort in the creation process can help practice patience, acceptance, allowing, openness, receptiveness and much more.
Mentally
Journaling about emotions, whether negative, positive or somewhere in between, how they're affecting you and where they originate is also a helpful form of emotional expression. Seeing thoughts and emotions on paper or in front of us can help us better understand them. This way, you can learn more about yourself and easily express yourself to others.
Physically
Remember, we are physical beings, and a big part of processing emotion is to move. Emotion is energy in motion, and it helps neurologically and biologically to move our bodies when balancing our energy and managing emotions. Move in a way that feels good right now if you're able. For example, roll your wrists, ankles, or head from side to side. Notice how it changes the sensations in your body, even in the slightest. Listen to your body and ask it what it needs.
Expanding Emotion Vocabulary
An integral aspect of feeling, understanding and differentiating emotion. To quote Brené Brown, a prominent psychologist, researcher, author and lecturer researching shame, vulnerability, and leadership,
"Language is the greatest tool for meaningful connection, and having access to the right words changes everything. It is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning, and self-awareness."
Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brené Brown.
In fact, our vocabulary of emotions directly relates to the depth at which we can experience them.
In Brené Brown'sBrown's research on shame resilience, they asked participants in the training workshops to list all the emotions they could recognize and name as they were experiencing them. Then, over five years, they collected surveys from more than seven thousand people. The average number of emotions called across the surveys was three. The feelings were happy, sad, and angry.
We know our brains are meaning-making machines and strive to categorize experiences to make sense of the world. To do this internally and within our communication with others, having the correct language to describe emotions is integral.
Here's a quote from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein,
"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." What does it mean if the vastness of human emotion and experience can only be expressed as mad, sad, or happy? What about shame, disappointment, wonder, awe, disgust, embarrassment, despair, contentment, boredom, anxiety, stress, love, overwhelm, surprise, and all of the other emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human?"
To expand your emotions vocabulary, you can check out an emotion wheel and maybe make it the background of your phone. I highly recommend the book Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown. And if you're a bitter-sweet kind of soul like me, the book the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is phenomenal for new, more profound, emotional words.
Practice & Patience
Feeling, understanding, expressing and processing emotion takes practice and patience, especially if you've been disconnected from yourself. So give yourself grace, meet your inner critic with compassion, and make time to be still and connect with your internal state.
Allow yourself to feel weird, awkward or embarrassed. Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life. It's how we learn, grow and actualize our potential.
You are a thinking, feeling emotional being, so don't forget to pay attention to your emotions.
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