Are You Avoiding Your Emotions?
Our emotions are not accidents. As mammals, we are wired to feel emotions, and sadly a lot of us have been conditioned to believe that there are only a handful of emotions that are “acceptable”, whereas the rest need to be avoided. I wish I could erase that programming right here, right now, for all of us because it does none of us any good.
Emotions are energy in motion, literally. Our emotions don’t come from our thoughts (though thoughts can impact emotional states), they come from the body in the form of energy, and that energy moves. Put another way, emotions are physiological responses to stimuli that motivate us to take action toward meeting a need.
When we’re experiencing fear, that motivates us to get away from whatever perceived threat we’re experiencing. Have you ever been somewhere at night and had that feeling in your stomach that something wasn’t right? That was fear doing it’s job for you.
Anger mobilizes us to meet whatever need is being blocked (it could be fighting against an injustice, securing a better boundary, advocating for your rights or the rights of others, expressing ourselves clearer to others, etc.) and is usually felt as heat inside the body.
Grief nudges us toward accepting a loss by mourning it. The purpose of grief isn’t just to hurt, it’s to remind us of the thing we’ve lost, whether it’s a person, place, or animal, and integrate the love we have for that being into our hearts and bodies.
All emotions serve a purpose, but the thing is when we try to tamp them down, distract away from them, act like they’re not there, or hold them in, they cause suffering. Think about what happens in areas where there’s flash flooding and there’s no drainage system in place to properly move all that water out? Well, you get a flood and it becomes challenging to maneuver in.
When feelings don’t have a proper drainage system (which really is just our ability to name them, feel them, and let them move through our bodies), they cause stagnation and become a different problem. Trapped emotions can literally impact the body through ailments, pain, and other symptoms and they can lead to other maladaptive expressions such as anxiety, excessive rumination, guilt, and depression.
Feelings really just need to be felt. I know that sounds so simple, but it really is. When we notice ourselves having an emotion, it’s generally a good idea to have some way to identify what the emotion is. Am I feeling mystified? appalled? bewildered? crestfallen? Is this emotion more akin to sadness than anger?
When you can name it, the emotion starts to settle. Sometimes knowing why we’re feeling a certain way can add context to the situation and make us more understanding of what’s going on. But ultimately, it comes down to letting ourselves feel it. When we feel something, we notice it, name it, and track it in our bodies.
When I was learning somatic experiencing, a valuable question would be after I could identify a sensation in my body to ask, “notice what happens next?” and funnily enough the sensation or feeling would change a little (kind of like a cloud in the sky) and would eventually settle and abate.
Feeling an emotion is very different than acting out an emotion. Acting out implies that we’ve lost a connection to ourselves, are in a dysregulated state, and are no longer being conscious about our actions. Feeling an emotion all the way through allows us to make better decisions and keeps us in a state of connection with ourselves, thus making it impossible to become dysregulated.
The famous expressions I always return to (and they’re a little corny, but bear with me) are: You have to name it to tame it and you must feel it to heal it. Corny, yes, but truthful nonetheless.
*This post is for educational purposes only and should not replace professional/medical advice. :)