Experience the Emotion, Don’t Become Hooked on a Feeling

2,000 years ago, Plato wrote, “All learning has an emotional base,” and since then scientists, educators, and philosophers have worked to prove or disprove the importance of feelings. The common thought has been for years that, “Emotions are in the way; they keep us from making good decisions, and they keep us from focusing.” More recently, however, research has been showing that the more emotionally in-tune we are, the richer our personal and professional lives are. We are now understanding the importance of feelings, and that unprocessed emotional reactions to problems may become new problems due to their negative impact on our being and decision-making.

I have had this conversation many times in my office with people of all ages, genders, and walks of life. These two opposing groups either dismiss emotions and feelings altogether as a waste of time or put so much emphasis on emotions that they often feel paralyzed in their actions. I am here to, hopefully, begin to bridge that gap.

To address the first group, the ones who have spent decades arguing against the benefits of emotions and feelings, viewing being emotional as an insult rather than another basis of intelligence, I understand. We have been conditioned to avoid our emotions. We have never been given formal education in understanding and utilizing our emotions, and at times we may have even been punished for attempting to learn on our own. As a crash course, emotion is simply the internal felt reaction to a thought or situation in your environment and is categorized as fear, joy, anger, sadness, and disgust. Think Inside Out.

While this group may devalue their benefit in feeling as though they cloud any productive decision-making, we experience these reactions due to their survival value. Emotions allow us to understand how safe, stable, and secure we are in various situations and make necessary shifts in our lives to ensure our needs are met.

For the group that emphasizes emotions to the point of occasionally even getting stuck in a mood and having trouble getting out of it, one of the most common arguments is that there is little or no choice in our emotions. While it is true that emotions can come on suddenly and be triggered by events that happen in our lives, it is also true that the initial experience of emotion is more short-lived than you might think. As a matter of fact, an emotion’s life-span is only a matter of minutes or even seconds; it is the emotion’s lingering and often intense aftereffect, known as feelings, that tend to live on much longer. While we only have five emotions, we have thousands of feelings. Feelings are defined here as more subjective experiences we assign to emotions, after self-reflection and assigning judgement to our thoughts and actions. We often begin to ruminate on other situations that have caused these feelings in the past or imagine future scenarios that could cause these feelings again. The end result is that we could continue to feel the emotion for a longer period of time than we would have if we would have simply allowed the emotion to pass.

Sometimes, when experiencing intense emotions, it can feel like we have no control. What we don’t often realize is that we actually have a choice in this. After we experience an emotion, we can avoid it and bury it, we can continue to focus on that one, or we can allow it to pass and experience other emotions. We have a choice in where we choose to focus our attention. There may be times that we want to hold on to an emotion and evaluate past, present, and future experiences. Emotions can communicate important information. There are unconscious assumptions, conclusions, and beliefs behind every kind of emotion which was picked up from childhood, and most of them don’t make much sense. When I work 1:1 with my clients and we discover core beliefs, they are often shocked by their inaccuracies, but it was once accurate for our inner child based on the information and resources they had. In order to free ourselves from negative and unhelpful feelings, you can begin to make choices that assist with understanding the inner conflict and correct inaccurate and limiting beliefs.

1. Be mindful of your emotion. Begin by identifying and observing your emotion. Then, try to concentrate on the way the emotion is making you feel physically. Next, remind yourself you are not your emotion. Don’t try to avoid it or hold it too tightly. Your emotion is a tool, a messenger giving you information about your experience. Thank it for providing you new information and then allow it to leave.
2. Process the feeling. Identify and label the feelings that may be bubbling up. Give yourself the time and space to feel how you feel without judgement. Decide how you’re going to address and handle the feeling. Identify the parts you have control or influence over and resolve those matters and decide how you will better cope with the parts that are out of your control going forward.
3. Understand patterns. Recording your daily emotions may be able to assist you in looking into patterns of behaviors and thoughts, assisting in providing invaluable decision-making information. Tracking and recording this information will assist you in understanding what your triggers are, when they occur, and if any changes can be or need to be made.

It is a practice to learn how to embrace the ebb and flow of our feelings and allow ourselves to lean into the vulnerability of feeling what we are feeling without trying to fix, change, or invalidate our experience. By giving ourselves the breathing room to feel and express without trying to manage and judge our own experience, we begin to feel safer to authentically express ourselves and be more of who we truly are. Experiencing your emotion as it occurs, without acting on it, reduces the intensity of the emotion. Over time, we develop the capacity to clearly communicate our truth to others while identifying any underlying needs we may have. In doing this, we learn that it is safe to have big emotions and when they arise, it doesn’t feel as overwhelming and scary. We learn to trust ourselves to move through the process of our emotional states and know that it’s okay to feel what we are feeling and express the truth of how we feel to others.

If you struggle with understanding your emotions, triggers, suffer from anxiety or depression or are in a season of your life where you could benefit from extra support, please do not hesitate to reach out to those who are able to assist. From friends to apps, to hotlines, to therapy, there will always be someone there to validate and help.