Befriending Your Emotions: Part 2
written by Fran Westwood
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
A prior reflection explored why therapeutic work often focuses on emotions, and how befriending your emotions can improve your connection to yourself and your life. A key next question might be: how does one get in touch with their emotions?
For many, emotions can feel like an unwanted friend, or a fearsome stranger that we want to stay away from. Conscious or unconscious messages from our family of origin around emotions might be that emotions are unsafe, unwanted, frightening or a sign of weakness. Specific beliefs and negative experiences may accompany certain emotions in particular, tying guilt, shame and anxiety to core emotions. These beliefs may have been communicated explicitly, or a young child may have witnessed a parent who is not regulated while experiencing anger or sadness, for example, teaching the child that emotions are unsafe.
For these reasons and more, most people develop defences that work well at protecting them from looking below the surface and getting to know their inner world. It can take time to recognize your particular behaviours that keep emotions at bay. These defences arose for a reason, and you likely need to trust that it’s actually safe to get close to your emotions. It can take time to cultivate a felt sense of safety. IT can take time for defences to settle, and the anxiety and guilt you may feel around experiencing certain emotions to soften enough for you to feel how you’re really feeling.
A few steps to begin getting to know your inner world, including your emotions, might be:
Practice mindful awareness, starting with a few minutes a day. Mindfulness has many definitions, but is often described as non-judgemental awareness of the present. This can look like pausing for 30 seconds to notice what you’re doing, thinking and feeling. The point here is to simply notice without judgement. When we slow down and notice, more comes to our awareness. Perhaps you might pause and notice a driven energy that keeps pushing you to do more and more. Or you notice currents of anxiety, and under that, a flicker of sadness, but the instinct to quickly judge or minimize the sadness. All of it is your experience. When we notice our defences, we become more aware of what we do to manage our inner experience, and we can start to move toward what’s there with curiosity.
Practice grounding in the present moment. Often, looking within and moving toward core emotions (sadness, fear, anger, disgust, even joy, excitement or sexual excitement) can feel unsafe, triggering anxiety, guilt or shame. Practice grounding in the present moment through pausing and taking diaphragmatic belly breaths that help your body register calm. As you breathe, press your feet into the floor and feel the surface you’re sitting on holding your body. Any time you notice anxiety, slow down and try to ground.
Develop awareness of body sensations. From this more grounded place, try noticing how your body is feeling. If you scan from head to toe, what do you notice, just on a sensation level? Often emotions will show up first in our bodies, before our conscious mind has made space for them.
Name your emotions. It’s okay to not know what you’re feeling, and to simply stay with that. However, naming your emotions is a great step to building awareness about what you’re feeling, and deciding on what to do next. As you’ve slowed down and noticed your physical sensations, behaviours and thoughts, ask: what emotion fits with this? Sadness? Anger? Fear? Joy? Often you might feel more than one. Naming your emotions can help them feel more manageable and less overwhelming.
Decide what you need. Ask yourself: what does this fear, sadness, etc need? Perhaps you know the emotion is connected to a bigger pattern or event in your life, and you want support to process that. Or maybe you have time to pause in the middle of your workday to sit with the emotion and let it move through you. Or you need a friend to talk to, or a healthy distraction before coming back to it. You also may not know what you need, but asking the question is an action that values the emotion, and that in and of itself can help the emotion feel seen, heard and more grounded.
Getting to know your emotions is a lifelong process. This process can be vulnerable, and also lead to tremendous growth, relief and calm as you get in touch with who you are, fully.
