In part 1, we took a close look at what emotions are, and the different ways we avoid feeling them fully. If you missed it, go back and read Why You Should Feel Your Feelings before you proceed.
In this post, we’ll learn how to feel emotions so they do not become overwhelming or destructive. We will walk through the steps together. Learning to listen to our feelings productively acquaints us to a new tool that has the power to change the way we approach life. Emotions, along with our other numerous senses, can guide us through even the most challenging circumstances, if we choose to pay attention. When we shift our perspective from thinking to sensing our way through life, decisions become easier, painful tragedies become more bearable, and even the mundane grind of everyday life becomes joyful.
As you read below, give it your full attention and follow along. Observe what is going on inside of you with ‘the beginner’s mind’. Imagine a little baby discovering her senses for the first time. Everything is exceedingly interesting to her and she doesn’t have a care in the world. She’s not analyzing or worrying. She accepts everything just as it is and is fascinated by it. Adopt that mindset. Be curious, be open-minded, be enthusiastic, be playful.
A special note: If you suffer from severe PTSD, flashbacks, or other conditions that may be triggered through body awareness, please only do this in the presence of a qualified healthcare professional.
So let’s begin.
First, take a few slow breaths to ground and centre yourself. Notice your posture and lower your shoulders, straighten your spine, and plant your two feet firmly on the ground.
Close your eyes or rest your gaze on a neutral object.
Start by labeling the emotion you are feeling. Emotions are things like fear, happiness, excitement, surprise, sadness, disgust, shame, and anger. Feeling lost, lonely, stupid, rejected, abandoned, or worthy are NOT emotions. They are perceptions or interpretations.
Next, and this is the hard part, separate the thought from the physical sensation of the emotion. Examples of thoughts are: ‘This hurts so much’, ‘How am I going to go on like this?’, ‘This is the worst thing that could happen to me’, ‘She hates me’, ‘I need to find a solution asap!’, ‘I’m so stressed about all the things I have to do’ etc. Leave aside the thoughts for now. We can get back to them when our physical feelings have been attended to. In many emotion-provoking situations, there is nothing that can be done to change the outcome so there is no need to rush to attend to the thoughts. In the minority of cases where there is something we can do to improve the situation, the most helpful thoughts arise from a state of calm, not high-emotion.
Find the feeling in your body. As mentioned in Part 1, emotions = mental thoughts x physical sensations. This means there is always a physical component to the emotion. Sometimes, it is very subtle and hard to find but it’s there. It may help to do a quick body scan from head to toe to search for it. Other times, the feeling is so strong that it becomes overwhelming or “painful”. In this case, it may be helpful to take the focus away from the inner body and to identify 3-5 things in your surroundings that you can perceive with your outer senses (i.e. see, hear, taste, smell, touch). Return to the body once you’re ready.
With the beginner’s mind, curiously explore the physical sensations that are occurring right now. How does the named emotion feel inside your body? What feelings are present that let you know that you are experiencing the emotion? For example, if you are angry, perhaps you notice warmth in the face, or the sensation of hands being pulled into fists. If the identified emotion is sadness, then there may be a tightness in the belly or a fullness in the throat. Just notice whatever is there without labeling it as good or bad. Don’t analyze or provide an explanation for the sensation.
Do not try to change or block the sensation. Simply bring mindful awareness to the feeling. Trying to control it leads to resistance, which often makes the emotion stronger. To quote one of my colleagues at Mindspace, ‘We’re not trying to feel good, but rather be good at feeling’.
Allow space for the feeling and stay with it. Bringing curiosity without judgment opens up space for the emotion. This is enough to transform the feeling. If there is a lot of energy behind the emotion, allow it to express itself and be present with the sensations until the energy is lowered. Other times, just giving it our full attention is all we need to do. An emotion is an adaptive signal whose purpose is to make us aware. Once we give it space to express itself, it will transform and recede in its own time. Your only job is to remain curious and allow it to unfold naturally. You can even say out loud, ‘Thank you ____________(emotion) for making me aware’. Then just watch it come and watch it go.
Now if at this point, you are still experiencing overwhelming emotions, troubleshoot with these questions:
Where is my mind? Is it focused on the body? Or has it returned to thoughts about the circumstance?
Is my attention only on the present moment? Or have my thoughts drifted into the past or the future?
Is there judgment about the emotion?
Did the sensation in the body reveal another emotion inside? Did it bring up a memory or an image?
Thoughts strengthen emotional energy. If your feelings are getting more intense with this exercise, chances are you are fuelling it with your mind. Silence the thinking mind, re-shift your focus away from it, and repeat steps 4 - 6. Do this as many times as you need to without judgment.
On the other hand, if you’re having trouble locating the physical sensation, gently and slowly recall some triggering thoughts and see if the feeling intensifies. Then repeat steps
4 - 6.
That’s it. That is how you actually feel a feeling - by going inward into your body and actively feeling it. Since most of us are completely unaware of how emotions feel in the body, emotion-provoking situations can be reframed as opportunities to practice. Negative emotions are often easier to localize than positive ones, so next time you are in a “bad mood”, go inward and familiarize yourself with the physical components of your emotions.
Emotional toolkit:
For times when the emotion is too intense, here are some tools that you can try after completing steps 1 - 7.
Surf the sensation: Our bodies have a built-in natural rhythm. The heart contracts and expands, circulating blood to the rest of the body in pulses. Lungs expand and contract when we breathe in and out. Neurons (cells of the nervous system) also fire electrical signals in bursts, although it occurs at such a rapid rate that we perceive sensory stimuli as uninterrupted. The truth is that the energy in our body is not continuously flat or constant. It oscillates and fluctuates, which means that our feelings do too. If you zone in on a sensation and give it all your attention, you’ll begin to notice that the intensity oscillates. It comes and goes. There’s a rhythm to the sensation. If we align our focus with that natural pulsing, we can ride out the sensation, no matter how painful it is. The sense of spaciousness and movement created by the fluctuation helps us tolerate the feeling. Dr. Peter Levine, a clinical psychologist and somatic healer, named this phenomenon ‘pendulation’. Next time you’re overcome with a strong emotion, don’t try to resist or fight it. Instead, find the rhythm, and rise and fall with the wave of the emotion. Alternatively, ‘pendulate’ your attention between the part of the body that holds the emotion and another neutral part of the body - like a swinging pendulum, back and forth - until the feeling recedes. Send breaths to those parts. Then surf the emotion and ride it out.
Transform emotion with emotion: The concept of changing one emotion with another emotion is originated by Dr. Les Greenberg’s Emotion-Focused Therapy. First, categorize the emotion into activating vs draining. Activating emotions create energy and are highly charged. Examples include anger, anxiety, and excitement. Draining emotions tend to make us become subdued, hunched and more withdrawn. Examples of draining emotions are sadness, shame, and guilt. Once you identify which category the current emotion falls into, find something that will provoke an emotion in the opposite category. Caveat: resist the temptation to turn to substances to regulate your arousal level. Find internal ways. If you are feeling sad, try to oppose it with a high energy emotion. For instance, watching a video of shark attacks to induce fear or calling someone that makes you anxious. Conversely, for high energy emotions like anger, you can try listening to sad music or write a letter to a loved-one you’ve lost. Importantly, there is a universal tool that will transform all unpleasant emotions. This tool is connection. When we form a bond with another person, animal, or even a purpose, we experience a feeling of gratitude and compassion, which can transform all unpleasant emotions and amplify pleasant ones.
Flip the script: Viktor Frankl, a widely known psychiatrist and author of the book, ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ conceptualized the term ‘paradoxical intention’. It works by deliberately bringing about and exaggerating the exact thing we are trying to avoid. So if you are overwhelmed with an emotion, go ahead and try to feel it as much as you can. If you’re feeling blue, actively try to feel sorrowful. Exaggerate the feeling. Counterintuitively, you will begin to feel less of the emotion.
Ever wonder why you feel glum even when there is no obvious trigger? Is your mood naggingly low at baseline? When we feel an emotion without any associated thoughts, it is likely that the thoughts are underneath our awareness. There are thoughts and beliefs in our unconscious mind that are so distressing to us that they remain hidden even to ourselves.
The bad news is that low mood is not the only way these unconscious thoughts show up in our body. Stress hormones get released continuously, and our cardiovascular system either goes into overdrive or is barely kicking. The consequence of these automatic physiological responses can manifest as chronic illnesses later in life. The good news is that we can do something about it!
In my next blog post, I’m going to dive deeper into the brain-body connection and how we can gain control of our mind and body for a better overall health.
Are you interested in how to work with your thoughts so that you can reduce ruminations and worries? If so, leave me a comment and I’ll share some cognitive tips in a future post.
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