Befriending Our Emotions
Listening for the truths they have to tell us – By Stacey Huget
If we’re really honest, how many of us are not okay with our emotions, are not entirely okay with feeling what we feel when we feel it? How many of us are actually a wee bit afraid our feelings – or at least some of them?
Some of us may think our emotions say something about who we are – virtuous or petty, healthy or troubled, desirable or undesirable. We decide that certain of our emotions are okay to let rip – say, love or joy or compassion. Others we’d best keep under wraps – like anger, fear, and sadness.
We don’t always like feeling certain of our feelings. Some of us have learned to filter some of them out – denying and avoiding them. We zone out when something disturbs us, numbing ourselves to our feelings in the hope of escaping them altogether. We live mostly in our heads, trying to think our way through life – like somehow that’s a safer bet.
Good luck with that.
In the long run, these coping strategies don’t turn out well. They just create a seething mess of anxious tension deep inside of us, a dark and roiling sea of dread that heaves us from our solid ground.
Our wellness, that ability to live our lives with ease and lightness, depends partly on feeling what we feel. Experiencing our emotions and letting them flow through us not only contributes to our health, it opens us up to new insights about ourselves, to vital truths.
Our emotions are just bodily sensations. Pleasant or unpleasant, they arise in response to what is happening around us. They do so for a reason – usually to tell us what we need to do to thrive, nudging us to action in order to have our needs met. None of our them are bad, they just are. It may not always seem like it, but our emotions – all of them, pleasant and unpleasant – are on our side. The sooner we befriend them, the healthier and happier we are.
Easier said than done.
So, what can we do to embrace all of our emotions, to listen to what they’re telling us in the moment? Here are five steps:
Tune in…
The first step to befriending our emotions is to tune in to our bodily sensations as they arise and just feel what we’re feeling. Sometimes – particularly if we’re angry or sad or afraid – these sensations can be uncomfortable, which is why we’re so tempted to zone out. Ironically, just sitting for a bit with our sensations can actually lessen our aversion long enough for our curiosity to arise.
Be curious …
That’s the second step: sorting out what we’re feeling. Are we frustrated, hurt, anxious? It isn’t always clear what emotions are arising in our bodies. We need to ask ourselves – our always-knowing, always-protective bodies – what is there? What are the emotions that are coming up for us in this moment?
Whatever they are, it’s okay. There need be no judgment. Emotions just are. There is no good and bad.
Sure, we can try to think our way through life, but our thoughts aren’t as reliable as our emotions for telling us the truth. Our thinking can twist us up and bog us down in a hell of dark fiction and blind alleys – but our emotions never lie.
Identify the trigger…
The third step is to understand why we’re feeling what we’re feeling – what gave rise to these sensations? Was it an event, something that was said, a subtle dynamic? Taking a break to sleuth out what it was that actually happened to make us feel as we do can be easy or difficult, satisfying or uncomfortable – but it’s time well spent. If we’re a bit muddled or confused, we can be patient with ourselves. Clarity will usually surface if we let it.
Look for the meaning…
The fourth step is to look for the meaning behind our emotions. What are they telling us? What is the need that went unmet in the moment these emotions came up? Did we expect something different to occur in that moment – and if so, why? What thoughts were we having, what beliefs and values were in play? What did we need in that moment – and what do we need now in order for the sensation to pass, to feel better?
It’s important we don’t veer off course here to all the other moments when we felt this way or to ALL our many unmet needs – because that’s how we lose our perspective and sense of proportion around our emotional experience. Judgments and irrational thinking and over-analysis – they work against us. They’re what make our emotions seem so overwhelming and difficult to express or process. We simply have to bring curiosity and insight to this specific experience and what it means to us.
Meet our own needs…
The fifth step is to act on what our bodies are telling us, to find ways of meeting our own needs in healthful ways. Are we in need of reassurance? Are we confused about something and need more information? Did a boundary get crossed that we need to honor? Do we need to undo something we wished we hadn’t done?
Whatever the need is, there’s usually an action we can consider taking. Sometimes, it comes to us with a flash of clarity. Other times, it emerges more slowly, this thing we need to do. However long it takes, we can hold space for it with compassion and confidence. Whatever it is – we are human, we are okay, we are capable.
Sometimes, we can meet our own needs without having to communicate with other people. For example, our irritability may be more about lack of sleep or too many deadlines and less about the event that occurred or the thing that was said when we felt that irritability come up. Our body might simply be telling us to get some rest, re-prioritize, restore ourselves.
Other times, the action we need to take to meet our own needs involves other people. And as much as we might tell ourselves that others should just know what we need, it isn’t so. The simple truth is: we have to express our needs in order to have them met. And that’s not always an easy thing. That’s where things can go sideways.
More on that later.
The point is, we can’t step up for ourselves and meet our own needs – the basis for living well and with ease and lightness – if we don’t know what they are, if we’re not listening to what our emotions are telling us. Sure, we can try to think our way through life, but our thoughts aren’t as reliable as our emotions for telling us the truth. Our thinking can twist us up and bog us down in a hell of dark fiction and blind alleys – but our emotions never lie.
We may not always like the truths our feelings have to tell, we may not always immediately know how best to respond to them, but they’re our truths just the same.
In the words of much-loved American Tibetan Buddhist, Pema Chödrön: If your everyday practice is to open to your emotions, to all the people you meet, to all the situations you encounter, without closing down, trusting that you can do that – then that will take you as far as you can go. And then you’ll understand all the teachings that anyone has ever taught.
Our ground doesn’t get any more solid than that.
