Feeling and Processing Your Emotions

As a graduate student, I learned so much about how to help people feel and process emotions. What I did not anticipate was a question I’ve gotten over and over again since starting work; Why is feeling my emotions important?

Emotions Don’t Need to be “Fixed”

Although I didn’t expect it, this is a normal question to ask. In our culture, we tend to prioritize “logic” or "rationality" over emotions. The belief seems to be that if we can put our emotions to the side, we can look at a given situation without bias and make a better, more “rational” decision. In this theory, emotions become pesky distractions that get in the way of productive action. If a person can just find a way to “fix” or “get rid of” emotions, they can move on to matters of actual importance.

There are a lot of flaws in this theory. Emotions cannot be “got rid of”. They tend to linger, and often fester, when repressed. If they are never taken care of, they tend to come out in unhealthy ways (resentment, anger, numbness, addiction, etc.). In addition, emotions are necessary tools for a person to survive and thrive. Emotions offer insight into our internal experience, can act as warning signals when something is wrong, and allow us to connect with other people. 

Let's explore what our emotions can do!

Emotions Don’t Go Away

Emotions cannot be hidden, suppressed, or thrown out permanently. It’s not an option to not deal with them! When a person doesn’t know how to process their emotions in healthy ways, they deal with them (sometimes unconsciously) in ways that are detrimental to their long-term health. This can look like outbursts of rage or anger. It can look like a depression that numbs all emotions out, or hypervigilance that leads to a pattern of anxiety. It can look like addictions to substances or habitual behavior that is outside our values. 

Our bodies can end up treating emotional pain like physical danger. These negative feelings of hurt, loss, grief, fear etc. can build up and lead our bodies to live in perpetual fight or flight. If our mind senses a potential emotional danger, it will trigger survival mode. What we often call “fight or flight” is our brain redirecting resources away from the prefrontal cortex (where we do cognitive thinking) and toward our limbic system. This part of our brain encourages impulses that help soothe us in the moment, regardless of the long term effects. The more times our brain goes through the system, the easier it becomes for your brain to hide from emotions and cope with short term hits of dopamine. 

Emotions are Not the Enemy

But we don’t have to see emotions as dangerous. In fact, when we learn to notice, process, and move through emotions they can actually provide us with good information about ourselves. 

Humans are not capable of truly being “unbiased”. Everything we perceive is filtered through a lens made up of our own internal experience. If we are not aware of that internal experience, we can end up being completely reactionary to everything that happens to us. Instead, learning to be mindful of our internal experience gives us the space to truly choose what we believe, what we understand, and who we become. 

Our thoughts and our emotions are both good information about our internal experience. Rather than valuing one over the other, it is more efficient to understand both. 

Emotions are Warning Signals

Emotions give us good information that something is off. I like to compare them to the dashboard lights in your car. When a light starts flashing and demanding attention, it’s time to pull out a code reader and figure out what is going on. Sometimes the light is simply malfunctioning, and nothing deeper is going on. With our emotions, this may look like feeling really angry and then eating a sandwich and realizing you were just hungry. Sometimes the light is a sign something internally is going wrong, which may mean you have emotional hurts that need some attention and processing. Or a light can be a sign of hazards in your environment (like icy roads or high winds). Our emotions are often the first sign that someone is treating us poorly or that we are in a toxic environment. 

Emotions are the Gateway to Connection

Another hugely important function of emotion is that it connects us to the people around us. Love, intimacy, and community require emotions. Every couple I have ever seen as a therapist want to feel loved by and connected to their partner. The way to build that connection is to share our emotions and have empathy for others’ emotions. 

Research on what makes a happy couple (particularly from researchers at the Gottman Institute and Sue Johnson) shows that couples who are disconnected need to learn what they are feeling and needing, and how to express that in effective ways. If you are wondering where to start, give us a call about talking to a therapist. 

“Am I just supposed to sit and be sad?”

This is the follow up question I get a lot. Once I have discussed with a client the need for their emotions, they feel discouraged. What are we meant to do with our emotions? Although this is a complicated question, I would summarize my answer like this. Feeling, expressing, and processing emotion is about balance. A person needs to learn their own process for letting an emotion in, getting curious about it, feeling it (not just thinking it!) and then accepting it. 

Just as it is not healthy to suppress our emotions all the time, it’s not helpful to sit in pain 24/7. The most common mistake I see is people trying to move on too fast. They sense a feeling coming on and jump straight to “how do I fix this?”.

Ask yourself the question; Can I give time and space to feel, get curious, acknowledge, and accept this feeling? Only when you can answer yes to all of the above is it time to move on to separating and seeing what else exists inside you. Again, if you’d like some help learning what to do with emotions, come on it!

Balance

As do most things in life, emotions come back to balance. A favorite yoga instructor of mine pointed out that trees stay balanced because they wiggle. If they were rigid, they would break in a storm. Allow yourself space to wiggle and you will find your balance over and over again. Wiggling means you are constantly moving, leaning one way and then another as you find balance every single day. If you would like the support of a therapist as you feel and process your emotions, you can reach out to Wasatch Family Therapy by texting or calling 801.944.4555 or filling out this form.