Managing emotions is a hot topic in life, health, and business coaching circles, so today I want to cover the basics
so you can understand what emotions are, what they’re not, and why they are actually tools that can help you.
How many times have you heard, “You’re so emotional!” Personally, I’ve heard it too many times.
Through the years of conditioning, I began to believe emotions were terrible. They meant I was weak. The result was that I repressed them and moved on with life. My body kept the score and told me about it through gut problems, migraines, and lower back pain.
The problem was that I didn’t understand what emotions were. Sure, I knew what anger, sadness, and joy were, BUT I didn’t realize that emotions are a natural response to a situation. They are NOT controllable because they result from the brain releasing certain chemicals, creating an emotional state.
When those chemicals are processed, we go into a state of feeling. Feelings and emotions are slightly different. Think about that close encounter with a large truck on the way to the grocery store. The emotion is fear, and the feeling is tightness in your gut and chest, maybe a headache once you start coming down from the rush.
What are Emotions?
Emotions are energy in motion. Our bodies are more than the physical we can see and touch. Everything in the universe is energy, including our bodies. Energy likes to flow unobstructed. Consider what happens to trapped energy like a sealed boiling pot of water. The steam finds a way out, one way or another. When we suppress emotions, they, too, find a way to leak out or explode.
We suppress emotions because no one likes feeling bad. Our inner critic comes to our rescue and tells us not to deal with or feel it. There are six general suppression strategies: distraction, numbing, being strong, giving ourselves pep talks, moving on to to the next best thing, and spiritual bypass. Suppression strategies are how we manage our emotions.
Suppression Strategies AKA Emotional Management
Distraction is probably the most common. It’s easy. You can stay busy and totally in your head through work, volunteering, and social media, to name a few.
Numbing often leads to addiction. In many ways, we are all addicted to something. Not all addictions lead to adverse health consequences, but you want to be careful here and notice if you are using a numbing strategy to escape a feeling.
Being strong is powering through an emotion relying on your thinking, but it isn’t necessarily demonstrating strength. Using this tactic of pushing down an emotion prevents one from experiencing life. Being vulnerable and showing up as your true self is true strength.
Pep talks are a mental game that doesn’t work. They are external and superficial but don’t address the emotion. Likewise, they can create pendulum thinking. This kind of thinking occurs when you try to change too much, too fast, and it would be like having a fear of heights and deciding to bungee jump to overcome the fear.
Moving on to the next best thing is similar to using distraction. This strategy is an outside-in way of thinking. The trouble is you have to keep raising the bar the more you suppress your emotions.
Spiritual bypass begins from a good place but honestly doesn’t serve you. “I guess that’s just the way it is, or things like this always happen to me.” This tactic is a way to dodge the emotion.
Managing Emotions Through Awareness and Naming Them
Can you describe what you feel? Explaining how you feel is much harder than it should be, but it comes down to not having an emotional vocabulary. While doing my coaching training, I found myself very limited in the words I needed to describe what I felt about something.
Karen McLaren is an expert in the area of expressing emotion. She devoted her career to helping people increase their emotional vocabulary to identify, work with, and regulate emotions. She created an extensive list, or vocabulary, of emotions segregated as soft, medium, and intense emotions. Her list is free, and you can download it at Your Emotional Vocabulary List | Karla McLaren | Karla McLaren. Start now especially if you have children. You can learn together, and they will be better prepared for adulthood.
Managing Emotions by Releasing Them
First, greet the emotion. Meet it with compassion. Silence your inner critic and don’t let it drive you to judgment. Emotions are part of you, and ALL of you is welcome. Remember that!
One of the most accessible ways to release emotion is release writing. This type of writing is different than journaling. Release writing is a way to write with no filter, no punctuation. It is just throwing it all out on the paper. Yes, pen and paper. The act of writing connects to the right side of your brain, your creative, intuitive center where unconscious emotions are stored. I like to rip it and throw it our after as an act of celebration. Then, I journal to reflect on the exercise and understand what happened.
Next is the temper tantrum technique. This one can seem silly, but it is incredibly effective. Think about small children. They get upset, cry, yell, or maybe shake themselves. Then, after the emotion is released, we console them and move on. That is the temper tantrum technique! Go to your bedroom and close the door. Punch your pillows or scream into them. Shake your body. Cry. Do what your body feels it needs. Once you feel you have let it all out, begin to come down with long, slow breaths. Show yourself compassion. Maybe a hot bath or a piece of fruit. Finally, journal about the experience once you feel ready.
Increased Energy and Improved Life Outcomes
Managing your emotions takes a great deal of energy when you suppress rather than release them. Consider holding a beach ball underwater. You have to really use some force! Once you begin to acknowledge and release your emotions, your body can use that energy to do the things you want to do. You will feel more energy and even more creative.
Likewise, your health will improve. Storing emotions takes a toll on your hormonal and cellular health. The body believes it’s under attack and needs to respond. Chemical messengers are released, and over time, cells become resistant to them. This process can lead to a variety of autoimmune disorders and chronic pain.
Emotions are energy in motion and a regular part of our lives. Expect to have them and greet them with compassion. Get curious about them and avoid judgment. Once you have an emotion and feel it, it’s your choice how you think about it. You have the power to release or suppress. Release it! It truly feels amazing.
As a coach, I can help you work through processing your emotions. I provide a safe space to see and hear you. Please email me at nikki@nikkidrobnylifedesign.com or apply to work with me here.
Talk soon!
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