No matter what you’re thinking and feeling right now, it’s okay. Our normal lives have been flipped and twisted and feel completely different and uncertain. Don’t resist your feelings. Allow yourself to feel and process them.
If you’re a Star Wars fan, you might be questioning this as you recall Yoda’s famous words, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering."
I want to be clear, “Negative emotions” are NOT the problem. In fact, I actually get excited to process them because I know that it makes me unstoppable.
The real problem with these emotions (and all emotions) is when we resist them. When we avoid them. When we push them down.
The fact that society even labels them as “negative” holds us back because we’re afraid to feel those emotions.
I want to make it clear. 100% clear that right now in this time of uncertainty, that it's ok to have any and all thoughts and feeling.
The key to success and happiness is to identify the feeling and instead of resisting them – allow – and allow yourself to process them – feel them all the way through.
We are living a worldwide pandemic. This is happening and the only real choice we have is to accept it and decide how to move forward. Arguing with reality means we are in resistance and create more upset and angst for ourselves.
On a call with Lisa (not her real name) she told me she had many emotions right now but wasn’t clear on how to process them. Everything was stressful because she was feeling so stuck. For years she had kept herself too “busy” to feel or process her emotions. And now she can’t contain them any longer and doesn’t know how to handle it.
I explained to Lisa that suppressing any emotion and resisting it will make the emotion more intense and last longer. Because the mind and body are so connected it can even cause physical symptoms like headaches, rashes, irritable tummy issues, sleeplessness, fatigue, and colds, you name it.
Luckily we can learn how to process and feel our emotions (at any age) and when we do so, we no longer have to fear our emotions. We can feel them, process them, and release them from our body.
It was actually a huge relief to Lisa once I explained the cognitive construct, the 50/50 theory.
We’re going to feel “negative” emotions 50% of the time and “positive” emotions about 50% of the time. That’s completely normal and once we accept this truth, we can accept these emotions as a totally normal part of life instead of something to stress and fear about thinking we’ve failed somehow and need to get rid of these emotions that can lead to the dark side of ourselves. Nonsense.
Negative emotion helps us understand what we want in life. It provides contrast. It’s an important part of being a human.
Now that you’ve mastered the first step, knowing it’s okay to embrace and process any emotion, let’s focus on the doing. The actual processing of these emotions.
Here’s how to process your emotions:
I want you to follow these 7 steps every day for the next week. In fact, schedule it on your calendar like we talked about last week, using Monday Hour One. Take 5 minutes to process your emotions. I think you’ll be amazed at the progress you’re able to make doing this throughout the week. That said, if you're afraid of being swept up in a sea of negative emotion go ahead and schedule a mini session with me. We’ll work through it together.
1. Name the emotion.
Ask yourself, “What feeling am I experiencing right now.” It might help to know there are 8 basic emotions according to Robert Plutchik. If you aren’t sure how to label it, start by figuring out which category your feelings fall into:
Fear → feeling of being afraid, frightened, scared.
Anger → feeling angry. A stronger word for anger is rage.
Sadness → feeling sad. Other words are sorrow, grief (a stronger feeling, for example when someone has died).
Joy → feeling happy. Other words are happiness, gladness.
Disgust → feeling something is wrong or nasty.
Surprise → being unprepared for something.
Trust → a positive emotion; admiration is stronger; acceptance is weaker.
Anticipation → in the sense of looking forward positively to something which is going to happen. Expectation is more neutral.
There are many more feelings of course, but these are the most common ones to get you started. I also recommend downloading the feelings list on my website. I send this one to my clients when we first begin our work together. As you go you’ll learn to process your emotion and in turn learn how to feel more of the emotions you want and less of the ones you don’t.
TIP: Take a picture of the list and make it your screen saver on your phone so that you’re reminded several times a day to check-in with yourself and identify what you're feeling.
2. Find where the emotion is in your body.
Ask yourself, “Where am I feeling this emotion in my body?” If you identified that you feel stress, is it in your chest, your shoulder, your stomach?
3. Relax into the emotion.
Lean into the emotion. Relax all your muscles, your hands, your shoulders, your neck, your face. If you feel stress in your chest – think about relaxing into that stress in the specific area of the body you identified.
4. Describe the emotion.
Describe it as if you’re describing it to a cute green space creature who's got no idea what emotions are like. “It feels like this… When it happens this…”
5. Picture the emotion.
What color is it? Is it hard or soft? Flowing or stagnate? Heavy or light? Tight or swirling? Does it have a name even?
6. Remind yourself that your feelings are caused by your thoughts.
Remind yourself of this truth over and over again, “This feeling is just caused by my thoughts, just sentences in my mind, this feeling cannot hurt me.” You don’t have to do a thought model at this time, you can just ease into allowing the emotion to ebb and flow through you. This is just the chemical of the emotion processing through your body. Let it vibrate and do its thing.
7. Continue to breathe and allow the emotion until it subsides.
You’ll know that you’ve processed it all the way through when it starts to subside. When you get practiced at this, you’ll see for yourself that emotions you’ve been avoiding won’t last forever. Actually, the more you allow an emotion instead of resisting it you'll find that it’ll subside rather quickly if you catch it early on. This may be harder if you’ve had a lot of anxiety or any other strong emotion that’s been building. If this is you, jump on a mini session with me and I’ll teach you what you can specifically do to manage more intense anxiety and other emotions. The trick is to catch it early on.
A lot of the time we feel like crap because we are afraid to feel emotion, we hide, avoid, procrastinate, buffer, don’t look in order not to feel. But the thing is you're feeling the negative emotion anyway, it’s just subconscious and lingering and you don’t know how to process it all the way through to the other side to get to more positive emotions. You can stop this cycle with these steps above. I can help you learn how to cross this river of misery and you can start feeling better as soon as you learn how. It just takes one phone call. So be courageous and set yourself free.
Having scary thoughts and feelings right now and not sure how to handle it all? I'm here to help you figure out your next steps while lessening anxiety. This week on a mini-session Racheal was worried about how to work at home with her kids also at home, I coached her through her blind spots and we made a plan of action so that she didn't have to keep obsessing over what to do and getting paralyzed. Now she feels like she can move forward. What can I help you with?
