What are emotions? While there are many emotions, there are eight we consider the basis of many others:
Anger, Shame, Fear, Pain, Guilt, Joy, Passion, and Love
Psychological research suggests that emotions evolved to guide us away from harm and toward safety and pleasure. Emotions also motivate us to take action.
Imagine waking up tomorrow without emotion. What would you do? Stay in bed or get out of bed or get up? Go to (log in to) work, or not? Would you let the dog out? Kiss your partner? Wake the children? Would you care about the consequences? If there was a car wreck in front of your house, would you hurry to help?
Our emotions guide us through most of our daily decisions. The desire to hold on to and maximize the good feelings and avoid the bad is a primary way that we sort constant incoming stimuli, both from the world around us as well as from the world inside us.
Emotions are organizing.
Because emotions can also be a catalyst for irrational and destructive behavior, cultural norms typically have “rules” that favor logical thought. Like so many aspects of being human, emotions are complicated and can be volatile. However, without them we are unable to fully experience our lives. A.C. Grayling, in his book The Reason of Things, takes a strong stand against the philosophy of Stoicism which minimizes emotion in favor of self-control:
. . . If one is frugal with one’s emotions—limiting love in order to avoid its pains, stifling appetites and desire in order to escape the price of their fulfilment—one lives a stunted, muffled, bland life only. It is tantamount to a partial death. . .
One way to wiggle out of this conundrum is to remember that emotions exist on a continuum, and the problems generally lie in the extremes. Anger, for example, is full of good information, about whether someone is crossing a boundary or behaving unethically. This manageable level of anger will hopefully move us to appropriate action. Too little anger, however, can result in victimization, allowing someone to be taken advantage of. Too much anger can result in physical and verbal violence, when directed outward, or self-harm and numbing when directed inward. Feeling sad is an inevitable response to life events, like death and loss. Too much sadness, however, can prevent us from getting out of bed in the morning, just as too much anxiety can make it difficult to leave the house.
In thinking about emotions, it is important to remember that they are never “good” or “bad,” in much the same way we should consider food when dieting. All emotions have value, even the difficult ones. Moreover, all emotions contain gifts. The following is adapted from the work of Pia Mellody:
The gifts of anger are energy, assertiveness, and strength.
The gifts of fear are protection, preservation, and wisdom.
The gifts of pain are awareness, healing, and growth.
The gifts of joy are gratitude, happiness, and abundance.
The gifts of passion are excitement, appetite, and energy.
The gifts of love are life, connection, and spirituality.
The gifts of shame are being in touch with our humanity, containing ourselves, and humility.
The gifts of guilt are containment, values, and taking responsibility.
🤯 🤬 😡 😭 😤 😳 😱 🤗 😍
How can we manage emotions? We all began practicing emotional regulation when we were very young, learning from our families of origin. Whether our families managed strong emotions well or poorly can often predict our own ease or difficulty.
It is helpful to first recognize what we are feeling in order to avoid emotional build-up. This involves practice (doesn’t everything?) through meditation and attention to the body where raw emotion is stored. The visual here is a pressure-cooker letting off steam a bit at a time to avoid an explosion. We must also consider why we are feeling the way we are, and whether our response to a here-and-now event is related to an older bigger problem. We may also need to practice new emotional regulation tools in order to risk knowing the breadth and depth of our emotions. (See Emotional Grounding; Window of Tolerance; CARESS)
Destructive emotional eruptions can be the result of individuals living with too much stress or can be the after-effects of trauma. Most of us struggle with not responding to the initial rush or whoosh of big emotions, as Terry Real calls it: a spike or surge of anger/rage, shame, or fear. We can, however, learn to better regulate our emotions if we give ourselves time to consider the action we take in response. For the big emotions, the practice of holding ourselves steady in the heat of feelings, without preemptive response, can take a day or three, a week, or even months.
Jon Allen, in his book Coping With Trauma, suggests that we can slow the whoosh, and subsequent reactivity, through practice with an imaginary pause button, allowing us time to modulate our responses by thinking and feeling about feeling at the same time, what he calls emotional mentalizing. Steven Hayes’ workbook, Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life is another great resource, and is based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
Day to day factors and habits also play a huge role in our ability to regulate emotion, including sleep, exercise, diet, relaxation, play, meditation, stress-levels, and social support. An increase in stress usually pushes us in the wrong direction, limiting self-care, and can leave us under-resourced and overwhelmed. Psychotherapy is another useful tool that can help increase self-awareness, helping to map a way to more consistent self-care, self-regulation, and compassion.
A short inventory might be helpful. Consider asking yourself:
Are there some emotions I feel too much or too little?
Do emotions prevent me from certain activities and/or interactions I enjoy or need? Alternatively, do my emotions push me to do more activities and/or interactions than are healthy or enjoyable?
Can I notice in my body where I feel my emotions most strongly, and allow space for them that will promote understanding and resolution?
Context-appropriate emotional and behavioral responses are central and critically important to our most treasured resource: relationships. As we interact with others, especially in intimacy, emotions consistently inform our ability to set healthy limits, problem-solve, as well as give and receive the support we need to live happier lives. If you feel overwhelmed, grounding and self-soothing exercises are often very helpful. (See Emotional Grounding; Window of Tolerance; CARESS)
Resources: Jon Allen, Coping With Trauma: Hope Through Understanding
Steven Hayes, Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life
