Working Through Emotions - Week Two Day Two
How to feel and manage emotions
Week Two Day Two
Stop. Take a few moments to notice your breath. Does it become slower or deeper when you give attention?
Next, scan your body. Eyes, mouth, neck, chest, abdomen, back, hands, shoulders, legs. Are there any tight spots? Swirling? Loose? Itchy, sweaty, dry sore? Any other feelings?
Does your body need anything? A drink? Food? To relieve yourself? To stretch? To be touched or have space from being touched? To breathe?
Don’t judge. Just notice.
Next, check your thoughts.
Without judgment, what have you been thinking recently and in the past 24 hours? Write them down if you wish.
If you have time and space, sit and breath. You can follow a meditation or sit with your breath — when your mind waters notice, then return to your focus. Repeat for as long as you wish. If you have people around you and they interrupt, that’s okay. Answer, handle their needs, then return to your focus. Meditation is not about no thoughts, it’s about returning your focus.
If your body has needs, attend to them as soon as you can. Get a drink, use the toilet, put on some lotion, or touch your toes. If you need touch or massage, give yourself that. If you need space from being touched, find ways to connect with your kids in non-touch ways. Sensory play is often helpful.
For the remainder of this course, we will do a daily check in.
You can leave your thoughts and needs in the comments. Let’s get into today’s discussion.
Most of us have never learned how to feel or handle our emotions. Mainstream parenting shames and pushes down feelings.
No one can handle their child's emotions without learning to handle theirs first. So how do you feel?
Start with noticing from the last lesson. Welcome the emotion. Emotions are communication. Do not run from them. They have a message for you.
Name the emotion. The feeling wheel is a great tool for exploring the nuances of emotion.
Emotions also come in layers. If you are dealing with anger, especially, there is likely another emotion under the surface: fear or sadness.
Along with negative feelings, do not forget to notice your positive feelings: joy, excitement, fun.
If you can explore big, deep, chronic emotions in a journal. Talk to your emotion. Find out what message the feeling has for you. Write about it, draw about it.
As with our check-in lesson, notice in your body where the emotion occurs.
Sometimes biology amplifies emotions. Hungry, tired, dehydration, and hormones. Lack of movement or daily sunlight. A short break outside for 5 minutes makes an enormous difference.
Last is our thoughts that drive emotions, which we'll discuss in the next lesson questioning our thoughts.
Examine your triggers
I am a fixer. Answering questions really helps me because I enjoy fixing problems. I enjoy easing pain; we try to avoid pain. Sometimes problem solving isn’t appropriate. Sometimes, what the person asking the questions needs isn’t a fix, it’s a place to vent and receive support without a solution.
Holding space and empathy are two very important skills we need to practice when helping others. Holding space starts with looking inside ourselves to notice our own triggers and bias before we respond someone else. When our triggers and bias come into play and we try to change someone based on our values and ideals. Once we have examined our thoughts and feelings, we can respond with empathy and non-judgment for others. We can be there without trying to fix or change them.
Triggers
Triggers have gotten a lot of press lately. Many misunderstand what triggers are. Many people feel it means avoidance or censorship.
In a broad sense, a trigger is anything that upsets someone. We all have our sticking points, be it sexual assault or violence or liberal views. Every late night TV show contains a trigger warning, the following show contains violence, profanity, nudity, adult situations, watch at your own discretion.
That is all a trigger warning is. “Hey, this subject is commonly upsetting. Please proceed if it will not cause you emotional upset.”
Recognizing Triggers
It’s not always easy to recognize your triggers. Too many cultures do not teach us to value feelings. We are taught to avoid upset at all costs. We may stifle it, dissociate, ignore, or avoid being upset to survive. Few people were raised with support for their negative emotions.
What we learned is the anger cycle. Negative emotion, try to repress, fail and explode, smooth things over, and repeat. We can use self soothing to calm ourselves.
A few years ago, I made a mistake that led to me having panic attacks. I come from a strong family history of anxiety and overthinking habits. By worrying or exploding, we strengthen those connections in our brain. We can change, but it requires deliberate practice and energy.
The first step to recovery was noticing my thoughts and body. I set regular reminders to check in with myself. At first, I struggled to recall what I’d been thinking as automatic negative thoughts, were so common I didn’t even notice until I got deliberate.
Spend the next few days checking with yourself and noting your triggers.
Bias
It is not only triggers that affect the way we react to information we receive. We have biases that affect our reaction. Bais is our prejudice toward or away from someone or something often unfairly. We learn bias from our childhood and experiences in life. They are often unconscious, but they can be conscious.
There is a Tumblr post that makes the rounds every few months. It reads, “The first thought that goes through your mind is what you have been conditioned to think. What you think next defines who you are.”
That first thought is your bias. Often we do not go beyond our first thought. These are the unconscious thoughts we are unaware of until we examine at our patterns.
Discussing bias can be uncomfortable. Racial bias has been the subject of discussion for decades, and it’s been increasing lately. Well-deserved attention, but many don’t want to discuss the topic.
Race is not the only area we can have a bias. We have biases based on gender, race, mental health, body size, exercise, alcohol, and drugs are a few examples. Every topic is somewhere you may have a bias that needs examined, especially for holding space.
Harvard’s Implicit Bias Test is a good way to check some of your biases.
Back to the Tumblr post. Once you recognize your conditioned thoughts, you can choose your next ones — the ones that define who you are. Challenge your thinking. Ask yourself if your bias reflects who you want to be and how you want to respond.
Further Reading