Why you should name and tame your emotions, but never shame them

Our minds naturally focus on the unusual and unexpected as part of our survival attention reflex. This not only applies to the external world but also to the internal world when we notice something emotionally or physically different.

The early teens to mid-twenties can be a particularly difficult time. We experience multiple emotional responses at intensities never felt before, along with increasing social pressure to suppress those responses. paternity; to work; Losing loved ones to death: These types of life events can create mind boggling experiences.

Of course, older generations also have to deal with their own unexpected emotional problems, but they benefit from having learned the full extent of their biologically imposed limits and will usually have developed more effective coping strategies.

Unfortunately, those in the know rarely have the opportunity to share this social reservoir of advanced knowledge with others, and this means that we have to scramble in confusion every time our mind catches on that we are having an emotional experience that we cannot easily explain. I’ve found that a natural three-step approach works for processing unfamiliar emotional experiences:

• name it
• tame it
• never embarrass him

Several years ago I was using exposure therapy to get rid of my panic attacks. After three months of this self-work I began to have a very strange physical reaction. While researching the experience on the internet, I came to the conclusion that I might have become diabetic. I made an emergency appointment with my doctor.

She was aware of my self-therapy program and listened carefully as I explained that over the past three days I had started to feel very heavy. The sensations had started in my thighs and gradually spread down my back to my shoulders and walking had become a struggle. I felt as if hands were pulling me to the ground. The pressure to collapse to the ground seemed to be getting stronger and he couldn’t explain it.

He told me that this was a normal response to prolonged anxiety and that he regularly saw it in his patients with panic attacks. She had previously read about the freeze response and she confirmed that that was what it was. She told me to take it easy and that she had nothing to worry about.

When I left the doctor and went home I found that all physical symptoms had disappeared. The doctor had normalized the experience for me; we had named it, he had fully experienced it and by telling me that it was a normal human reaction he had been able to accept and clarify it. My focus of attention had stopped worrying about that.

I used the same approach when healing a difficult grief reaction. I’ve lost a few people to death in my time, but I’ve never experienced a grief reaction like this: a searing, paralyzing body pain that left me feeling helpless and frozen. I had to consciously crawl out of it just to perform normal daily functions. I found that no matter what I did to get out of it, the reaction was still floating around, waiting to draw me back. So for a couple of days I named it, tamed it, and turned it off.

Naming an emotional response

If we have an emotional experience that we cannot place on our internal non-predator list, we will continue to draw our attention to it. Because our minds interpret pain as the signal that a predator is in the neighborhood (even if it is one of our own emotional responses), our unconscious will continue to ask questions about the unexpected intruder until we can show it the full extent of what we are dealing with. the intruder can do. do all of us. The unconscious will not abandon an emotional response unless it knows for certain that it cannot kill us.

To name an unknown answer, you need to spend some time searching the external world for similar signs in others – what do they call it? Talk to other people you trust, and if you can’t bring yourself to talk to those close to you, go and talk to a professional about it. That’s what they’re there for and they’ve probably seen more of the human condition than anyone else you know.

Do some research and when you feel like you can pick a name for the answer, give it a name. Is it mourning? Is it disgust? Is it a shock? Name it and it will give you a shape.

Taming an emotional response

What’s that? What can you do to me? they are questions that will continually capture your unconscious attention, especially if what you are looking at hurts. To tame an emotional response, you must fully experience it from beginning to end so that your unconscious can come to a point where it knows the full extent of the experience. Then your focus of attention will let it go. Focus on the triggering event that led to the emotional response and be sure to mentally link everything from the triggering event, to how you felt about that event, to accepting the emotional response. By going over and over these aspects of the answer, you will gradually reduce its impact on you.

never embarrass him

When we see that our emotional responses cause us to feel pain, it is an easy mistake to think that the emotional response is bad. None of your emotional responses are bad. Nature does not produce bad emotional responses. All of our responses are designed to aid in our survival. If you fully explore your responses and what they mean, you will find a good motivation behind the painful feelings. If you consciously label your feelings as unacceptable, you assign your unconscious the task of fighting them the same way you would any other predator.

However, this does not mean that we should allow our temporary feelings to dominate our external actions. While our emotions are not harmful, an external action can be. It is a myth that the only way to release an emotion is to act it out in the real world. We can fully release emotions simply by continually feeling them until they have left us. When we have an emotional response that leads us to commit a harmful external action, we should naturally feel some shame about it: shame is a sign that we are damaging our social relationships. Just remember not to be ashamed of your embarrassment.

Also, our emotional responses often tell us what we need but don’t want to consciously listen to. Do not shoot the messenger. If an emotional response, for example, tells you to leave a situation, you will eventually have to agree to leave the situation. That the external situation is bad does not mean that the emotional response to it is bad.

Taking the time to fully explore new emotional experiences, no matter how painful, will free us up more quickly to move on with our lives. The paradox of achieving unconditional, unconscious happiness is that the more you focus on, name, and tame your most painful emotional responses, the sooner you can remove their effects.