Emotional Awareness

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I’m currently seeking a publisher for my book, Emotions: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Feeling Better. In the meantime, here are some thoughts (for free!).

Working With Emotions

We’re often uncomfortable with our emotions, so it’s tempting to view them as just problems to solve. But they’re also what gives life its color and its energy. Without them we’d be flat and robotic!

In America we tend to emphasize how to control or manage emotions. I believe that, on one hand, if we try to control emotions too rigidly, they’re going to rebel and end up kicking our butts anyway. For example, anger or hurt come out as snippy comments after you’ve told yourself, “Don’t be angry!” On the other hand, we can’t always let anger follow its preferred path, which can involve aggression. You can’t just scream at your boss every time you’re angry at ’em. So, what can you do?

Recognize your emotions. It’s really hard to do a good job of dealing with emotions you haven’t recognized! More info below.

Choose consciously how to deal with emotions rather than letting them just run wild. Here are some options for working well with your emotions:

• Express them directly. Not always possible, but great when possible. “I’m really hurt that you did X.” Or simply having a cry when sad.
• Express them partially. When your boss, who’s mean and controlling, does something extremely annoying, you might get fired for saying, “I’m mad as hell about what you did.” So, try the careful, consciously chosen route, such as “I’ve got some concerns about the way we’re approaching this.”
• Soothe yourself. Sometimes you can’t fix the situation, so you just have to cope. There are lots of options for how to soothe yourself:
  • Do something physically soothing–a walk, a bath, etc. Figure out
    your list now, before you need it. Smart move would be to jot it
    down so you can find it when you’re in a less coherent mindset.
  • Vent to someone supportive (and do not vent to someone
    unsupportive!). Let them know you’re just looking to vent, so you
    can skip the hassle of their trying to fix the problem when you just
    want to vent
  • Vent to yourself. Write it out. Or go for a drive and scream, etc.
  • Do something you like. Good movie, good meal, whatever.
  • Another option is doing some problem-solving. If you’re doing problem-solving by yourself, consider writing it out. Writing pushes us to be linear and logical. (Remember, problem-solving isn’t necessarily about the emotion; it’s about fixing the situation that led to the emotion.) If you’re doing problem-solving with someone else, tell them you want problem-solving help; listeners often don’t know whether you just want emotional support or problem-solving, so tell ’em.

Don’t forbid yourself from feeling any emotions. They’ll just go underground, like the Resistance in World War II.

Do try to recognize your emotions, and do try to make conscious choices about how to deal with them. You’ll get a lot better at both parts as you practice, and your mental health and your relationships will also get a lot better.

What Are the Main Emotions?

I think there are five, with lots of variations on each one. For example, anger ranges from irritation to rage and fear from worried to terrified. Three of the main emotions are difficult, and two are enjoyable:

• Fear
• Anger
• Sadness
• Joy, the energetic level of happiness
• Peace, the foundational level of happiness

How To Notice & Name Your Emotions

If you’re not completely sure what you’re feeling, you can just ask yourself whether it’s pleasant or unpleasant. If it’s pleasant, does it feel like joy, peace, or a combo? If it’s unpleasant, does it feel more like fear, anger, or sadness, or a combo? Having a few, main possibilities makes this much easier. Pro tip: anger is a reaction to a more vulnerable emotion, so when you notice that someone’s angry, ask yourself what the vulnerable emotion is. Fear? Hurt?

Hurt is the word we use for a combo of anger and sadness. It’s extremely helpful to get good at noticing hurt because hurt happens often in intimate relationships. If you can stay in touch with your own hurt, which has some vulnerability in it, you’re less likely to act out of pure anger, which is hard as a knife.

Levels of Intensity

Another thing that helps a lot is to be aware of the many levels of intensity of each main emotion. Anger isn’t always a 10 on a 10-point scale, right? A person can be a little angry or extremely sad. Here are some ways we talk about the big five, starting from milder experiences and going toward stronger:

1. Fear: concerned … stressed … worried/anxious … afraid … terrified
2. Anger: frustrated … irritable … pissed off … angry … enraged
3. Sadness: down … sad … extremely sad
4. Joy: energized … joyful … excited … ecstatic
5. Peace: okay … calm … peaceful … blissful

Being aware of the milder levels will prevent these kinds of crazy-making conversations: “You seem angry.” “I’m not angry.” “But you look and sound angry.” “I’M NOT ANGRY!” Maybe the second person was just mildly irritable at the beginning of the conversation and so didn’t recognize it as mild anger…so they weren’t lying, but they were clueless about being a little angry.

Noticing Emotions via Your Body

I recommend that you become an expert on how the big five feel physically. This awareness can really speed up the process of noticing your emotions. You want to know how it works for you specifically, but here are some examples to get you going:

• Fear creates tension in your muscles, which can be easy to notice. Does yours tend to be in your stomach? Neck? Chest?
• Anger also creates tension. Is yours in your jaw? Neck? Chest?
• Sadness usually feels heavy, with less tension. A weight on your chest?
• Joy and excitement have lots of energy. Are you bouncing around compared to usual? Talking faster? Smiling more?
• Peace pairs with relaxed muscles and deeper breathing.

Noticing Emotions via Your Thoughts

• Fear focuses on threats in the future–worries–and how to avoid them.
• Anger focuses on what went wrong and who’s to blame and how to destroy the source of the problem.
• Sadness focuses on loss in the past and negative prospects in the future, but without fear’s “how to avoid them”: sadness accepts the problem rather than fighting it.
• Joy focuses on fun things in the present and in the possible future.
• Peace focuses on what is, like sadness, but is okay with what is. “This is okay” or “This is good.”

If you notice that many of your thoughts are critical, consider the possibility that you’re not just running into a non-stop parade of buffoons, but actually in an angry and critical mood.

What Emotions Are Not

Many things that people are calling “feelings” these days are really attitudes or mindsets or else accusations of other people. Examples:

• “I’m feeling skeptical.” Okay, that tells me something important about your mindset, but I don’t know how that feels in your body, what emotion goes with it. You could be dispassionate, slightly angry, or afraid.
• “I’m feeling abandoned.” Nope. That’s not a feeling; it’s an interpretation of what someone else has done to you, namely abandoning you. So not only is it not an emotion, it’s not even about you! When the “abandoning” person hears this, they will be crystal clear that it’s really an accusation about what they’ve done.

Emotions can be felt in your body, and each one can accompany any of several mindsets or attitudes. The big five will help you keep a clear focus on the part that’s the actual emotion. Again, one hint is that you can always feel emotions in your body.

Conclusion

So, I’m recommending that you pay attention to your emotions, learn how to name them, and remember some ways of dealing with the more difficult ones (fear, anger, sadness). You’ll be able to take better care of yourself, be happier, and resolve conflicts with other people more effectively. And become much better looking. Just checking: still reading? Now that I messed with you, though, I actually think that you’ll be looking better if you’re taking care of the feels. Try it!