Emotions
They are information. Names for clusters of sensations we are experiencing. Emotions are messengers. When we can name the underlying need behind our emotions, we can express ourselves more clearly.
Inside out names 5 core emotions. Joy. Sadness. Anger. Fear Disgust. Inside out 2 adds a few more. Anxiety. Envy. Nostalgia. Ennui or boredom. Embarrassment.
Inside out is my favourite user friendly guide to the purpose of our core feelings. Anger for defence of our boundaries, sadness to bring help, Disgust to protect us, fear to keep us from harm and joy- well just because…
Feelings wheels list many feelings with increasing nuance.
That’s a lot of sensation we are decoding. Inevitably we mis-read our body sensations from time to time resulting in confusion for ourselves and those around us.
Glennon Doyle in her book untamed, describes feelings as doorbells that interrupt her and leave a package on the doorstep. Ignore the feelings, ignore the gift they contain.
Rumi famously writes of humans as a guest house where each morning there is a new arrival, a new feeling. He too encourages us to welcome it all. To make room. To allow our feelings to communicate the information they are designed to deliver.
I think the two analogies work well together…when feelings come knocking, do we invite them in?
Libraries worth of books have been written about emotions.
What they are for, what happens when they are supressed or confused, how we experience them, how we learn about them and what happens when try not to feel them or have never learnt how.
For example what happens if every time we cry, someone tells us we are tired? If this happens when we are little, we most likely we will have sadness and tiredness confused in someway. Maybe we will always feel sleepy when we cry, or maybe we will bypass the crying step and simply go to sleep and not feel the feelings at all.
In some families some emotions are celebrated and others frowned upon.
Children are incredible observers and use this information to decide how best to get on where they are. If they notice that when they are angry it doesn’t go well for them, they will quickly learn to hide anger. If the people around them are embarrassed by their enthusiasm or unbridled joy they will learn to feel shame…the list could, and does, go on.
As adults this leaves us with a fundamental problem. If the sensations and the labels are confused it is hard to take effective action.
Imagine for example the salt and the sugar were in identical container in the kitchen. Cooking would be much more difficult. No one wants salt in their coffee. It’s the wrong tool for the job of sweetening coffee. In the same way experiencing tiredness when we are in fact sad means we cannot take effective action, instead of reaching for help and comfort, we go to sleep.
The long term consequences of this can be very damaging.
Also…
What happens when there is so much sensation that we cannot distinguish the emotions from one another? Neurodiverse people can experience this. Thinking about Rumi’s guesthouse poem it is like all the guests arrive all at once at all times of the day, all demanding for their needs to be met in their own particular way at the same moment.
The result can be overwhelm unless we take steps to reduce the amount of incoming information.
What happens when we have shut our feelings down? When we are scared of opening the door of the guesthouse in case we are swept away by the tide of feelings that are waiting to be let in.
The result is we loose really important information designed to keep us well, safe, connected and alive. We slowly shrivel up behind the closed door while the emotions clamour to be let in.
Many of us try to compromise between the two positions, selectively letting in some emotions while attempting not to experience others. It is a strategy that is rarely successful.
It seems the door is open and we welcome our feelings as they arrive and unpack what they have to offer us, or we shut the door to all of them.
When in therapy we are often asked where in our bodies specific feelings are located – it help us let the feelings in, to discriminate them well, so we can receive the message and take action. When we have the feelings will ebb. Like the satisfied guest, the feeling will go on its way.