How to engage with uncomfortable emotions
image: nathan dumlao
It is important to reframe the language we use around emotions to counteract stigma, or maintain binary experiences of emotion.
Terms like positive/negative, good/bad imply some emotions are desirable, while others are to be avoided. However, all emotions are natural, and serve a purpose. By using terms like comfortable, or uncomfortable, we remove the expectation of emotions being desirable, and instead acknowledge the physical sensation might not be pleasant.
In therapy, many clients will describe ‘sitting in emotions’ and having to ‘just tolerate it until it passes’. I consider this problematic, because tolerating an emotion implies a lack of autonomy over your experience.
“ Emotions can often feel like a violation if we lack the skills to engage and process them. ”
The terms we use when one tolerates physical sensations they don’t like includes assault, abuse, trauma, and non-consensual.
Sometimes emotions can feel like an assault on the body. They can occur without warning, and may persist for longer than we anticipate. Emotions can often feel like a violation if we lack the skills to engage and process them.
Unlike non-consensual touch from another person, we alone are responsible for our emotional responses. Here are four approaches to engaging with your emotional experiences, as a means of beginning to process them.
Recognise.
Acknowledge to yourself that you are experiencing an uncomfortable emotion. You don’t even need to label it, or understand why it is there.
Label. Do you have a word to represent the emotion? Can you identify it as anxiety, stress, sadness? If you lack the language, can you make a word up that can represent the feeling.
Notice. Mindfully notice that is happening in your body. Do you feel tightness? Where is it located? Do you feel tension? In what areas? Place a hand on the areas of your body you feel physical sensation and take a breath into that space.
Describe. Perhaps the previous steps are too difficult to focus on or articulate. Try describing the sensation in as much detail as possible. Does it move? At what pace? Does it feel heavy, or light? Can you liken it to something, is it electric? Sticky? Hot? Does it have a colour, a shape?
By using any one or more of these techniques, people engage with, and begin to process their emotions.
