The Emotional Landscape: Understanding and Embracing Our Feelings
Every month, I run a parenting group at an Intensive Outpatient program for adolescents and one theme that consistently pops up is feelings and emotions. Not shocking by any means, yet I take it as an opportunity to ask the following question,
What is your relationship with feelings?
More often than not, parents fall under the category of, I know the benefits of feeling your feelings and talking about emotions, and I want my teen to share their feelings with me, yet I don’t like feelings.
This prompts more questions,
Do you welcome all emotions as an opportunity to clear what needs to be observed?
What messages have you been given around emotions?
How have others responded or reacted to your emotions?
So, I want to ask you the same question, What is your relationship with feelings?
As you assess where you stand, I also want to share a poem written by Rumi, a mystic and poet, called The Guest House.
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
As Rumi's poem, The Guest House, suggests, every emotion, whether comforting or painful, has a purpose. If this poem comes as a reminder to honor the unexpected and welcome the sometimes uninvited, why is it that so many of us struggle with our emotions?
Feelings have become synonymous with vulnerability. Many of us have been conditioned to shut them off or push them down, instead allowing rationality to be the regarded powerhouse guiding decision-making. Through this conditioning, we’ve steered toward negating our emotions, so when they do arise, we aren’t sure what to do. To develop the necessary skills to communicate emotions requires us to regard feelings as healthy and to confidently move forward with the notion that feelings, both comforting and discomforting, are okay.
Before we can communicate about our feelings, however, we need to understand what feelings are and how to talk about them. Communicating feelings is more than just identifying a feeling or having an emotional vocabulary. It also involves the ability to:
Regulate and manage feelings
Understand the intensity of an emotion
Observe others’ body language and facial expressions
Connect feelings with physical sensations in the body
Understand affect and mood congruency; that is, when an emotional reaction, including facial expressions, matches the situation or experience
All of these aspects and others influence how we share our feelings and develop healthy communication skills. These skills are associated with a host of benefits. In addition to mental health benefits, such as decreasing depression and anxiety, expressing feelings in healthy ways allows us to organize our thoughts and experiences, engage in effective problem-solving, and lower our physical reactions to stress.
Feelings also fuel connection. When we have a strong emotional foundation, we’re better equipped to empathize, sharing in the emotional experience of another, which also supports the ability to observe another’s perspective. Feelings further encourage us to ground in our power and confidently share our truth—two skills that pour into self-worth and authentic interactions.
When we are encouraged to feel with, and through, our feelings, we’re creating foundational tools that will help us express our needs and desires effectively, ask for help, and speak up when a negative situation arises. To feel with and through an emotion asks that we befriend, and sit with, the emotion, allowing the natural state of our feeling to be felt fully, even when the feeling doesn’t feel so great. When we try to bypass emotions that we don’t like or that are uncomfortable, we allow layers of unprocessed feelings to pile up. Typically, when feelings go unseen and stack too high, a breaking point occurs, and emotions unravel.
Take a moment to pause. Big breath in, deep sigh out...
As you curiously tune-in to your own emotions and honestly assess your own relationship with feelings, remember every emotion has a purpose. Emotions are intended to expand and flow, even the discomforting ones.
