The last few years have been emotionally intense in the entire world, adding to the tumultuous personal and professional lives we’ve all been leading. I felt a lot of that heaviness as well, in my body, in my mind, weighing me down, and I thought I’ll record an episode on managing emotions and how we can find a balance as the world around us continues to spin at its insane pace.
Hello and welcome back to a brand new episode on the Own Your Everyday series. I’m your host and self-awareness coach Shwetha Sivaraman. This episode, we will talk about emotions – are they good or bad? How can we be more emotionally resilient and live balanced lives where we are in control of our feelings and not the other way around.
Let’s jump in straight to the point. Are Emotions: Good or Bad?
I come across many pieces online on negative emotions and the need to cultivate positive emotions like gratitude. And personally, I’m not a fan of labelling emotions as positive or negative. Emotions are nothing but chemical reactions in our bodies. It is an indicator, like the message you get when you touch a hot stove to immediately pull your hand out. It is a necessary survival instinct that kicks in, and similarly, every emotion has something to teach us about ourselves. If you look at why you feel sad, bad, mad, tired, drained, annoyed, irritated, you’ll find so many pieces of you in them. Your thoughts, triggers, reactions, and past conditioning come together to make up the emotion you feel at any particular moment.
If you look at emotions to deepen self-knowledge, then every emotion is teaching you something valuable. Something you’d probably have never realised about yourself if you didn’t spend enough time looking beneath the surface.
What do we do, though, when emotions take over?
I believe there are 5 archetypes – 5 ways we approach emotions depending on our personalities and past experience.
1. Ignorant: The first and most common is probably ignorance. We’ve spent years ignoring our emotions, so we hardly notice if the emotional resistance increases. We think it’s just a tough day at work and don’t even realise our feelings are not balanced. I call this set the ignorant lot. They go through day after day with every motion without ever remembering/knowing to lift underneath the veil and explore what’s happening within.
2. Delusional: Those delusional are not ignorant. They can sense it, feel it, and even know something’s wrong. But instead spend their time identifying or processing it, they deny there’s emotional turbulence. It’s not always a conscious choice. It’s more of an unconscious self-deception that we indulge in because such lies give us the strength to carry on.
3. Escapist: This is my territory. Being restless by nature and intuitive to a very high degree, I sense and feel many emotions and pain, but I find ways to distract myself. Escapists keep themselves busy through work, hobbies, passion projects, or plain vanilla distractions. You don’t have time to mull over difficult emotions when you’re busy, so you let it be. Escapists face twice the pain because one, they’re reeling under the weight of unprocessed emotions, and two, their awareness of this weight and escapist tendencies add to more feelings of guilt and shame piled on, which makes the pile even larger.
4. Victim: Here, we are aware of the emotions impacting us. But rather than processing it, we spend time crying and wallowing in self-pity. “Oh poor me!” “Why me” “Everything like this only happens to me” Rather than channelling the awareness to go into problem-solving, victims give their strength away by blaming the external world for their woes and staying stuck in the same space.
5. The lone wolf: The awareness of the emotions is very much present. But lone wolves find it hard to process them and prefer working on it themselves. They are the opposite of wearing their feelings on the sleeve. Most likely, people around lone wolves would be unaware of the emotions they are reeling under. They don’t ask for help and learn to carry the burden on their shoulders by themselves.
Clearly, none of the archetypes I just listed are a great way to process emotions.
So, How can we deal with feelings instead?
Here’s my approach to dealing with emotions
1. Pause: The first thing we need to do is pause long enough to feel what we are feeling instead of running to the next thing or escaping the emotions. We need to pause and feel the feelings.
2. Acknowledge: We may or may not be ready to process the emotion, but we must acknowledge it immediately. You can choose to resolve it at a later time after buying the presence of the feelings. Don’t miss out on acknowledging before you postpone dealing with it.
3. Identify: We might be highly educated but very illiterate regarding our emotions. To effectively acknowledge what we feel, we need to identify the right feeling. In the beginning, look at emotion wheels to appreciate the nuances of emotions we are capable of feeling at any moment and find out what most resonates with you. Gradually as you stay more in touch with your feelings, you’ll be able to identify them faster.
4. Infer: Look back at the events that led you to feel like you did. Draw patterns – recognise people, conversations, and situations that arouse certain emotions in you. Is too much social media scrolling leading to more feelings of jealousy and inadequacy in you? Is being around certain people producing fear in you and making it harder for you to stand up for yourself? Then question the inferences – is it true? Is it really true? What can you do to ensure a more pleasant experience next time? If you’re dealing with heavier emotions, it might be good at this stage to ask for help from a clinical psychologist or coach to work with you.
5. Act – Self-knowledge is pointless if you don’t take action in a way that improves your quality of life. Take steps to pre-empt situations that cause unpleasant emotions, see what’s in your control to be better prepared for them, catch them before they ruin your day or week. Develop tactics to snap out of unpleasant emotions the moment you notice them. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It needs to work, is all.
So there’s your own your everyday tip for this week. There are no good or bad emotions. All emotions help us deepen our awareness about ourselves and our aspirations and motivations. Instead of ignoring, escaping, or pretending they don’t exist – take proactive measures to stay in control of your emotions at all times.
Until we meet again, this is Shwetha signing off. Hoping you have a fabulous week ahead.