What You Were Taught About Emotions isn't Helping (What to Do Instead)

Ever feel like almost every message you’ve ever gotten about how to handle emotions doesn’t help much?

You’re not wrong. 

The body and the mind must work together when it comes to feeling emotions or feeling emotions turns into a slog.

Not taking the mind-body connection into account when we’re working with emotions keeps us stuck in emotional analysis or emotional avoidance, which, while it’s only natural to be in those patterns, doesn’t help our bodies release tension, stress, and pain.

In this post, I’m going to highlight three common issues where I see people getting stuck with emotional processing - and what’s missing from a mind-body perspective.

At the end, I'll share how you can work with me to learn my approach for releasing chronic anxiety, pain, stress, and tension using a mind-body focus that allows you to fully process emotions safely and gently.

Here we go:

Most of us have been taught to “feel” emotions by thinking about them and analyzing them. Why is the emotion here? What is causing it? Even in the coaching industry, a common path for feeling emotions is to see what thought is causing the emotion and then shift the thought.

If I feel deeply sad and I try to analyze the sadness, my mind is now taking over and pulling all of my attention into the analysis of why I’m sad. I’m no longer aware of the sensation of heaviness in my chest, the tears that want to flow behind my eyes, or the clenched feeling in my throat and shoulders.

Now I’m completely unaware that I’m holding tension in my upper back. I don’t even notice! While I work on analyzing the emotion, my body is still holding that tension. At some point, it might even turn into a tension pattern that doesn’t leave, and even a headache or regular headaches.

Or, maybe you were taught to completely ignore your emotions as a child. To “suck it up,” or just keep going no matter what. Maybe you’ve been told you’re too dramatic if you share your emotions or that "big kids don’t cry."

If this was the case, you might find yourself dismissing your own emotions. A coworker or partner says something that you find painful; you feel yourself getting upset. “You’re making too big of a deal out of this,” you think to yourself. “It’s not a big deal at all. Get over it.”

On one memorable occasion, I was with a group of friends and had a strong emotion coming up. I felt embarrassed, but I couldn’t hide it as our culture so often tells us we should. Someone in the group told me to “get over myself.”

This is a classic phrase used against us to remind us to suppress our emotions instead of inconveniencing others with such messy feelings! 

We internalize these sorts of phrases and then try to suppress our own emotions. Of course, if you’re a heart-centered human who feels things deeply, you’ll have likely encountered multiple humans who’ve told you to stop being so sensitive or emotional. (Oh, the joy of this experience.) 

Or, maybe you actually have been working on feeling emotions in your body as a sensory experience, which is a great step toward processing them and allowing your body to release tension and pain.

Yet, this can feel really freaking overwhelming. You notice the heaviness in your chest, or the welling of tears in your eyes. You allow yourself to stay with those sensations.

And then you find yourself not wanting to stay with those uncomfortable sensations! It feels like too much. You can’t stick with it and shift to thinking about your to-do list or pick up your phone to check out your email.

This is totally natural! Emotions trigger a feeling of vulnerability within us, which feels unsafe. We feel exposed. Even if we’re alone, we feel deeply unsettled by the sensations that are arising and we don’t want to pay attention to them.

So, what do you do instead of analyzing, suppressing, or feeling emotions as sensations? If you really want to release chronic pain, tension, anxiety, or stress, something has to happen to allow these emotions to be felt. Otherwise, our shoulders will stay up by our ears and we’ll end up with the unconscious tension patterns and the unaddressed needs within our psyches.

It’s actually really simple to feel emotions safely, but it does take some practice. You will need to start with feeling the sensation in the body, but you can do so in a really gentle way. Start with noticing a part of your body that feels good. Or, hold something comforting in your arms or hand (a stuffed animal or a worry stone, for example) and notice how great that feels.

Then, you can move into the sensory awareness of the emotion, knowing you can return to the good feeling anytime. This allows you to stay present in your body and begin to release areas of tension quite naturally.

This allows you to be able to ask, “What is the helpful guidance from this emotion?”

This requires just a few moments of inward listening. Maybe you’ll discover an umet need, something you want to say to someone, inner wisdom guidance, or a boundary you need to set.

It’s tempting to pop back into analysis here and say things like, “Well, if I’m angry, it means I need to set a boundary.”

I find it’s more helpful to stay with the sensation and find out its unique message. Emotions are too fluid to be boxed into categories and you might miss the real message if you try to align the emotion with a chakra quality or a common emotional message others have told you this emotion represents.

Feeling emotions in this way will help you feel safe and supported even as you feel the discomfort of the sensations. Plus, your body will get to release tension, pain, stress, and anxiety.

Helping you work through emotions to find healing, relief, and inner wisdom clarity is one of the biggest aspects of my Mind-Body Magic Life Coach Training Program. You’ll learn how to do this for yourself, get coached around it, and even learn how to help your clients do it if you’re a coach.

You’ll have the chance to gently and safely feel emotions and learn how to use the process I’ve described with as much ease and comfort as possible. We’ll release any hidden self-pressure or old emotional habits you picked up from unhelpful messages that others may have shared. Our culture is quite full of judgments and opinions about what we should do with emotions that just don’t help us at all.

You’ll be in a safe environment where you can truly explore this new way of feeling emotions so that it can become your go-to and you can finally feel better (or help your clients do so). You’ll be amazed at how easy it is to connect to inner wisdom when you start using this process regularly.

You can learn more about this program and others here.