On How to Start Connecting with Your Emotions
I want to talk about emotions, but as a practiced intellectualizer, come with me on a tangent about science fiction. I am thrilled by stories about epic space battles and alien cultures, and I enjoy the insight we get into humanity by looking beyond its boundaries.
One of my favorite reads has been Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovksy, in which we encounter a civilization of spaceship-dwelling octopuses who communicate exclusively through colorful, shifting, ink-blot-like patterns on their skin. What the human space travelers struggle to understand is that the octopuses are mostly communicating their emotions. The rational humans wonder, “How do they get anything done if they’re just talking about feelings all the time?” In work with clients I often encounter a similar distrust of emotions. They are messy, imprecise, and even overwhelming at times. Spoiler alert, the humans and octopuses work together to neutralize an overwhelming threat using the guidance of logical reasoning and emotion.
We humans are also emotional beings, and I seek to help my clients understand that emotions are part of the toolset that we use to navigate the experiences of a fully engaged life. When we have trained for a lifetime to avoid “bad” emotions that make us feel vulnerable (more on why there’s no such thing as a bad emotion), we can end up divorced from this key element of our humanity.
If you’re out of practice, it’s difficult to just feel your feelings so let’s explore a few techniques that can help you connect with your emotions and discover the guidance they are offering.
grow your emotion vocabulary
If your response to how are you feeling right now is often the same, “Fine, I think,” or even, “I don’t really know,” try the How We Feel app to expand your vocabulary and practice identifying the nuances of your feelings. The app has helpful prompts to help focus down on some key feelings, and inspire reflections about what your internal world is saying.
2. Embody your emotions
Try leaning into the embodied sensation of that emotion by asking yourself where on your body this emotion tends to make itself known. We are emotional and physical beings. Often our bodies have specific sensations associated with emotional states. Check out Lindsey Braman’s Emotion Sensation Feeling Wheel to help spark some insight into the embodied experience of your emotional states.
3. Engage with art
If feelings seem to evaporate as soon as you tune in, listen to some music, watch a movie, or engage with a piece of art that inspired strong emotions for you in the past. Acknowledge the emotions that arise as you feel tears well up, a smile spread across your face, or fear bears down in your gut.
4. Let logic go
Emotions are hard to describe and it can limit your experience to attempt to frame it perfectly using language. Dance to music, scribble with crayons, get a massage, follow a guided meditation, read or write a poem. Engaging with other forms of expression can free you to experience emotions without needing to capture them precisely without the pressure to get it just right.
5. Slow yourself down
Journal it out. Putting pen to paper can help you slow down a chaotic process and help you focus on a singular thread. Whether it is just today’s date, a string of expletives, or an account of your day, journaling can help you move out of a fast paced logical space to a slower and more expressive frame of mind which can allow your emotions to come forward. (Read on for some journaling prompts to help you feel your feelings below)
Allowing your emotional self to come forward can be overwhelming. It’s fine to set the work aside at times. Many years of avoiding emotions makes us less resilient when they arrive with their full force. Familiarity is the first step to make the experience more tolerable. But this brings me to the last pointer:
6. Seek connection
Reach out to your community of support, you don’t need to do this alone. Whether with a friend, a mentor, a parent, someone on a hotline, a book, an app, a pet, a faith leader, a congregation, or a therapist, connection with someone else can be a powerful invitation to allow your emotions to come forward and find deeper connection with yourself.
If this feels like an invitation you’d like to get deeper into, please reach out for a consultation with one of the therapists here at Kindman & Co., we’d be happy to go there with you.
journal prompts to start to feel your feelings more:
In any journaling exercise, there is only one rule. No word count, nobody to impress, no subject to avoid. You can scribble, strike out, and make spelling mistakes. The only rule is that you must be honest in the moment without judging the words that come out. It is a space to say anything, try anything, and experiment. You may feel different tomorrow, or even in the next minute, but give yourself the moment to be honest and nonjudgmental here and now.
Write a dialogue with your inner critic, write down what they would say about a situation you are facing and respond as if in conversation.
Relate your current mood to a specific color and explore all the ways your emotions relate. (“Today I feel like the color red….”)
Listen to a poem (try the poem of the day at the Poetry Foundation website) and record your reaction in a journal (even if it’s “I hated that poem so much!”)
When I connect with (my best friend/my pet/my therapist/etc) I feel __________.
The most important thing I want the world to know about me is __________.
Listen to a short guided meditation (like this, but feel free to find one that you like) and follow up with a journal entry describing what emerged for you. (My back hurt when… I thought about my childhood pet and felt… I was annoyed when they said…)
Steve Wilson is an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist, a queer man, and a feminist. He loves working with young adults navigating adulthood, folks healing from racial trauma and minority stress, and couples/partners. He is especially drawn to working with adolescents and young adults embracing queerness. He deeply and personally understand the complexities of queer experience and want to help other queer individuals and partners, parents of queer and trans youth, and those practicing consensual non-monogamy (CNM) to build thriving, connected, & healing relationships.
Fun facts are that Steve has been a teacher, tutor, publicist, recruiter, bookseller, cabinetmaker, and a zip-line tour guide!
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