Noticing and Naming Emotions in Chaotic Times

Starting with the Basics

Obviously, different people are at different places in their work with emotions. I’d say to trust your instincts. If this step doesn’t feel helpful, you could just glance through this page or just skip it entirely. If it’s a good review, or if it’s just what you need right now, feel free to use it however works best for you. I’ll add more skills next week, so feel free to check back then.

I don’t know about you, but this week I’ve been an emotional mess. One minute I’m really sad and scared, but the next minute I’m watching tv or frantically playing a game on my phone. I lurch from staying away from the news to listening to it voraciously- but also wanting to throw the phone I’m listening to across the room. I’ve had to take several emotional inventories to calm my system down, because I’ve learned over time that all the different feelings need to be heard before they can rest. I hope you have found ways to help your own system cope with this week. I invite us to have a conversation about that in the comments section. Let’s start a little support group online about what is helpful for us and our feelings.

The topic of emotions can seem impossible to think about sometimes. Our bodies can sometimes be overwhelmed by our feelings, and then we might just want them to go away and not ever come back. Other times we might really WANT to help them, to settle them down, even to heal them. But where do we start? How can we even think about them?

Emotional knowledge has lagged behind other skills in this culture. Things are changing slowly, but when I went to school there wasn’t really any talk about emotions other than “calm down”, “stop crying” (said harshly or gently), “let’s move on”. We didn’t have lessons on how to deal with anger, sadness, or fear. Teachers and parents weren’t usually trained in emotional skills, and keeping order was a primary survival skill in those classrooms.

Noticing and naming your emotions can be a good start. What am I feeling at this moment? Naming the feeling, feeling the feeling, sitting with it even briefly, can be important in our quest to improve our emotional skills. Research has found that noticing and naming emotions can help make them less intense. It can shift the thinking into the prefrontal cortex, which helps process feelings and inhibit behavior. (from Huffington Post- https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-science-behind-why-na_b_7174164)

Some of us might have gotten the idea that certain feelings are bad, and should be banished or ignored. But no feelings are actually bad. Anger, for instance, can let us know something is unequal, or someone is threatening us and we might need to stand up and resist. Sadness might let us know that something is missing, there is a loss, and we might need some time to slow down and process that loss. Fear obviously warns us that there might be danger, either physically or psychologically, and we should watch out. Joy tends to want to reach out and share a good feeling with others. All the feelings are important, and if we can notice and name them they can flow through our bodies rather than getting stuck there and causing problems later.

While noticing and naming sounds simple, it isn’t always as simple as it sounds. Most of us had experiences while growing up that make it feel somewhat dangerous to identify our feelings. For example, it might be difficult to connect with anger if it was misused in our family of origin. If people got upset when we cried, sadness might feel out of reach. And it might feel scary if we express fear, because sometimes in the past others took advantage of our vulnerability.

Why am I advocating getting in touch with feelings? Because those feelings, when ignored and stuffed inside, don’t just disappear. They build up in our bodies. They might come out sideways, expressed to the wrong people or the wrong times. They can make us sick. Being human, it’s important for us to know how to deal with human emotions.

Noticing them is a really important first step in gaining emotional skills. What am I feeling? We might start by noticing a single feeling, but then we might also notice more than one feeling at a time. We’ll talk next week about different parts of us having different feelings, and how we can center and help the different parts.

Maybe this week you can see how many feelings come up as you are noticing them. Next week we’ll begin to work with being there for the parts with strong feelings- celebrating with the happy ones, comforting the ones that need help.

Some ways to notice emotions:

1. It can help to notice body sensations. For me, if I notice my chest getting tight, or my stomach starting to hurt, I know to look for a strong feeling. It could be anger, fear, or even excitement. And sometimes it might be all three of those.

2. We all have favorite distraction methods for when emotions get too big, so if you notice yourself distracting, you might check to see what emotion your inner system is covering up. Anything you use compulsively might be a cue to start noticing (drinking, drugs, working harder, shopping, binging tv, playing phone games, etc). When you notice you’re doing that, you might wonder “what am I feeling”, or “what feeling am I trying to avoid?”

3. Remember, you can stop this listening to emotions any time we want to. And if a feeling gets too intense it can actually be helpful to ask the feeling (the part with the feeling) to turn down the intensity a bit. Or you can get up and do an activity that takes our mind off it for a while.

4. It can be helpful for some people to see a list of different emotions. I’ll enclose a sample list below. For myself I usually just start with a few basic feelings: sad, happy, angry, fearful. Many things are a variety of those. (e.g. I think of disappointment as a combination of anger and sadness).

   Thanks for your interest in this topic. I will get into specific skills to help deal with these emotions in later weeks. For this week, I published an example of “notice and name” in a separate post as I noticed feelings about the inauguration in the US. And I started a chat thread so we can get to know each other a little bit. Sending good thoughts to you and your feelings. These are challenging times, and self care is more important than ever right now.

This list comes from Nonviolent communication as listed in “Sociocracy for All”

https://www.sociocracyforall.org/nvc-feelings-and-needs-list/

When needs are met

adventurous – engaged – loving
affectionate – excited – moved
alive – fascinated – peaceful
calm – friendly – playful
confident – glad – relaxed
content – happy – satisfied
curious – hopeful – tender
delighted – interested – thrilled
energetic – joyful – warm

When needs are not met
agitated – embarrassed – nervous
alarmed – exasperated – overwhelmed
ambivalent – flustered – protective
angry – grief – sad
annoyed – heartbroken – scared
anxious – helpless – stressed
confused – hopeless – suspicious
despairing – impatient – tense
devastated – irritated – terrified
disconnected – lonely – torn
discouraged – longing – troubled