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Key points
- Opening yourself to your emotions may help you feel less distressed by them.
- Increasing your emotional vocabulary is a good starting point.
- When you feel a difficult emotion, try using it in service of your goals and values.
Opening yourself to your emotions has several benefits:
- You'll feel less distressed by them.
- You'll self-sabotage less.
- You'll learn more from your emotions.
- You'll be better guided by your emotions.
There are lots of ways to do this. Here is a guide. Pick and mix the strategies that appeal to you.
1. Increase your emotional vocabulary.
This strategy is an ideal starting point for all the others. Google to find lists of emotion words. Diversify the words you use to describe your emotions. This will allow you to be more precise in identifying your emotions and express more nuance when you're conveying your emotions. Think of it like this: Instead of only describing your emotions as yellow or red, you want to be able to distinguish maroon from raspberry, and mustard from egg yolk.
Googling the dictionary definitions of emotion words can be helpful. Practice using nuanced emotion words, even if it's just to yourself. You can also try identifying the nuanced emotions of characters when you're watching TV or reading, or when you're observing others. Increase your emotional vocabulary as if you were at an advanced stage of learning a new language.
2. Use poetry.
Psychologist Dr. Susan David shared this wonderful Rumi poem on her Instagram. It sums up how to open yourself to your emotions probably better than I ever could!
3. Lie down and feel your emotions.
Lie in bed for a few minutes and let yourself experience your emotions like waves that come and go on their own. There will be big waves and gentle waves.
If you find it helpful, use these words to identify how you're feeling your emotions: sensing, thinking, feeling. When an emotion shows up in your physical body (e.g., as tight shoulders) then say "sensing." When an emotion comes as a thought, say "thinking." When an emotion comes as a straight-up feeling, say "feeling."
4. Try single-tasking.
Multi-tasking can be a defense against feeling our emotions. How so? We fill all the gaps in our tasks, when emotions could creep in, with other tasks. For example, I helped my child with her spelling this morning. She was using an app, but occasionally need to ask me for help. I could've multitasked, but, instead, I let myself be still during the gaps in the task when she didn't need my help.
5. Try not to fill waiting periods.
This is similar to the previous suggestion. Instead of filling up times you're waiting with either distraction (e.g., your phone) or productive activity (including mental activity like planning or thinking), let yourself feel your emotions in those waiting periods.
6. Practice utilizing your difficult emotions.
When you feel a difficult emotion, try using it in service of your goals and values. For example, if you feel anger, then channel it into a behavior that fights injustice. If you feel self-doubt, channel it into a behavior that increases your competence. (I've included a lot more about how to channel your emotions to serve your goals and values in Stress-Free Productivity.)
7. Try not to think of emotions as "false alarms."
When I trained in clinical psychology, it was standard to talk about emotions like anxiety and anger as false alarms. For instance,
- You felt anxious about social rejection when you weren't being rejected.
- You felt angry because you thought you were being criticized when you weren't being criticized.
Increasingly, I don't think of emotions as false alarms anymore. I think of them as good information about what matters to me and increases my safety. Yes, maybe a reaction to rejection was "false" in the sense I wasn't actually being rejected at that moment. However, it wasn't false in the sense that acceptance of who I am, and recognition of my strengths and talents from others, are important to me, increase my safety, and help me flourish.
8. Teach.
In medical doctor training, there's a phrase "see one, do one, teach one" to describe a method of learning. Teaching is a great way to learn and improve. For example, teach your children about emotions. Join a support group and "teach" by providing support to others. Or, incorporate teaching about emotions into your role at work.
9. Label distress.
When you feel distress, label it as such. Distress usually isn't a primary emotion so much as it's a reaction to another emotion. Distress will usually naturally burn itself out without you doing much. It's similar to a panic attack in that intense distress is self-limiting.
In an evolutionary sense, feeling and expressing distress causes us to draw attention to our need for caring. When a baby cries, it's to get attention from its parent. However, we're wired so that if we don't get a response to our distress calls, we go quiet to avoid attracting the attention of predators when we're vulnerable and there is no parent or other protector to shield us.
Distress doesn't keep escalating to the point we spontaneously combust. Label your distress as distress and allow yourself to feel it. Then, identify the underlying emotions you're having, without ruminating on why you're having those emotions, or why you've gotten yourself into a position of feeling distress.
See what happens when you're more open to your emotions. For me, I notice it helps me create more space between emotions and self-sabotaging or other reflexive behavior. That pause then allows me to choose my actions more wisely, so they're more closely aligned to my values. Does it help you in the same way, or does something else happen?
