What do you do with Big Emotions?
Rage, grief, hopelessness, anger – these are all big emotions that are tough to deal with. We often push them away because they really hurt, and humans don’t like to be in pain. When we push these emotions away we miss an opportunity to hear their deeper meaning and earn about ourselves. So what do you do when they arise?
1- Self compassion. Know that these feelings are normal! Humans have the capacity to experience all of the emotions; in fact we need to feel them so we can make the best decision for us an individual. We all express emotions differently so don’t judge yourself as being “too emotional” if you are the only one crying, maybe others are equally as sad they only express it differently.
2- Name the emotion. Once you give something a name you take its power away and you can start to understand it. You can work with it and not against it. If you have not done so already please look up a feelings wheel. They are great tools to help you put words to what is happening in your mind and your body.
3- Don’t push the big emotions away, unless you have to in order to get away from danger. When your body is safe, sit with them and allow yourself to feel them. The feeling will not go away just because you are ignoring it. It wants to get your attention because there is a lesson for you to learn. It may get louder and more painful until you are forced to deal with it. This is often why anxiety gets worse and can lead to full blow panic attacks.
4- Gently question the big emotions. This is hard so you will have to find a way that works for you. I do a mix of journaling and moving my body (tiding my house or stretching). You want to question the emotions in a kind and curious way to build a relationship with them. Feel them in your body so the next time they come up you can recognize them right away.
Here are some journal prompts:
a. Describe the event or situation
b. Describe how it made you feel. List all the feelings!
c. What thoughts or memories come up? Maybe you are uncomfortable with the thoughts that came up during the event and made you feel bad for having such a thought (this is 2 triggers, tease them apart and deal with one at a time)
d. What is this big emotion defending me from? Is there something else that I really don’t want to feel that this big emotion is protecting me from? (Venerable, scared, hurt, weak, stupid, etc.) This may bring up feeling of experiencing these emotions as a kid. Often when we are young certain things make us feel less than acceptable and are determined detrimental to our survival by our ego. So it protects us by developing the big emotion as protective armour around the perceived weakness. Now as an adult, you understand more about what was going on and you need to revisit these shadow parts and integrate them into your conscious mind.
e. It may take a few days to get to this soft part of you depending on how thick your armour is around it. When you do get there, sit with it and ask it what it needs to feel safe. These soft parts can often be our biggest strengths if we can learn to work with them.
f. Sometimes bringing it into awareness is all you need to do, others time you will actively need to integrate it back into your life. Examples of Integration actions:
Get creative – draw, paint, dance, collage, doodle, poetry, word association
Find something to represent this part of you and carry it with you: paper note, charm, talisman, patch, rock, etc. I love crystals for this!
Journal about all the times the big emotion protected you, thank it for being there and think about stepping outside of the pattern.
Create a ceremony to let go of the old pattern. For example write down the old pattern on one sheet of paper and write the new way of being on a second sheet of paper. Feel yourself let the old one go as it no longer serves you, you can burn or bury it. Then feel yourself stepping/growing into the new way as you bury or bun the second paper.
Remember self compassion is really important for this exercise. You may regret how you acted in the past now that you know what is under the “rage armour”. Remember this is a human experience and we are all individuals with different traumas, coping mechanisms, and pain tolerances. Remain as curious as possible, recognize resistance when it shows up, because it will! Your ego created your armour to protect you so you bet it’s going to fight very hard to keep you from peeking inside, let alone taking it off!
When you personally go through this process you can start to see similar situations playing out in other people. You might trigger someone and they fly into a rage because they don’t want to feel something (venerable, scared, hurt, weak, stupid, etc.). Now, instead of being triggered by their rage, you can take a step back and see their rage as a reaction to unconscious pain. You can see them as a sheep in wolfs clothing and not buy into their story.
The more compassion you can have for yourself, then more compassion you can have for others. This is how we build connections and create thriving communities.