5 Important Things to Know About Emotions

Emotions are a part of life. But we are taught so little about these forces that have great power to raise us up and crush us down. Learning a few things helps us grow to be our most authentic selves.

1. You’re not weak for having emotions. Your brain is working correctly. Emotions are a fact of being human. All people are wired to experience anger, sadness, fear, disgust, joy, excitement, and sexual excitement. Our core emotions are there to help us survive. For example, fear makes us run from danger. It’s when we are judged, shamed, or abandoned due to our core emotions that we start to feel chronically anxious, insecure, or depressed.
2. Core emotions make us feel alive and human because they ignite energy for movement. Our thoughts are flat. It is our core emotions that give oomph and color to our life experiences. Emotions unleash a ton of energy because they mobilize our bodies to move. For example, anger prepares our body for a fight to help us survive an attack. Disgust, with its gag reflex, makes us expel something poisonous, protecting us from toxic food and toxic people. Sadness, which we feel when we lose someone or something we care about, primes us to look for and respond to soothing and connection so we heal. Without sexual excitement, we probably wouldn’t be here. You get the picture.
3. Society and families teach us (using both overt and subtle messages) to ignore, invalidate, bury, and suppress emotions. This has huge consequences for our mental health. How many of us have heard the expressions, "Pick yourself up with your bootstraps" or "Just get over it"? For many years, society led us to believe we can have "mind over matter" without really understanding the role and biology of emotions. Anxiety, depression, and other diagnoses like PTSD and personality disorders, are caused by blocked emotions. Our mind and body use a variety of strategies to suppress emotions when they are too much to bear alone. And, when we block emotions, we are depleted of vital energy that could be used for better living.
4. We can learn to validate and process our emotions internally and then think through how best to express them externally. When I realized fear, sadness, excitement, and joy were hiding underneath my anxiety, it lowered my anxiety considerably. I could deal with the underlying emotions more effectively. For example, if I felt “stepped on” by another person, I could process my anger and use it to assert my wants and needs. I could also process my anger and choose not to do anything else.
5. Actively processing our emotions as they arise in daily life helps us return to the openhearted state of our authentic self. That's because processing emotions instead of burying them helps us stay "regulated," meaning our nervous system can return to a more relaxed state. In this openhearted state, we have access to the C's: Calm, Confidence, Clarity, Connection, Courage, Compassion, and Curiosity. When we learn to validate and process our emotions, we feel more authentically ourselves because we are connected to not only our mind, but also our body. We are more integrated.

The bottom line: We should all be utilizing knowledge, tools, and skills to help us process, not bury emotions. The Change Triangle tool is my favorite tool to teach to everyone, particularly parents and teachers, so we can raise healthier generations to come.