Episode description

How are you feeling? Fine? Tell me… how exactly does “fine” feel? Most people can’t describe it to me. We are so disconnected from our bodies and our emotions that when we actually feel them we think they’re “too much” or that we’re “over sensitive”. Let me tell you friends, feeling your emotions is not a problem. It’s actually an important part of being human. Everything you want to accomplish requires you to feel your emotions! We all wander around asking “how do I get motivated?” when motivation just means finding the right emotion to cause us to take the action we need/want to take. Here are the three levels of identifying your emotions so you can get started authentically feeling your feels and rocking your world and blowing your mind! Get to it, y’all!

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Transcript

Hello, and welcome. I’m so excited to have you. If you follow me on social media, you will know that I talk a lot about emotions. And the reason that it’s important to learn about your emotions is because a lot of us try hard not to feel them. And there are implications for that. We tend to take on bad habits or, um, things that aren’t in our best interest, all in an attempt to avoid feeling negative emotions. 


And I know that we have become so practiced at numbing our emotions and avoiding them that when I tell clients, “Hey, we’re gonna go ahead and feel your emotion. We’re gonna go ahead and allow that.” They kind of freeze up. They’re like, “I don’t even know. I don’t even know where to start. Like, how do I, how do I do that? You know, like, all I know is that when something happens and I get mad, will I feel an emotion then I don’t like how that feels. And I don’t wanna cry and, you know, I don’t wanna pretend to be happy. That’s just a really bad idea.” 


And so the idea of either intentionally feeling emotions or identifying them, it’s kind of become a lost art. We’ve forgotten how vital it is for human beings to be human and to feel emotions. So I’d like to break down for you today three levels of identifying your emotions and hopefully this will help you begin to track your emotions and notice when you are feeling them. Notice what’s going on for you in your body, in your brain, and begin to take on the process of allowing yourself to feel any emotion. 


Okay. So if you’re hearing weird noises in the background, just know that my, uh, contractors are here and they’re finishing up, uh, some work in my living room, kitchen area. And so it’s like, hey, I welcome the noise because it means stuff’s getting done and I can work on other things. 


So, the first level of identifying your emotions is the level of, “I feel like…” And this is where a lot of times I will ask someone, “Hey, how’s it going? Uh, how are you feeling right now?” 

“Oh, I feel like everything’s crazy. I feel like I’m gonna lose my mind.” Or… “I feel like it’s going to be a really great day. I feel like something good’s going to happen.” 


And when we use the phrase, “I feel like” it sounds like we’re describing an emotion, but what we’re actually doing is we are describing a scenario or we’re describing our thoughts about something and hoping the other person can translate that into an emotion, because we all feel emotions differently. 


And I’ve noticed with clients that if one of them has a thought about something, like “I have to do this thing alone”, one might feel terrible and another one might feel like, “yay, I get to do this alone”. So using that verbiage, I feel like, realize that it’s not an actual emotion you’re describing. It’s actually your thoughts about the emotion that you are physically feeling. 


“I feel like everything’s going to be great.” 

“I feel like everything’s going to be terrible.” 

“I feel like I’m going to do this by myself.” 


That could be good or bad depending on who you are. So notice when you say the phrase, “I feel like” because you are about to describe an emotion using your thoughts about what’s going on for you and this thought is actually creating that emotion. 


Okay. So number two, this is where we actually name the emotion. And I have a whole list of emotions that I share with clients. It’s like things like, uh, discouraged or excited or ambivalent or hopeful, thrilled. It, it has the entire gamut of all the emotions. 


And these are the one word names that we have for emotions. And this is a step closer to us actually identifying emotions in a way that other people are more likely to understand what we’re talking about. Uh, I noticed that things like “Anxious” though, some people feel anxious different than others. So even using those names, telling someone I feel anxious, I feel scared, those are going to show up physically different for different people. So while naming your emotion is a step closer to actually identifying it, we’re still not quite there. 


And oftentimes the names that we have for our emotions can actually disrupt us feeling it. So for instance, if you are, if you say I’m feeling anxious about something it can, it can have a couple different impacts. It can either. Oh, okay. I’m feeling anxious. You know, if you’re of the mindset that this is something that’s normal, it comes up for me. I know what I’m feeling. It’s all good. It’s okay. Then naming it, anxiety kind of helps calm it. 


If you’re someone where you think anxiety is a problem, when you say, oh, I’m feeling anxious and I shouldn’t be, this should not have been happening. And you begin to like feed into that and add the… add to the anxiety that actually creates a problem for you. So even naming the emotion is still, we’re still not quite there we’re still not really experiencing it.

We might be numbing it. We might be feeding it. Okay? 


So that’s why we have three. The third one is when we actually notice the physical sensations of the emotion. And that could be something like, oh, I feel tightness in my chest or I feel heat across my chest, or I feel tightness in my shoulders or I feel a lump in my gut, or I feel a coldness in my stomach. 


I feel my, um, skin might be tingly or there might be like a color. I might see like a yellow strobing light, or I might see a red or a green. I might see, like, This movement of colors. Might be lots of colors happening. I might feel lots of different sensations. I might feel an ache in my elbow or like, whatever it is, there might be… I know that, like, there’s like the emotion people talk about like the butt clenching emotion, like, oh, when I feel scared my butt clenches and all of these physical sensations of the emotions. 


And when you describe it that way, when you share with other people, oh my gosh, I just, I felt my, um, my back get tight I felt my stomach turn and I saw red. Like that tells me how you’re feeling. You know, we could say, oh, that’s anger or anxiety or whatever it is. But again, the name not as clear as describing the actual physical sensations. 


So I invite you dear listener to take time out, to notice how you describe your emotions. 


Are you using the phrase “I feel like” and then describing it with a thought or are you using the actual name of the emotion, which is great. It’s a wonderful thing to do. And it’s a really good practice to get into, but notice that sometimes we are still maybe not quite aligned with different people, as far as like sharing them or being really clear what you’re actually feeling. And then the, the third one is actually describing the physical sensation. 


This is the way you get back in tune with your body. And this is the way to begin to see how feeling and not feeling emotions is working for you. Because I can tell your friends that learning to feel your emotions is always better than avoiding them and pushing them away. 


Okay. That’s what I got for you. I’d love to hear what you get from this, uh, episode today. What emotions it might bring up for you. Please share them with me and have an awesome week. I love you. Bye.