MORE IN TOUCH WITH YOUR FEELINGS

MORE in Touch with Your Feelings

By learning to sense, recognize, label, and express your feelings, you will awaken to the rich world of emotions that resides inside you. You will learn to harness the power and information your feelings provide. No matter what level of fluency you have, you will benefit from expanding your emotional repertoire.

True self-care means that we befriend our emotions, learn their secrets, and unleash their power. Too often, we believe we are victims to our circumstances when our feelings are stirred up, and we don’t know how to deal effectively with our emotions. We feel sorry for ourselves because of the challenges we face and the feelings they evoke, especially the fear, hurt, and anger we don’t know how to deal with. We often sink into self-pity, resentment, complaining, and other ineffective means, rather than really nourishing ourselves.

By learning to sense, recognize, label, and express your feelings, you awaken to the rich world of emotions that resides inside you. You learn to harness the power and information your feelings provide. Being able to sense and name feelings expands your emotional intelligence and helps you become aware of yearnings. No matter your level of fluency, benefits abound from expanding your emotional repertoire.

Neuroscience and the Biomolecular Basis of Emotions

Emotions are the bridge between our body and our mind. Neuroscientist and pharmacologist, Candace Pert, studied the biomolecular basis for our emotions—neuropeptides and various other ligands and their receptors. She reported, “My laboratory research has suggested that all of the senses—sight, sound, smell, taste and touch—are filtered, and memories stored, through the molecules of emotions, mostly the neuropeptides and their receptors, at every level of the bodymind.” Dr. Pert’s research shows that our unexpressed emotions are literally lodged in the body— down deep in the circuitry of organs, GI tract, or a loop in the ganglia. By paying attention to our body signals, we get more in touch with the unexpressed emotions that are lodged within.

Building Your Emotional Facility

The first step is emotional awareness—being aware that you are feeling something. Becoming aware of sensations and bodily signals that indicate emotions is a foundation of emotional facility. When we are in touch with our bodies and bodily sensations, we are more present. We are in the here and now—more conscious and aware.

As you increasingly become aware that you are feeling something, you begin to know what you are feeling and can more accurately label your feelings. This helps you work toward more emotional expression in the weeks that follow.

Through other assignments, you deepen your emotional facility, express your emotions fully and responsibly, and complete them. You develop more skills of awareness and expression, recognizing that you can’t “think” your feelings. You must feel them and experience them fully to express and integrate them—and thereby harness the true power of your emotions.

The Journey of Emotional Consciousness and Expression

Emotions are not fully expressed until the emotions reach consciousness—but consciousness includes our entire body, from our periphery, up our spinal cord, and into our brains as the emotion moves up to be expressed. Raw emotion working to be expressed in the body often gets blocked from resistance that comes from our thinking-brain. Our mistaken beliefs and rationalizations about emotions push emotional energy down—which is why last week you had the assignment about becoming more conscious of your mistaken beliefs and conditioning about your emotions.

Our cortex works to prevent overload; it is stingy about what information it allows up into it. This can create a struggle in the body because our true emotions need to be expressed in and through our body. Our emotions are trying to be expressed and integrated—yet that integration only occurs when emotions move into consciousness, when our emotions bubble up and the cortex relaxes to allow the emotion to come through.

When we become conscious of the emotion and express it bodily and verbally with sound, our emotion is expressed and processed. It has bubbled all the way to the surface—where we can consciously express and integrate the emotion.

This is the journey of your relationship with your emotions as you pay attention to the signals of your body this week. Befriend your body. “Hear” what it is trying to tell you. Be in relationship with your body so that you become more attuned to the emotions that are pulsing through you and can bring them to consciousness and expression to unleash their power in your life!

Hypo or Hyper? Widen Your Window of Tolerance

Being aware of yourself means knowing where you are in relation to your “Window of Tolerance.” Window of Tolerance, a term coined by Dr. Dan Siegel, denotes a window between two states—one of hyperarousal or one of hypoarousal. In hyperarousal, you are in your fight-or-flight zone—one of the reptilian defense systems. Maybe you are defensive, have racing thoughts, are hypervigilant, are feeling unsafe or impulsive. These are all signals that you are in hyperarousal.

From the opposite end of the spectrum, in hypoarousal, you are in your freeze or immobilization response—the other reptilian defense system. Signs that you are in this zone are that you are shut down, disconnected, or numb. In between those two states is your Window of Tolerance. In this window, you can both feel and think, feel your feelings, respond appropriately to the situation at hand, and feel empathy.

Other automatic responses or defense mechanisms—for instance, attach or submit—can land you in either hyper- or hypoarousal as well. Perhaps you panic and attempt to attach to others when you feel threatened—to cling to others close to you. Or maybe you subjugate yourself to others’ will when you are laying low. Pay attention to any time you are running “hot” or “cold.”

Learning to be with your emotions allows you to widen your Window of Tolerance. You have more capacity to be in the moment, feel empathy, and handle whatever comes your way. This week, you map your Window of Tolerance to become aware of states that indicate strong feelings underneath. Continue to expand on your map all quarter long. If you are in flight, flight, or freeze modes—hypo- or hyper-aroused—remember that you are having deep feelings underneath. Use these states to notice that you are having feelings that are muted by your fight, flight, or freeze response.

I’ve Got Me Under My Skin: Be a Feeling Detective

Main Assignment

Become an emotional detective! Your job is to begin to recognize the omnipresent emotions that course through you, unrecognized, in a day. Identify the bodily sensations, thought patterns, and states that indicate emerging emotions that require your attention. Do you become tense, defensive, critical, shy, or even aggressive to cover up emotions? Do you feel a clutch in your gut, sweaty palms, an ache in your heart, or other physical signals that could indicate a feeling? Do you indulge in soft addictions to mask your feelings? Are you frozen or hyper-aroused?

Notice your moods, states, thought patterns, and soft addictions that indicate the need to pay closer attention to your emotions. Become aware of your Window of Tolerance and when you are hypo- or hyper-aroused. When you are in those states, outside your Window of Tolerance, you’re not present, you’re not feeling your true feelings, you can’t learn, and you can’t be nourished. Map your Window of Tolerance so you can more easily recognize your states as they occur.

Emotions are not fully expressed until the emotions reach consciousness—but consciousness includes our entire body, from the periphery, up our spinal cord, and into our brains as the emotion moves up to be expressed.

Use the Very-Ables and worksheets, particularly the Window of Tolerance mapping exercise, to recognize and track the road signs to your emotions.

Learning to be an emotional detective and mapping your Window of Tolerance provide great opportunities to expand on your Purposeful Leadership Process. Perhaps you are noticing more emotions muted or arisen. Maybe you are having insights about what leads you into spaces of hypo- or hyper-arousal.

Be a Feelings Detective this week. Discover the rich world of your emotions that lie beneath the surface of your awareness. Celebrate the ‘clues’ you discover about your feelings this week!

Very-Able Assignments

These variations on the assignment can help you become more aware of what is going on inside of you.

Map Your Window of Tolerance

Our goal is to widen the window of the feelings that you can tolerate and integrate, creating a greater ability to feel and think at the same time, to be more aware of what is going on inside you, and to be with yourself and your feelings more freely.

Notice the signs of when you are hypo-aroused and hyper-aroused. These are signals that your defense mechanisms of fight, flight, or freeze (or possibly attach or submit) are activated. This means that underneath, you are feeling fear and/or that strong feelings are triggered that you are not consciously aware of or feeling fully.

Notice when you are hypo-aroused—when you are in your frozen reptilian state. What words would describe that state? Some possibilities are: numb, frozen, shut down, disconnected, foggy, flat, not present, detached, slowed thinking, confusion, lack of motivation, feeling drowsy, dizzy, fuzzy, out of touch with your body, slow motion, hopeless/helpless, trapped, feeling shame, hard to think… On the worksheet provided, write the words—or draw the symbols—that describe you in this state as part of the hypo-aroused section of your Window of Tolerance map.

Notice the signs of when you are hyper-aroused such as racing thoughts, anxious, obsessive thinking, over-eating, impulsive, overindulging in soft addictions, overwhelmed, chaotic, aggression, outbursts, restlessness, shaking, sweating, breathing quckly, shallow breathing, higher heart rate, inability to concentrate, uneasy, edgy, stressed, panic, easily frustrated… Write the words or draw symbols that describe you in this state to the hyper-aroused section of your Window of Tolerance map.

Remember, no new learning can take place in these states, which means there is no nourishment available.

Thinking Your Feelings

Often when we feel sad, afraid, hurt etc., it translates into a thought or statement, rather than being expressed as a feeling. You may not be aware that these kinds of thoughts are misguided attempts to express an emotion. Be aware of thought patterns like Stinking Thinking that are good indicators of unrecognized emotions:

This will never work ‒ fear or hurt
I can’t ‒ fear
He’ll never let me – anger
Why am I always wrong? – hurt
Why is everybody always picking on me? –hurt and anger

Our goal throughout the quarter is to widen the window of the feelings that you can tolerate and integrate, creating a greater ability to feel and think at the same time, to be more aware of what’s going on inside of you, and to be with yourself and your feelings more freely.

Listen to Your Body

As you become aware of your bodily sensations that are indicating emotions (of which you are not yet consciously aware), “listen” to their signals. What is your body trying to tell you? What are your clutched gut, tense jaw, tight shoulders, sweaty palms, butterflies in your stomach, weak knees, collapsed posture, hard to swallow sensations, etc. trying to tell you? If that part of your body could talk, what would it say? What message is your bodily sensation trying to tell you, and what new action and thought does it indicate?

State of the Notions Address

States like tension, worry, withdrawal, fatigue, ennui, irritation, and others also indicate unrecognized emotions.

At the end of the day, review your day and record the states—when you were frenzied, tense, worried, shut down, withdrawn, agitated, etc.—that would indicate unexpressed emotions.

Moody Blues as Emotional Cues

Mood addictions and way-of-being addictions also indicate unexpressed emotions. Be on the alert for patterns such as acting cool; constantly cracking jokes; moping; wallowing in self-pity; or being cranky, aggressive, passive-aggressive, sarcastic, superior, inferior, or manipulative. Often these mood/way-of-being addictions become reflexive responses to emotions. Scan each day for these patterns. What feelings might you have that trigger your behavior?

Soft Addictions Scan

Pick at least one day during the week and write down the soft addictions you indulged in during the day. List them and try to discern what feelings you might have been having that you responded to with a soft addiction, which masked your emotion. Usually, soft addictions are triggered by an emotion that we are uncomfortable with, and so we reach for a cookie, go online, check our Facebook page, or turn on the TV, etc. to numb the feeling.

Ask yourself: What was I feeling before I indulged? What would I have been feeling if I hadn’t eaten that cookie, checked my email, bought those shoes, etc.?

I Know I’m Feeling Something, But What Is It? Using the Feelings Lists

Once you become aware that you are having feelings, you may not know which feelings they are. Do your best to identify the primary feelings of fear, hurt, anger, sadness, and joy—as these have the most power for you.

If you can’t find the primary feeling, use the Secondary Feelings Lists attached. Scan the list and see if any of those words puts a name to the experience of feelings you are having. You’ll have the “Ah, that’s it” experience as you see the names of secondary feelings.

Anytime you have some of the clues above—thought patterns, bodily cues, soft addictions, moods, etc.—reach for this list and scan it until one of the feelings says, “That’s it,” to you. Then write that feeling down on your worksheet. If you can, identify the primary feelings that comprise the secondary feelings (i.e. frustration is a form of anger; self-pity is often a combination of anger and hurt).

Be an Advocate for Emotions

Every day, have a conversation or discussion with someone about the importance of emotions. Share the power of emotions with others by sharing your journey regarding emotions, what you are learning, what your challenges are, and how you are growing. Discuss what you are learning about the uses and power of emotions. Share the neuroscience of emotions. Teach what you are learning. Have meaningful conversations about feelings and emotions. You could even have and express your feelings as you are sharing!

Develop More Nourishing Contact

Make eye contact with as many people as you can—coworkers, strangers on the street, loved ones, friends, and neighbors! Up the ante in your engagement—see others and be seen by others as you engage with them. Keep track of the number of people you greet and the experience of making eye contact.

The Feelings List

Primary and Secondary Feelings

Become an Emotional Detective

Map Your Window of Tolerance

Being aware of yourself means knowing where you are in relation to your “Window of Tolerance.” Write the words or symbols that describe you when you are in both the hyper- and hypo-aroused state. Notice what situations or with which people you find yourself in either of these states.

Soft Addiction Template

What soft addiction did I turn to?
(Examples: Social Media, Shopping, Constantly trying to please people)
What was happening right before I indulged in my soft addiction? What event or circumstance triggered my soft addiction?
What primary emotions was I feeling prior to engaging in my soft addiction?
(Examples: Fear, Hurt, Anger, Sadness, Joy)
What negative thoughts (stinking thinking) were going through my head during or after this event or situation? (Examples: Magical Thinking: I am sure it will all work out somehow, Helpless/Hopeless: No matter what I do it won't make a difference, Emotional Reasoning: I feel bad, I must be bad, Should statements: I should have know better. How stupid of me.)
What mistaken beliefs may have triggered my stinking thinking and soft addiction?
(Examples: I am not OK… I’m not worthy… I don’t matter…My emotions are not important…There is no support for me…The world is an uncaring place)
What positive thoughts or attitudes could I think instead?
Positive thought are thoughts reflecting the reality of the situation, or thoughts that are humorous, compassionate, or forgiving. (Examples: My contributions count in the big picture…I need to apply myself to make sure this works out…I can do it)
What did I really yearn for? What was the deeper yearning beneath my wanting my soft addiction? (Examples: To be seen or heard, To feel connected, To be comforted, To be alive, To learn, To matter, To make a difference)
What positive alternatives could I do instead of my soft addictions to meet my deeper hungers?