Self-Help
Stop Managing Your Emotions and Start Processing Them
Most people have the mistaken idea that emotions are to be managed. When you process your emotions, they do not need to be managed, they naturally shift and change in healthy ways.
To make this shift, you need to understand the physiology of emotion. The brain and the body are complicated. The following is a simplification of the mind/body connection regarding emotion.
The right brain, limbic system, and the body create the emotions we experience. The left brain analyzes emotions, but it does not create them. We express emotions from our right brain; we talk about emotions from our left brain.
Emotions come in waves. When emotions are pleasant, such as experiences of contentment, satisfaction, happiness, and joy, people tend to breathe normally, rarely noticing the waves. Feelings do not stay the same—they come and they go.
What goes wrong?
When emotions are uncomfortable; such as experiences of high excitement, fear, grief, and loss, people change how they breathe, often without realizing it. As the emotion wells up, people tend to hold their breath and then shallow breathe. They shift into their left brain and start to question what is happening (What if? What’s wrong? OMG, etc.) Holding the breath blocks the processing of the emotion so the wave cannot crest, it cannot recede, and therefore, it cannot dissipate. Now the emotion has to be managed. Unprocessed emotions tend to build over time, like a stack of coins, as other situations create similar feelings. There is more and more emotion to manage. There is less and less energy to manage or wall off the emotions.
When emotions are distressing, such as intense love, fear, grief, and rejection, people get into the habit of trying to avoid them. What they are trying to avoid are the sensations of the feelings. The actual situation that created the distressing sensations usually gets lost. Now life becomes about avoiding the awful sensations. This complicates life because people become so focused on trying to avoid, they cannot live freely. Also, by trying to avoid feelings, people often behave in ways that create the very feelings that they are trying to avoid.
The breath is the key to processing emotions.
As an emotion wells up, breathing through the emotion allows it to crest and recede. At first, the waves may be intense. By breathing through the waves they dissipate and get smaller and smaller until, like waves on a beach, they are gone. There is nothing left to manage or avoid.
By facing a feeling and breathing through the sensations of an emotion you will learn that you can handle it. Knowing you can tolerate and handle difficult sensations, will free you up to make the decisions that you want to make. You are less likely to experience difficult feelings and, because life can be difficult, when you do, they won’t last as long.
Embrace all the moments of life. The capacity to experience the full range of emotions, from the depths of despair to the heights of ecstasy, creates a sense of being fully alive.
With care & concern,
Dr. Bea
Always Have a Plan
I’m always amazed at how seldom parents prepare their children for times when they might ‘lose’ each other.
When my boys were little (ages 4–6), we often went to the Coquitlam Mall. Sometimes I went there twice a day and would forget where I parked my car. The mall was big back then and even more expansive now. I learned to park my car in the same area every time. My instructions to my boys were that if we got separated from each other (pre-cell phone era—too young to have a cell phone) they should…
- Find a clerk in a store with a name tag on their shirt—someone behind a counter.
- Tell them your mom is lost (you are not lost—your mom is lost).
- Ask them to call me on their intercom system.
Several weeks later we were at the mall, and suddenly I realized my kids were nowhere to be seen. I was just about to search for them when I heard my name over the intercom “Mrs. Mackay, would you please come to the cigar store on the second level?” I hurried to the store.
There were my boys, with huge grins on their faces. They had obviously decided to ‘get lost’ from me. I ignored the ruse because I thought it was an excellent trial run which they followed to a T, even though it was several weeks since I gave them the plan. In front of my boys, I told the clerk how proud I was of them for handling a difficult situation well. I wanted them to hear me tell another adult about how well they carried out my instructions. After we arrived home, I told their father about it, so HE understood the plan too.
I never called them on their ‘little adventure’ because I didn’t think they needed to know that I knew (LOL). We actually never got separated from each other again at the mall or at any other place. I felt good knowing they knew what to do if it ever happened.
For 6 years, I was a Mountain Host at Blackcomb Mountain in Whistler, B.C. The two mountains together have over 200 runs and 1-mile vertical skiing from top to bottom. This was the pre-cell phone era. Even so, cell phones crash or run out of charge. It is easy to lose each other in such a large ski area.
Occasionally, I was asked to help parents find their children. One day I was asked to help a father search for his 10-year-old daughter. As we were riding up the chairlift (knowing the answer and at the same time programming him for what to do next time), I asked “What were your plans with your daughter if you ever got separated from each other? Where did you plan to meet?”
Worried and somewhat distraught he answered, “We didn’t have any.”
I responded, “That’s too bad cuz it is so easy to lose each other on this big mountain.”
Luckily, it didn’t take very long to find her. She was at the bottom of one of the larger chairlifts with some other kids building a snowman. The relief on his face when he saw her was palpable.
I told his daughter I was impressed with her choice to stay at the bottom of a major lift. I didn’t remind him to have a plan next time. I didn’t think he needed reminding.
It’s important to lay out a simple plan when people, families, and friends are unfamiliar with their surroundings. Even when operating around the home, it is good to have concrete plans.
When I visited Australia last January, my cell phone went dead when I was out and about. Without a map and a cell phone, I had to rely on the goodwill of others. Fortunately, in Australia, there are many, many good-hearted people. I was never ‘lost’ for long. I was apprehensive about how dependent I had become on my phone/internet.
Now, even in my own city/country, I carry a fully-charged battery pack, so I can charge my phone whenever I need. Always be prepared for life’s surprises!
3 Tips For Changing A Fight-Flight-Freeze Instinct
By Bea Mackay, Ph. D.
We all have different ways we react to stressful situations. For example, when someone directs anger towards you, your instinct might be to fight back and protect yourself—or maybe you feel like leaving the room (flight) because you are uncomfortable.
- Do you fight?
- Do you leave the space (take flight)?
- Do you freeze in your space without knowing what to do?
If the angry person is your boss, you might want to hide (freeze) from embarrassment or fear of being fired.
These reactions (fright, flight, freeze) can happen because stressful situations evoke emotions, expectations, and uncomfortable sensations in the body. How can we process our emotions during these stressful times?
Don’t just survive — thrive emotionally
In all the species, basic survival methods have become instinctual—built into the DNA over thousands or millions of years. The organisms that survived passed on their genes to the next generation, and so on.
These survival behaviours are so ingrained in human DNA that people’s bodies and minds behave as though their fears are life-threatening even though they are most likely not.
Here are three steps to help you process your stress response—not just react
STEP ONE—Become Aware
Awareness is the first step in changing emotional and physical habits. Taking time to recognize uncomfortable sensations in your body is an important step.
For example, when someone feels anxious and they don’t take the time to recognize this feeling, they can drag this feeling on through the day. This feeling can affect your mind flow, muscles, posture, blood pressure, etc. We cannot process feelings/sensations if we don’t take the time to feel the discomfort.
This discomfort can be a headache, shoulder tension, stomach issues, or any specific body sensation that emerges when emotional stress takes over. Become aware of these sensations in your body the next time your emotions take hold of you.
STEP TWO—Try Not to Analyze
People are strongly motivated to understand why and how they came to feel what they feel. Trying to understand this may even evoke positive change.
However, understanding alone does not induce change because people do not know what else to do; they often get stuck analyzing and rethinking with the hope/intent to get the change they seek. What they do not know is that understanding is not necessary for change.
To shift from thinking to sensing, you need to interrupt the thoughts and focus on the sensations in the body.
Typically, people do not want to address unpleasant emotions because the sensations/feelings might be intense.
The sensations/feelings that are not processed build up over time and highjack personal energy, which serves in managing our emotions. This managing, or analyzing, can be exhausting and can affect our health and relationship with ourselves and others.
Catching yourself in the act can lead to different neural pathways and new ways of being.
STEP THREE—Process Emotions, Breathe
If an emotion is not allowed to flow, it will build up. It takes personal energy to block or stop the flow of emotion. Eventually, something will give. The person will either live a limited life or have an emotional breakdown; they will either implode or explode, cry, or have outbursts of anger over tiny incidents, such as spilled milk.
This emotional blockage leads to exhaustion and an inability to function, which is often what a mid-life crisis involves. A person’s way of operating in the world developed over time no longer works, but they do not yet have a new way of being; therefore, they stay the same.
They use so much energy to manage their emotions that there is little energy left to function in daily life. Processing these sensations helps to promote emotional freedom and personal growth.
Personal growth leads to healthy relationships.
Sensations come in waves.
Breathe through the waves.
Breathe through the sensations.
By breathing through the waves of sensations (deep, slow breaths), personal energy will realign and flow in the same direction.
Sometimes, during this shift, the biggest temptation is to avoid feeling the sensations (a twinge, some nausea, a slight headache, etc.) and immediately shift back to thoughts to figure out why you feel this way.
However, it does not matter why! It also does not matter who, what, when, where, or how. What matters is that they are having these sensations and need to stay with them.
What is, is.
Thriving Emotionally
When we stay with the sensations and breathe into them, we process them; we create new neural pathways that precipitate new sensations, and therefore, we evolve emotionally and create healthy and productive change.
As we reconnect with our bodies, we feel more connected to ourselves. When we connect to ourselves, we feel more connected in relationships.
To live happy and healthy lives, one needs to thrive emotionally, not just survive. Next time you sense an uncomfortable feeling, take the time to acknowledge your feelings/sensations and breathe through them.
