As a mental health counselor, I know how emotions play a huge role in the progression of therapy. I would say at least 95% of the clients I have worked with in the past and still currently work with struggle with emotions in some way. The most common is not being able to accurately and appropriately express emotions. The biggest analogy I use with emotions is the hoover dam. I say to clients that all of our emotions are like the water being held up by this giant wall. We’ll eventually the wall cannot hold anymore behind it and it ends up overflowing or breaking. People who talk about anger outbursts or emotional breakdowns, this is what this is. The difference with the hoover dam is that they release water before that happens. As humans, we need pressure release valves to release some of the pressure of these emotions before we reach a boil over or breaking point.
Emotions are hard. 1000%. Nobody really wants to deal with them. But why? Mostly because of society and our upbringing. I can’t even tell you how many times growing up I heard “Big girls don’t cry” or the famous “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about!” Boys and girls were both told similar things growing up, but I think boys had it worse. This put the idea in young growing minds that emotions shouldn’t be expressed. I see this especially for men now. Most men see showing emotion as a weakness, this is another way that society impacts our emotions. Grief is another big emotion influenced by society. Society says it’s okay to cry at the wake and the funeral but after that just carry on with life. What? How are we supposed to just drop our emotions and continue on after a loss? There is is no timeline on grief or frankly any difficult emotion.
This brings me to my next point. How many people can actually list more than 10 emotions. When most people think of emotions, they actually think of judgements. Someone says “how are you?” The defaults are good, fine, alright. But are those really emotions, not really. Other than judgements people fall back to what I call umbrella emotions (Happy, Sad, Upset, Angry). Now sometimes these are okay. But here’s an example I use often with clients. Someone says something to you that genuinely hurts your feelings. You label what you are feelings as anger. You’re pissed. But are you really? Or are you feeling hurt? Disrespected? Annoyed? Frustrated? Those are very different than Anger.
We have to be able to accurately identify our true emotions before reacting because if not we fail at communicating. Back to that example. If a friend says something that hurts you and you jump to anger. What’s gonna happen? An argument and conflict very likely. Now if we approach this saying “hey I feel really hurt and disrespected right now.” Do you think there is still going to be conflict and an argument. Less likely, that will likely open up more of a conversation. Make sense?
Everyone always says “Communication is Key!” But the real thing is “Effective Communication is Key!” If we aren’t communicating things effectively, does anything actually get resolved? Probably not. Very likely it’s just another thing that gets pushed behind the wall of the dam.
One last point. So many of us hate emotions. Why? Because we view emotions and obstacles we have to get over versus tools to help us. Every emotion we experience is a tool to help us overcome a situation. We experience grief to help us overcome loss. We experience frustration to help us overcome conflict. The important thing is to be able to identify the emotions effectively and then use them to communicate to others and ourselves how to overcome whatever situation we find ourselves in.
So my recommended first step for those wanting to get a better grip on their emotional health. Go to feelingswheel.com and study that wheel. That’s the first step to being able to accurately identify what emotion you’re actually experiencing. Once that happens then work on how you communicate that to yourself and others. But most important is this. Find your emotional release valves. Exercise. Journaling. Screaming to loud music. Coloring. Painting. Anything Really. Crying (this one is big, it’s okay to cry!) If we think about babies and young kids, they cry to communicate their emotions, so when did we decide that that’s not okay anymore. I encourage everyone to cry as an emotional release. Find what works for you and do it often. Remember the hoover dam can’t hold all that back and neither can you!
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