Episode 2 - Pause to Process
This is episode number 2 titled Pause to Process. This is the first part of The Pause Principle that I will be teaching you over the next few weeks.
This is something I teach my clients and that I use in my own life to help create more joy no matter the season or circumstance.
Everything I talk about is from a life coaching perspective. In no way am I trying to take the place of a licensed therapist or counselor. This information is for those of us who have a healthy brain but feel stuck and want to find a different way to show up in our lives.
So let’s get started. Today I am talking about Pausing to Process.
For a long time, I didn’t realize that I was the creator of my emotions. I believed that I was at the mercy of them. They just happened to me when someone did something that affected me. This is such a disempowering place to be–believing someone else has control over our emotions. There were relationships in my life that felt hard. I believed that certain people in my life “should” choose and act differently than they were. When they wouldn’t do what I believed to be right, I felt hurt because I wanted things to be different than they were. I would cry often then I would feel self-pity and then frustration which then led to me beating myself up for how I was handling everything. I wasn’t showing up in these relationships as the person I wanted to be and I would tell myself I just needed to get over it. Then I would repeat this cycle. Over and over again.
I was not in emotional balance. The reason I was unhappy was because I believed I shouldn’t be unhappy. But the truth is, unhappiness gives us the frame of reference for happiness and joy. The negative emotions we experience make the positive emotions possible. I was experiencing increased negative emotion because I was spending so much time being unhappy about being unhappy instead accepting that being unhappy is a natural part of this human experience. Understanding that being a human includes a 50/50 emotional experience. Once I understood this and allowed for the negative or uncomfortable emotions, I created more space for the positive emotions.
Our bodies were created to experience all the emotions - positive and negative. Our bodies know exactly what to do with these emotions, if we allow them to do it. But if we don’t allow ourselves to take ownership of what we are feeling and allow ourselves to process them, we actually block ourselves from moving through them so we can find healing and experience joy. By not processing our emotions we end up carrying them around in our bodies physically and in our subconscious minds. Eventually, the emotions we have denied ourselves from experiencing manifest themselves and create problems for us.
In Dr. Marc Brackett’s book, Permission to Feel he says, “when we deny ourselves the permission to feel, a long list of unwanted outcomes ensues. We lose the ability to even identity what we’re feeling–it’s like without noticing, we go a little numb inside….it’s impossible for us to…master our feelings–not to deny them but to accept them all, even embrace them–and learn to make our emotions work for us not against us.” He goes on to say, “if we can learn to identify, express, and harness our feelings, even the most challenging ones, we can use those emotions to help us create positive, satisfying lives.” And I would add, create more joy.
When we resist our negative emotions, we actually intensify them. For example, from the story I shared in the beginning, I was layering on self pity, frustration and shame on top of the hurt I was feeling. By not accepting that it was ok to feel hurt and let myself feel it, the hurt became more intense and I then I would layer on more negative emotions. This wasn’t necessary or useful and it kept me stuck in that same emotional loop. I was creating more negative emotion in my life which left less room to experience positive emotions.
Another way that people don’t allow themselves to process their emotions is by reacting to them. Think about a toddler who doesn’t get their way. What do they do? Stomp off. Yell. Slam doors. Or even throw things. They let their emotions control their behavior. Toddlers aren’t the only ones that behave this way. As adults, there are times we push against an emotion. We become dramatic or even freak out sometimes. We let our toddler brain take over which prevents us from creating a life we love.
Others of us just avoid our emotions by escaping or dulling them. Not wanting to feel sad, anxious, stress, angry, frustrated, worthless,or inadequate– we use buffering behavior like overeating, overdrinking, overworking, shopping, scrolling social media, streaming services, pornography, ect. to avoid feeling the uncomfortable emotion. We do this all in an attempt to comfort ourselves with false pleasures. These behaviors feel good in the moment but they ultimately create a negative consequence preventing us from being who we want to be, keeping us from reaching our desired goals or hindering our ability to create a joyful life.
Resisting, reacting and avoiding our emotions actually gives our power away.
In Brené Brown’s newest book, Atlas of the Heart, she says “when we name an emotion or experience, it doesn’t give that emotion or experience more power, it gives US more power.”
I love this. We become more empowered to create more joy by acknowledging and naming our emotions.
Dr. Brackett teaches that we can learn how to use our emotions as information. Our emotions are sending us messages about what is going on inside of us. If we can learn to process our emotions and get curious about what they are telling us, we can “achieve greater well-being, make the most informed decisions, build and maintain meaningful relationships, and realize our potential.” We can be our best selves and show up in the world as who we want to be.
But in order for us to learn from our emotions we must process them.
I want to share with you 5 things about emotions:
Emotions are vibrations in our bodies and nothing more. This is different from a physical sensation like hunger. Physical sensations start in the body and travel to the brain. They are involuntary bodily reactions. But our emotions start in the brain and vibrate through the body.
Our thoughts always create our emotions. Our emotions do not happen to us. We create them with our thinking–the sentences in our brain. Even if we aren’t aware of the thought causing them, feelings always follow thoughts.
Emotions are the fuel for our actions, everything we do or don’t do. We naturally avoid any negative emotion because of how it feels. We also move toward any positive emotion because of how it feels. Every decision we make, every goal we reach or let die, and every relationship we nurture or ruin is based on how we feel. Many times we limit ourselves because we are trying to avoid discomfort. Once we take responsibility for our feelings we can create the emotional fuel we use to create our lives.
Many people are worried about opening themselves up to negative emotions because they imagine the experience will be horrible. But the truth is our emotions will not hurt us. If we can become curious and be open to experiencing these vibrations, we typically find that they aren’t such a big deal after all.
We are not our emotions. We are not bad or wrong when we feel any emotion. We are all created in the image of God and I believe that our Heavenly Parents experience emotion. The scriptures teach us that Christ is a God of emotion. He experienced emotions such as sadness, sorrow, grief, anger, compassion and love.
So now that we know more about emotions, what does it mean to process our emotions?
I want to show you how.
I invite you to close your eyes and think about what emotion you are feeling right now. I am going to walk you through my 7 steps process for processing an emotion.
Take a deep breath. Accept that you are feeling this emotion and be present with it.
Acknowledge what you are feeling by naming it.
Find it in your body. What does it feel like? Is it a tightness in your neck or chest? Is it in your stomach? Is it fast or slow? Hot or cold? Sharp or soft? What color is it? Has it moved in your body?
Just relax into it and observe yourself experiencing this emotion. Don’t resist, react or avoid it.
Open up to the emotion. Move toward it.
Remind yourself that you are experiencing this emotion because of “sentences in your brain.” Nothing has gone wrong.
Allow it until it subsides.
I would like to share a personal example of this process. A couple of years ago, my husband and I were heading to a family activity with some extended family. It was around Christmas time. On our way there I began to feel anxious. We pulled into the parking lot of where we were going and I told my husband that I was feeling really anxious. He asked me why and wanted to help fix it. I remember telling him that I just needed to feel anxious. I closed my eyes and noticed it was in my chest. It was heavy and wasn’t moving. It was just a heavy weight in my chest. It felt warm and I would say it was the color blue. I remember saying to myself, “Ok, Jill, this is what anxiety feels like for you today and it is all because of sentences in your brain. Everything's fine. Nothing has gone wrong. This is what anxiety feels like for you.” I just sat there breathing without doing anything about it. Then after about 90 seconds, it began to soften. It didn’t totally go away but it had softened to a point that I was able to get out of the car and go to the family activity. Anxiety just came with me. I was able to participate while at the same time bringing my friend, anxiety, with me. As the day went on my anxiety dissipated. Since that time, I have experienced this again but I know it won’t hurt me. I am open to it and I know that it will pass sooner if I just process it.
I understand that we may not always be able to stop everything we are doing to process an emotion or sometimes we are struggling with a recurring emotion. But I believe the same skill applies. You may want to consider creating an emotional protocol. This means that as you are working on processing a delayed or recurring emotion you allow for scheduled times to process it. Maybe once a day, once a week, or once a month. Allowing yourself time to process your emotion even at a later time gives you power over your emotions.
This is a skill that is transformative. When we are in an elevated emotional state we aren’t always able to consider why we are feeling the way we feel. The process I just shared allows us time to pause. As Viktor Frankl taught, there is space between a stimulus and response. This is where agency lies. By allowing ourselves time to pause, we empower ourselves to consciously use our agency to create more of what we want in our lives. Instead of being stuck in an endless cycle of negative emotions, we bring our lives into emotional balance.
I invite you to practice this 7 step process as you learn to process your emotions.
Take a deep breath. Accept that you are feeling this emotion and be present with it.
Acknowledge what you are feeling by naming it.
Find it in your body. What does it feel like? Is it a tightness in your neck or chest? Is it in your stomach? Is it fast or slow? Hot or cold? Sharp or soft? What color is it? Has it moved in your body?
Just relax into it and observe yourself experiencing this emotion. Don’t resist, react or avoid it.
Open up to the emotion. Move toward it.
Remind yourself that you are experiencing this emotion because of “sentences in your brain.” Nothing has gone wrong.
Allow it until it subsides.
Thank you for listening. Stay tuned for next week’s episode for the second part to The Pause Principle.
Have a joyful week!
If you want to learn more about me go to Seasons Coaching.
