What do I do with all of these feelings?
Emotions, what are they?
What are we supposed to do with them?
Which ones are good or bad?
As a society, we’ve evolved into amazing humans capable of things we never once thought of, such as making it to space, building technology to communicate with people all the way across the world, and so many other unfathomable things.
Without our emotions, we can’t make decisions; we can’t decipher our dreams and visions; we can’t set proper boundaries or behave skillfully in relationships; we can’t identify our hopes or support the hopes of others; and we can’t connect to, or even find, our dearest loves.
But we’ve failed hard as a collective society in understanding the language of feelings. As Karla McLaren shares in her book “The language of emotions”, : “ We are intellectually brilliant, physically resourceful, spiritually imaginative, but emotionally underdeveloped. This is a shame because emotions contact indispensable vitality that can be channeled toward self knowledge, interpersonal awareness, and profound healing. Unfortunately, we don’t treat them as such. Instead, emotions are categorized, celebrated, vilified, repressed, manipulated, humiliated, adored, and ignored. Rarely, if ever, are they honoured.”
Without access to our emotional selves, we grow in this culture like trees in the wrong soil, becoming tall but not strong, and old but not mature. Our emotional awareness goes underground in childhood, and we turn toward every other kind of development— physical, scholastic, artistic, financial, intellectual, religious, or athletic. We don’t grow up as emotive people; we grow up as people who learn not to emote.
Here are a few questions that could help you become curious about your relationship with emotions and the speed bumps that you encounter. What did I learn about emotions? What’s my relationship with them? Do I feel afraid of them or do I welcome them? Which ones were considered acceptable vs unacceptable? How did I witness my caregivers experience them? What is the underlying message I understood about them? Did I feel responsible for learning how to manage my parents/caregivers emotions?(i.e, if you are ok, I’m ok) Was there a consequence to expressing myself when I experienced emotions? As you can see, with only these few questions, it can shape how you would interact with different emotions.
So, what do we do with these, what I refer to as emotional speed bumps? We can certainly get really good at avoiding them altogether, redirecting them, going over them as fast as possible and everything in between. But regardless, the bump remains and we often get more of what we don’t want.
We’ve come to understand/learn as a society that there is a standard of how we operate in a public setting. Although oftentimes, we allow ourselves to revert back to a childlike emotional state with our loved ones, and this often is the main struggle that presents itself in my office with couples.
Imagine if we got really good at regulating our internal systems, how differently we could show up for ourselves and others in the middle of a storm. You have everything to gain.
Your “easy to talk to therapist”
Kimberly Castle RTC, CAMC
Kimberly Castle is a Registered Therapeutic Counsellor with a private practice in beautiful Kelowna, BC. She focuses on Kelowna Counselling Solutions to empower individuals in all areas of their life. In her practice she works with couples and individuals on a variety of topics including trauma, self-esteem, family and child counselling.
