Tuning into Emotional Insight

Emotions as Information

I so often hear people saying, "Life would be so much easier if I just didn't have to feel anything" or "I wish I could just get rid of this awful feeling so I can actually start living my life!"

It's tempting to think that we would be more productive, better functioning, and higher performing humans if our emotions would just get out of the way. This desire is not helped by the way that our culture and society tend to vilify emotion or at very least treat emotional expression as an embarrassing problem to be dealt with in private. 

But what happens when we begin to view our emotions as vital information or data to be collected rather than as a malfunctions of daily living? Rather than turning off these critical, life-saving signals, we can tune into what our brains and bodies are trying to tell us about the world around us in our work, our home, and our relationships.

Navigating a Complex World

Emotions give us a leg up in in navigating our complicated world. Life is complex and our emotions are designed to help us move through it with greater ease. If you are accustomed to living by thoughts, reason, and logic alone, you are missing vital pieces of information that can serve to notify you of problems, protect you, or let you know when things are going well.

 When intense emotions surface, this is a loud and clear signal that, “Hey! Something is up! It could be good, bad, harmless, dangerous, neutral, or unknown but whatever it is, we need to check it out!”

 Imagine you are driving home from work or class or the gym and your Check Engine Light begins flashing. Would you grab the closest object and proceed to smash the dashboard in order to stop the flashing warning light? Maybe… but you would be dealing with the warning sign and not the actual problem under the hood of the car.

This is what we tend to do with emotions. Instead of addressing the potentially serious underlying issues, we often ignore them or get them to stop by turning off the warning lights on our limbic system's dashboard. This can look like stuffing emotions down deep, avoiding them with scattered activity, or numbing them with substances. Other ways of avoiding emotion can look like perfectionism, procrastination, performance, rumination, codependency, and other forms of self-abandonment.

Increasing Emotional Capacity

Deepening your emotional experiences and learning the nuances of feeling can bring greater efficacy, satisfaction, and vitality to your life. When you cut yourself off from emotion, you effectively detach from a biological database of information that could not only improve your situation, but save your life.

Emotions give depth, contrast, nuance, beauty, vibrancy, and meaning to our experience.  If our thoughts are lyrics, emotions are the music flowing underneath them which swell and fade over time. Think about your favorite song for a moment- one that resonates deeply in your heart and soul. Is it playing in your mind? Can you hear the melody, the harmony? Now take away the music, only think about the words. Has the song lost something? Is it the same song or has it transformed into something very unlike the tune you were hearing play in your mind? When we shut ourselves off from emotions, this is what we are doing. Not only are we losing our personal effectiveness, we are losing the music that animates our lives.

Emotions ebb and flow like waves and learning to ride these waves can free up energy and attention to mindfully attend to the present. They can increase our effectiveness, accuracy, and precision in problem solving. They can foster deeper relational connections and also allow us to experience inner peace and calm. 

Gathering + Applying Emotional “Data”

Emotions elicit important questions. Tuning into these internal signals and taking a moment to answer the questions that arise from them can provide valuable information for making decisions or taking action.

*Emotions are also front line messengers for detecting dysfunction in our mental/emotional world. Many normal emotional experiences can be unpleasant, painful, or intense at times but there are instances when these experiences fall outside of the normal range. If you find any of these feelings persisting continuously, repetitively, or without resolution, consider talking with your primary care physician or seeing a therapist to assess for underlying mental health conditions.

When anger is present, ask: what needs to be protected?

What do I value that is at risk? What needs to be made right? What boundaries are being crossed? Anger can be a source of energy that focusses our attention on identifying a problem at hand and taking action to solve it.

 When fear is present, ask: what actions should be taken to keep myself safe?

What are the dangers in my environment? Fear can manifest as concern, worry, or anxiety. Recognizing fear for what it is allows you to evaluate threats to determine whether they are within your control to take action upon or outside of your control. If they are not in your control, this is an opportunity for practice radical acceptance.

 When sadness is present, ask: what has been lost or needs to be released?

What are some losses I have experienced? What was meaningful to me about them? What am I holding onto that I need to let go of? Sadness is a rich source of information. Tuning into sadness, whether mild disappointment or deep heartache can help us indicate what is important to us, what is worth holding onto, or what needs to be let go of in order to allow for new things to come into our lives.

When happiness is present, ask: what is going well?

What is going well? What am I proud of? Happiness can notify you of what is working in your life. It is considered a “positive” emotion and one that we would like to experience more often than not. Remember, that the more you allow yourself to experience other “negative” emotions, the greater capacity you will have for contentment, happiness, and joy. 

There are many other emotions to attend to but consider these as the basics which can combine to form more complex blends. When you are able to tune into your emotions, you begin to discover a world of untapped information and insight about your world and yourself. What ways can you begin to practice tuning into your emotions as a source of information, insight, and inspiration?

If you feel that you need help processing difficult or painful emotions please reach out or visit here for more details.