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Welcome to the first episode of the Feel, Heal, Grow show. Here we discuss the importance of feeling emotions, the difference between thoughts, feelings and emotions, how emotions are made (the theory of constructed emotion), emotions to meet our needs, how emotion vocabulary shapes our perception, and how to healthily feel emotions and feelings.
Books mentioned in this episode include:
- Non-Violent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg
- How Emotions are Made by Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett
- Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown
- The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig
- Bitter Sweet by Susan Cain Check out the Sprowt App if you'd like guidance on feeling, processing and transcending emotions.
Sprowt: Emotion Meditation on the App Store & Google Play.
Check out Sprowt on social:
Instagram: @sprowt.io https://www.instagram.com/sprowt.io/
Twitter: @sprowt_io https://twitter.com/sprowt_io
Facebook: @sprowt.io https://www.facebook.com/Sprowt.io
Connect with Marina on social:
Instagram: @marinacvanderheyden https://www.instagram.com/marinacvanderheyden/
Twitter: @marinavanderh https://twitter.com/marinavanderh
Facebook: @marinavanderheyden https://www.facebook.com/marinacvanderheyden/
TikTok: @feelhealgrow https://www.tiktok.com/@feelhealgrow
Hello, welcome to the first episode of the feel, heal, grow show. This episode we discuss Feel, the importance of feeling emotions. I'm excited and a little bit nervous to bring this to you as it's the first episode. But I'm sure throughout the creation of this podcast we can feel, heal and grow together.
Here's a brief introduction to who I am. My name is Marina Vander Heyden, and I am the founder of Sprowt. An app to help you feel your emotions, heal painful perceptions and grow into your best self. I am an emotional intelligence practitioner, meditation teacher, cognitive behavioural therapy practitioner, hypnotherapist, breathwork facilitator and life-long learner, to name a few things.
Having struggled with mental and emotional health for most of my life, I've experienced how the state of my inner world affects every aspect of my outer reality. I believe understanding and nurturing the layers of ourselves is how we can make the most of this human experience and inspire others to do the same.
In this podcast, my goal is to help you embody wisdom with the application of knowledge to feel adaptable, peaceful and resilient in daily life.
So, welcome. Take a deep breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Relax your jaw and shoulders, and settle in for a journey within.
Let's get right into it. Feelings and emotions can seem burdensome when you have been conditioned to think of them as weakness.
But they do not exist to be avoided or condemned. They have a purpose. Emotions are messengers from the intelligence of our whole being. They provide essential information we need to understand ourselves, meet our needs, and develop meaningful relationships with others.
By tuning into our emotions, acknowledging them, allowing them to arise, and inquiring into their source, we develop a deeper sense of self-awareness. And to know thyself is the foundation to leading a fulfilling life.
If I've learned anything in life, it's that everyone has a story and has experienced pain and suffering in some sense. It's unavoidable in the human experience. Sometimes pain alters our perception and can causes us to live from a place of fear, rather than love. But the beauty of being human is the plasticity of our brains. We have a miraculous ability to change. And that's why...
Healing is the next podcast topic, so stay tuned for this 🙂
In connecting with the emotions alive within us and communicating with them to understand our needs and desires and being mindful of the context we're experiencing them in, we can learn to make peace with them. And perhaps heal painful responses. Transforming pain into compassion.
While it's important to feel emotions, it's important to balance mind and heart to use emotion intelligently. We must use emotions as data, not directives.
When you’re able to recognize emotion as a piece of information or data at a a given moment — then you can use this information to move forward. Bottling up or repressing emotions also negatively affect wellbeing, relationships, work, stress and much more. As humans we are wired for connection. Repressing our expression goes against our biology. In my personal experience, repressing emotions has led to them getting stronger and stronger until they boil over in overwhelming and uncontrollable way, like panic attacks, major depressive episodes or fits of rage. That's why I've found it absolutely transformative to tune into my emotions and process them as they occur, to keep them balanced and manageable.
Giving yourself permission to feel — to truly feel — is a superpower. And it can help you get better at regulating and accepting your emotions. Because once we understand our emotions and where they come from, we can manage our responses to them to serve our greatest good.
Emotions affect almost every aspect of out life and how we live. Including motivation, learning, growth, development, survival, attention, memory, decision-making, problem-solving, connection and attachment to others, career, passions, fulfillment, creativity and overall well-being.
And when we're enduring hardships and challenges, emotion can seem like more of a burden than a blessing. But with practice, you can learn how to transform even painful emotions into beautiful reminders of your aliveness.
I can't forget to mention intuition, the fleeting first sign of emotion, often called a
"gut feeling" can keep you safe from harm in ways the mind can't always comprehend. And I have to admit, if I had listened to my intuition more, I wouldn't have had to endure half the hardship I've experienced. Or at least would have navigated it more effectively.
Let's touch in the importance of emotions in relationships. As babies, emotions are how we communicate before we can speak. Crying, screaming, smiling, squealing are all signs of our internal state, an expression of our needs and a way to communicate with those around us.
Being aware of our emotions and their needs is at the core of effective interpersonal communication as well. This is a core tenant of Marshall Rosenberg's book, "Non-Violent Communication."
Understanding our own emotions and feelings lays the foundation to expressing them them openly and authentically to others. And also enables us to understand what another person may be experiencing. This allows us to feel seen, heard and understood and also to see, hear and understand another.
I will say, when it comes to developing meaningful relationships with others, whether your partner, spouse, children, friends, family or professional relationships, vulnerability is strength when used with discretion. Showing and expressing our emotions in the right context deepens interpersonal connection and understanding.
And when we know our own emotions and where they come from, it becomes less scary to share them with others. Because we all experience emotions, albeit in different ways. If we don't understand them, there can be fear around showing or expressing emotion, because it may seem like they're out of control. But when you're aware of and have the tools to regulate emotions, you can interact from a place of love, openness and curiosity instead of fear, reactivity and defensiveness.
Let's discuss the difference between thoughts, feelings and emotions.
Distinguishing the difference between thoughts, feelings, and emotions is important because western society tends to be caught up in the heads to think of emotion as a weakness and not see its value. But we are not just thinking heads; we are thinking, feeling, full-body beings. And to feel whole and well, we must treat ourselves as such.
Now there's debate among experts on how to define emotions. So rather than get caught up with this, here we aim to understand the relationship between thoughts, feelings and emotions.
Thoughts are contents of the mind. These mental occurrences can influence how we feel. Particularly when we allow our attention to get carried away by a thought and pulled into a spiral of other thoughts.
Feeling is a word we use to describe the emotions our body is experiencing. Emotions originate as sensations in the body. Feeling is the bridge of awareness connecting thought and emotion. It is our mind's perception of emotion.
But we run into trouble when we use the words "like" or "as though" after expressing how we feel. Because "like" or "as though" used after "I feel" represent intellectualizing emotions. Or confusing thoughts with emotions. So consider these phrases: "I feel like you don't care" or "I feel as though I'm on top of the world." You cannot actually feel these experiences in your body. These are the contents of the mind. Instead, you could say, I feel misunderstood, or I feel empowered.
It can be lexically confusing. Because we can feel emotions while feeling and emotion are different things. Let us be bound by the idea instead of the limits of words.
So we've discussed thoughts and feelings. We've learned emotions originate as sensations in the body. Whereas feelings are influenced by emotions but are generated from thoughts. Now let's discuss emotions. Now as I mentioned there is a debate among experts on a definitive definition of emotion. So to understand what emotions are, let's get into how they're created. Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is a respected neuroscientist among the top 1% most cited scientists worldwide for her ground breaking research in psychology and neuroscience. And she developed the theory of constructed emotion.
This is a vast topic, eloquently described in her book "How Emotions Are Made" (which I will put in the show notes). So I'm going to try to put it simply. The theory of constructed emotion states that for our brain to operate most efficiently, it uses past experiences and a wide variety of other factors as a guide to making predictions on how we should respond to certain stimuli. This includes but is not limited to: the state of your nervous system, hormone levels, satiety, energy levels, the vocabulary of emotions and perceptions of past experiences. This all adds to your brain's and body's generalizations of emotions you experience as pleasant or unpleasant, high or low.
These experiences occur because it's our mind's way of balancing our body budget. Our body budget is how your brain budgets energy in the body to keep you well and alive. To ensure our body budget is balanced, the brain anticipates and attempts to satisfy the body's needs even before the need arises.
For composing 2% of our total mass, the brain uses about 20% of our energy, so to operate most efficiently, it has become a prediction and meaning-making machine inside our skull.
It's also interesting to note that there are no biological fingerprints of emotion in the brain or facial expressions. This means feelings and emotions are unique to each and every individual. Emotion does not have unique and consistent visible expression across individuals or even within the same individual across instances.
Although it is also interesting to note that a team of scientists in Finland asked people to map out where they felt different emotions in their bodies, they found that the results were surprisingly consistent, even across cultures. This exciting graphic may help you connect with how emotions are experienced in your body, so I will include this image in the episode transcript on our website. Or you can just Google heat map of emotions.
Some time ago, I asked Dr. Feldman Barrett on Twitter how she could describe the theory of constructed emotion to a 5-year-old, and this is how she replied...
"Interesting question. I probably wouldn't describe the theory itself but would (1) point out the huge variety of what a single facial movement means, like a smile, and (2) talk about the emotional experiences of storybook characters and how the characters could help themselves."
Then she included an excerpt from her book on the importance of developing emotional awareness in children. Now I think this is important because, as adults and our beautiful capacity of neuroplasticity, we train ourselves to change how we feel about and experience emotions. So here is the excerpt.
"Speak to a child about emotions and other mental states as early as possible, even if you think they are too young to understand. Remember that infants develop concepts well before you realize it is happening. So look children straight in the eye, widen your eyes to grab their attention, and speak about bodily sensations and movements in terms of emotions and other mental states. "See that little boy? He is crying. He is feeling pain from falling down and scraping his knee. He is sad and probably wants a hug from his parents." Elaborate on the feelings of storybook characters, your children's emotions, and your emotions. Use a wide variety of emotion words. Talk about what causes emotions and what their consequences are to others. Think of yourself as your children's tour guide through the mysterious world of humans and their movements and sounds. Your detailed explanations help your children build a well-developed conceptual system for emotion.20
When you teach emotion concepts to children, you are doing more than communicating. You are creating a reality for these kids— a social reality. You're handing them tools to regulate their body budget, to make meaning of their sensations and act on them, to communicate how they feel, and to influence others."
Excerpt From How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett
Ok, so we've talked about thoughts, feelings, emotions, how emotions are made, our body budget and how our brain is a prediction-making machine. I hope this expanded awareness and provided an understanding of feelings and emotions. Although when I first learned about the theory of constructed emotions, it opened a can of worms as to why I am the way I am and prompted a brief existential crisis of sorts. That's not my intention, of course. Sometimes learning new perspectives or ways to understand the human experience can be uncomfortable because it pushes the limits of our knowledge. But pushing the limits of what we know is how we grow.
Now let's discuss language. An integral aspect of feeling, understanding and differentiating emotion. To quote Brené Brown, a prominent psychologist, researcher, author and lecturer researching shame, vulnerability, and leadership,
"Language is the greatest tool for meaningful connection, and having access to the right words changes everything."
"Language is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning, and self-awareness."
From her book Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brené Brown.
In fact, our vocabulary of emotions directly relates to the depth at which we can experience them.
In Brené Brown'sBrown's research on shame resilience, they asked participants in the training workshops to list all the emotions they could recognize and name as they were experiencing them. Then, over five years, they collected surveys from more than seven thousand people. The average number of emotions called across the surveys was three. The emotions were happy, sad, and angry.
We know our brains are meaning-making machines and strive to categorize experiences to make sense of the world. To do this internally and within our communication with others, having the correct language to describe emotions is integral.
Here's a quote from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, from Atlas of the Heart:
"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." What does it mean if the vastness of human emotion and experience can only be expressed as mad, sad, or happy? What about shame, disappointment, wonder, awe, disgust, embarrassment, despair, contentment, boredom, anxiety, stress, love, overwhelm, surprise, and all of the other emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human?"
I feel this quote deeply as I've been learning to expand my emotional vocabulary for some time now and have noticed the profound impact on my well-being.
To expand your emotions vocabulary, you can check out an emotion wheel and maybe make it the background of your phone. I highly recommend the book Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown. And if you're a bitter-sweet kind of soul like me, the book the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is phenomenal for new, more profound, emotional words.
Alexithymia: an inability to identify and express or describe one's feelings
The german word Freudenfreude means to derive joy from another's joy. This is the opposite of the word schadenfreude which means to derive joy from someone's misfortune. Gotta admit we've all done this at some point.
Sonder: The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it
Liberos: the desire to care less about things.
The german word backpfeifengesicht means "a face in need of a fist." I don't condone violence, but I think this word is funny and relatable. (pronunciation)
The dutch word gezellig - is difficult to translate but basically means having an inviting and friendly ambiance; cozy, nice, pleasant, sociable. This could be related to conviviality or fun. My family is dutch, and I grew up hearing it, although I'm Canadian, so I feel this deeply.
The Brazillian Portuguese word cafuné - means to tenderly or affectionately run your fingers through one's hair, whether a loved human or pet.
The Chinese word xin (pronunciation) which doesn't differentiate between the heart and the mind but refers to both together, as our core.
Please give me some grace if I accidentally mispronounce any of these words in your language. My Canadian accent will faithfully shine through.
And lastly, ineffable, although there are many more words I adore.
Ineffability is the quality of something that surpasses the capacity of language to express it. These are usually experiences that inspire wonder beyond what words can express. I suppose the emotions we don't yet have words for are ineffable.
I would love to know what emotion words you have in your language that don't exist in English and what they mean. So send me a tweet with your words @marinavanderh!
Now let's get to the good part. How to feel emotions.
You can feel emotions by connecting to how you're experiencing them in the body. Notice sensations. Breathe deeply. Breathe into them. Feel your breath stoking the fire of your liveliness.
Interoception
Interoception is the perception of sensations from inside the body. It includes the perception of physical sensations related to internal organ functions such as heartbeat, respiration, and satiety, as well as the autonomic nervous system activity related to emotions.
Strengthen interoceptive abilities by tuning into your breath. How deeply are you breathing? How fast are you breathing? Can you notice the space between inhale and exhale?
Notice your heart rate. Put two fingers on your neck just below your jawbone. Count how many times your heart beats in 15 seconds and multiply by 4 to get your heart rate.
Observe satiety and digestion. The last time you ate, what you ate, how it made you feel and how hydrated you are.
Assess your energy level. High or low, pleasant or unpleasant. Remember how you slept and if food, supplements or medication could influence this.
Stillness
Be still for a moment as often as you can. At least every day. Notice how the sensations in your body shift from moment to moment. If you don't even know where to start with being still and allowing emotions, Sprowt meditations can offer some guidance.
Give Yourself Permission
Give yourself permission to feel and experience the energy alive within you. Emotion is energy in motion.
Write out Emotions
Take a moment to write down the emotion — negative, positive, or somewhere in between — and why it affected you. This way, you can learn more about yourself and express yourself to others with ease. Sometimes seeing it on paper or in front of us can help us better understand them too.
Accept Emotions
If you’re feeling sad, allow yourself to cry instead of holding back tears. If you’re feeling happy, smile and let others know. The sooner you acknowledge the feeling, the sooner you can move through it.
Investigate: Making the Unconscious, Conscious
Tune into where emotions are coming from, what they mean and the needs your emotion is trying to express.
As Carl Jung says, "until we make the unconscious, conscious, it directs our life and we call it fate." So see emotions as a plant in the garden of your consciousness. Trace it's roots back down to it's source. Perhaps in childhood or a previous experience. When you understand the root of what you're dealing with, it becomes easier to manage and eventually transcend. For me, working with a therapist has been integral to understanding the needs my emotions express.
Move Intuitively
Remember we are physical beings and a big part of processing emotion is to move. Emotion is energy in motion, and it helps a great deal neurologically and biologically to move our bodies when it comes to balancing our body budget and managing emotions.
Move in a way that feels good right now if you're able. For example, roll your wrists, ankles, or head from side to side. Notice how it changes the sensations in your body, even in the slightest.
Move, shake, groove, baby. And if you're so inclined, get up and move in a way that feels right for you. Dance, jiggle, wiggle, jump up and down, give yourself a hug, scream into a pillow, flex your muscles, writhe and contort your body in whatever way you want, do interpretive dance or an Irish jig. Cry, smile, laugh, and hug a tree, loved one, or pet. Take your shoes off, and feel the earth under your soles. Listen to your body and ask it what it needs.
Practice & Patience
Feeling takes practice and patience, especially if you've been disconnected from yourself. So give yourself grace, meet your inner critic with compassion, and make time to be still and connect with your internal state.
Allow yourself to feel weird, awkward or embarrassed. Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life. It's how we learn, grow and actualize our potential.
You are thinking, FEELING, and EMOTIONAL being, so don't forget to pay attention to your emotions.
In summary of this episode, I was going to say I feel this is a lot of information I included. But that's a thought, not an emotion. So I will say instead, I think it's a lot of information. So if you didn't retain everything, that's ok. I'll be elaborating on these topics in new episodes. Please let me know your feedback, too, as it will help me structure this podcast the most effectively for you.
So, in summary, we learned:
That's it for this episode. If you enjoyed this, I would be grateful if you left a review wherever you're listening. Also, feel free to send this to someone you care about who could use a gentle reminder to tune into the feelings and emotions alive within them.
Check out the Sprowt: Emotion Meditation app if you'd like to be guided through feeling, understanding and processing emotions. New content is uploaded weekly, and this week's practice is Trust.
And lastly, breathe air with flair, be self-aware and take care.
Remember to grow through what you go through.
Emotional regards 'til next time
- Marina
Hello, welcome to the first episode of the feel, heal, grow show. This episode we discuss Feel, the importance of feeling emotions. I'm excited and a little bit nervous to bring this to you as it's the first episode. But I'm sure throughout the creation of this podcast we can feel, heal and grow together.
Here's a brief introduction to who I am. My name is Marina Vander Heyden, and I am the founder of Sprowt. An app to help you feel your emotions, heal painful perceptions and grow into your best self. I am an emotional intelligence practitioner, meditation teacher, cognitive behavioural therapy practitioner, hypnotherapist, breathwork facilitator and life-long learner, to name a few things.
Having struggled with mental and emotional health for most of my life, I've experienced how the state of my inner world affects every aspect of my outer reality. I believe understanding and nurturing the layers of ourselves is how we can make the most of this human experience and inspire others to do the same.
In this podcast, my goal is to help you embody wisdom with the application of knowledge to feel adaptable, peaceful and resilient in daily life.
So, welcome. Take a deep breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Relax your jaw and shoulders, and settle in for a journey within.
Let's get right into it. Feelings and emotions can seem burdensome when you have been conditioned to think of them as weakness.
But they do not exist to be avoided or condemned. They have a purpose. Emotions are messengers from the intelligence of our whole being. They provide essential information we need to understand ourselves, meet our needs, and develop meaningful relationships with others.
By tuning into our emotions, acknowledging them, allowing them to arise, and inquiring into their source, we develop a deeper sense of self-awareness. And to know thyself is the foundation to leading a fulfilling life.
If I've learned anything in life, it's that everyone has a story and has experienced pain and suffering in some sense. It's unavoidable in the human experience. Sometimes pain alters our perception and can causes us to live from a place of fear, rather than love. But the beauty of being human is the plasticity of our brains. We have a miraculous ability to change. And that's why...
Healing is the next podcast topic, so stay tuned for this 🙂
In connecting with the emotions alive within us and communicating with them to understand our needs and desires and being mindful of the context we're experiencing them in, we can learn to make peace with them. And perhaps heal painful responses. Transforming pain into compassion.
While it's important to feel emotions, it's important to balance mind and heart to use emotion intelligently. We must use emotions as data, not directives.
When you’re able to recognize emotion as a piece of information or data at a a given moment — then you can use this information to move forward. Bottling up or repressing emotions also negatively affect wellbeing, relationships, work, stress and much more. As humans we are wired for connection. Repressing our expression goes against our biology. In my personal experience, repressing emotions has led to them getting stronger and stronger until they boil over in overwhelming and uncontrollable way, like panic attacks, major depressive episodes or fits of rage. That's why I've found it absolutely transformative to tune into my emotions and process them as they occur, to keep them balanced and manageable.
Giving yourself permission to feel — to truly feel — is a superpower. And it can help you get better at regulating and accepting your emotions. Because once we understand our emotions and where they come from, we can manage our responses to them to serve our greatest good.
Emotions affect almost every aspect of out life and how we live. Including motivation, learning, growth, development, survival, attention, memory, decision-making, problem-solving, connection and attachment to others, career, passions, fulfillment, creativity and overall well-being.
And when we're enduring hardships and challenges, emotion can seem like more of a burden than a blessing. But with practice, you can learn how to transform even painful emotions into beautiful reminders of your aliveness.
I can't forget to mention intuition, the fleeting first sign of emotion, often called a
"gut feeling" can keep you safe from harm in ways the mind can't always comprehend. And I have to admit, if I had listened to my intuition more, I wouldn't have had to endure half the hardship I've experienced. Or at least would have navigated it more effectively.
Let's touch in the importance of emotions in relationships. As babies, emotions are how we communicate before we can speak. Crying, screaming, smiling, squealing are all signs of our internal state, an expression of our needs and a way to communicate with those around us.
Being aware of our emotions and their needs is at the core of effective interpersonal communication as well. This is a core tenant of Marshall Rosenberg's book, "Non-Violent Communication."
Understanding our own emotions and feelings lays the foundation to expressing them them openly and authentically to others. And also enables us to understand what another person may be experiencing. This allows us to feel seen, heard and understood and also to see, hear and understand another.
I will say, when it comes to developing meaningful relationships with others, whether your partner, spouse, children, friends, family or professional relationships, vulnerability is strength when used with discretion. Showing and expressing our emotions in the right context deepens interpersonal connection and understanding.
And when we know our own emotions and where they come from, it becomes less scary to share them with others. Because we all experience emotions, albeit in different ways. If we don't understand them, there can be fear around showing or expressing emotion, because it may seem like they're out of control. But when you're aware of and have the tools to regulate emotions, you can interact from a place of love, openness and curiosity instead of fear, reactivity and defensiveness.
Let's discuss the difference between thoughts, feelings and emotions.
Distinguishing the difference between thoughts, feelings, and emotions is important because western society tends to be caught up in the heads to think of emotion as a weakness and not see its value. But we are not just thinking heads; we are thinking, feeling, full-body beings. And to feel whole and well, we must treat ourselves as such.
Now there's debate among experts on how to define emotions. So rather than get caught up with this, here we aim to understand the relationship between thoughts, feelings and emotions.
Thoughts are contents of the mind. These mental occurrences can influence how we feel. Particularly when we allow our attention to get carried away by a thought and pulled into a spiral of other thoughts.
Feeling is a word we use to describe the emotions our body is experiencing. Emotions originate as sensations in the body. Feeling is the bridge of awareness connecting thought and emotion. It is our mind's perception of emotion.
But we run into trouble when we use the words "like" or "as though" after expressing how we feel. Because "like" or "as though" used after "I feel" represent intellectualizing emotions. Or confusing thoughts with emotions. So consider these phrases: "I feel like you don't care" or "I feel as though I'm on top of the world." You cannot actually feel these experiences in your body. These are the contents of the mind. Instead, you could say, I feel misunderstood, or I feel empowered.
It can be lexically confusing. Because we can feel emotions while feeling and emotion are different things. Let us be bound by the idea instead of the limits of words.
So we've discussed thoughts and feelings. We've learned emotions originate as sensations in the body. Whereas feelings are influenced by emotions but are generated from thoughts. Now let's discuss emotions. Now as I mentioned there is a debate among experts on a definitive definition of emotion. So to understand what emotions are, let's get into how they're created. Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is a respected neuroscientist among the top 1% most cited scientists worldwide for her ground breaking research in psychology and neuroscience. And she developed the theory of constructed emotion.
This is a vast topic, eloquently described in her book "How Emotions Are Made" (which I will put in the show notes). So I'm going to try to put it simply. The theory of constructed emotion states that for our brain to operate most efficiently, it uses past experiences and a wide variety of other factors as a guide to making predictions on how we should respond to certain stimuli. This includes but is not limited to: the state of your nervous system, hormone levels, satiety, energy levels, the vocabulary of emotions and perceptions of past experiences. This all adds to your brain's and body's generalizations of emotions you experience as pleasant or unpleasant, high or low.
These experiences occur because it's our mind's way of balancing our body budget. Our body budget is how your brain budgets energy in the body to keep you well and alive. To ensure our body budget is balanced, the brain anticipates and attempts to satisfy the body's needs even before the need arises.
For composing 2% of our total mass, the brain uses about 20% of our energy, so to operate most efficiently, it has become a prediction and meaning-making machine inside our skull.
It's also interesting to note that there are no biological fingerprints of emotion in the brain or facial expressions. This means feelings and emotions are unique to each and every individual. Emotion does not have unique and consistent visible expression across individuals or even within the same individual across instances.
Although it is also interesting to note that a team of scientists in Finland asked people to map out where they felt different emotions in their bodies, they found that the results were surprisingly consistent, even across cultures. This exciting graphic may help you connect with how emotions are experienced in your body, so I will include this image in the episode transcript on our website. Or you can just Google heat map of emotions.
Some time ago, I asked Dr. Feldman Barrett on Twitter how she could describe the theory of constructed emotion to a 5-year-old, and this is how she replied...
"Interesting question. I probably wouldn't describe the theory itself but would (1) point out the huge variety of what a single facial movement means, like a smile, and (2) talk about the emotional experiences of storybook characters and how the characters could help themselves."
Then she included an excerpt from her book on the importance of developing emotional awareness in children. Now I think this is important because, as adults and our beautiful capacity of neuroplasticity, we train ourselves to change how we feel about and experience emotions. So here is the excerpt.
"Speak to a child about emotions and other mental states as early as possible, even if you think they are too young to understand. Remember that infants develop concepts well before you realize it is happening. So look children straight in the eye, widen your eyes to grab their attention, and speak about bodily sensations and movements in terms of emotions and other mental states. "See that little boy? He is crying. He is feeling pain from falling down and scraping his knee. He is sad and probably wants a hug from his parents." Elaborate on the feelings of storybook characters, your children's emotions, and your emotions. Use a wide variety of emotion words. Talk about what causes emotions and what their consequences are to others. Think of yourself as your children's tour guide through the mysterious world of humans and their movements and sounds. Your detailed explanations help your children build a well-developed conceptual system for emotion.20
When you teach emotion concepts to children, you are doing more than communicating. You are creating a reality for these kids— a social reality. You're handing them tools to regulate their body budget, to make meaning of their sensations and act on them, to communicate how they feel, and to influence others."
Excerpt From How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett
Ok, so we've talked about thoughts, feelings, emotions, how emotions are made, our body budget and how our brain is a prediction-making machine. I hope this expanded awareness and provided an understanding of feelings and emotions. Although when I first learned about the theory of constructed emotions, it opened a can of worms as to why I am the way I am and prompted a brief existential crisis of sorts. That's not my intention, of course. Sometimes learning new perspectives or ways to understand the human experience can be uncomfortable because it pushes the limits of our knowledge. But pushing the limits of what we know is how we grow.
Now let's discuss language. An integral aspect of feeling, understanding and differentiating emotion. To quote Brené Brown, a prominent psychologist, researcher, author and lecturer researching shame, vulnerability, and leadership,
"Language is the greatest tool for meaningful connection, and having access to the right words changes everything."
"Language is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning, and self-awareness."
From her book Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brené Brown.
In fact, our vocabulary of emotions directly relates to the depth at which we can experience them.
In Brené Brown'sBrown's research on shame resilience, they asked participants in the training workshops to list all the emotions they could recognize and name as they were experiencing them. Then, over five years, they collected surveys from more than seven thousand people. The average number of emotions called across the surveys was three. The emotions were happy, sad, and angry.
We know our brains are meaning-making machines and strive to categorize experiences to make sense of the world. To do this internally and within our communication with others, having the correct language to describe emotions is integral.
Here's a quote from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, from Atlas of the Heart:
"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." What does it mean if the vastness of human emotion and experience can only be expressed as mad, sad, or happy? What about shame, disappointment, wonder, awe, disgust, embarrassment, despair, contentment, boredom, anxiety, stress, love, overwhelm, surprise, and all of the other emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human?"
I feel this quote deeply as I've been learning to expand my emotional vocabulary for some time now and have noticed the profound impact on my well-being.
To expand your emotions vocabulary, you can check out an emotion wheel and maybe make it the background of your phone. I highly recommend the book Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown. And if you're a bitter-sweet kind of soul like me, the book the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is phenomenal for new, more profound, emotional words.
Alexithymia: an inability to identify and express or describe one's feelings
The german word Freudenfreude means to derive joy from another's joy. This is the opposite of the word schadenfreude which means to derive joy from someone's misfortune. Gotta admit we've all done this at some point.
Sonder: The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it
Liberos: the desire to care less about things.
The german word backpfeifengesicht means "a face in need of a fist." I don't condone violence, but I think this word is funny and relatable. (pronunciation)
The dutch word gezellig - is difficult to translate but basically means having an inviting and friendly ambiance; cozy, nice, pleasant, sociable. This could be related to conviviality or fun. My family is dutch, and I grew up hearing it, although I'm Canadian, so I feel this deeply.
The Brazillian Portuguese word cafuné - means to tenderly or affectionately run your fingers through one's hair, whether a loved human or pet.
The Chinese word xin (pronunciation) which doesn't differentiate between the heart and the mind but refers to both together, as our core.
Please give me some grace if I accidentally mispronounce any of these words in your language. My Canadian accent will faithfully shine through.
And lastly, ineffable, although there are many more words I adore.
Ineffability is the quality of something that surpasses the capacity of language to express it. These are usually experiences that inspire wonder beyond what words can express. I suppose the emotions we don't yet have words for are ineffable.
I would love to know what emotion words you have in your language that don't exist in English and what they mean. So send me a tweet with your words @marinavanderh!
Now let's get to the good part. How to feel emotions.
You can feel emotions by connecting to how you're experiencing them in the body. Notice sensations. Breathe deeply. Breathe into them. Feel your breath stoking the fire of your liveliness.
Interoception
Interoception is the perception of sensations from inside the body. It includes the perception of physical sensations related to internal organ functions such as heartbeat, respiration, and satiety, as well as the autonomic nervous system activity related to emotions.
Strengthen interoceptive abilities by tuning into your breath. How deeply are you breathing? How fast are you breathing? Can you notice the space between inhale and exhale?
Notice your heart rate. Put two fingers on your neck just below your jawbone. Count how many times your heart beats in 15 seconds and multiply by 4 to get your heart rate.
Observe satiety and digestion. The last time you ate, what you ate, how it made you feel and how hydrated you are.
Assess your energy level. High or low, pleasant or unpleasant. Remember how you slept and if food, supplements or medication could influence this.
Stillness
Be still for a moment as often as you can. At least every day. Notice how the sensations in your body shift from moment to moment. If you don't even know where to start with being still and allowing emotions, Sprowt meditations can offer some guidance.
Give Yourself Permission
Give yourself permission to feel and experience the energy alive within you. Emotion is energy in motion.
Write out Emotions
Take a moment to write down the emotion — negative, positive, or somewhere in between — and why it affected you. This way, you can learn more about yourself and express yourself to others with ease. Sometimes seeing it on paper or in front of us can help us better understand them too.
Accept Emotions
If you’re feeling sad, allow yourself to cry instead of holding back tears. If you’re feeling happy, smile and let others know. The sooner you acknowledge the feeling, the sooner you can move through it.
Investigate: Making the Unconscious, Conscious
Tune into where emotions are coming from, what they mean and the needs your emotion is trying to express.
As Carl Jung says, "until we make the unconscious, conscious, it directs our life and we call it fate." So see emotions as a plant in the garden of your consciousness. Trace it's roots back down to it's source. Perhaps in childhood or a previous experience. When you understand the root of what you're dealing with, it becomes easier to manage and eventually transcend. For me, working with a therapist has been integral to understanding the needs my emotions express.
Move Intuitively
Remember we are physical beings and a big part of processing emotion is to move. Emotion is energy in motion, and it helps a great deal neurologically and biologically to move our bodies when it comes to balancing our body budget and managing emotions.
Move in a way that feels good right now if you're able. For example, roll your wrists, ankles, or head from side to side. Notice how it changes the sensations in your body, even in the slightest.
Move, shake, groove, baby. And if you're so inclined, get up and move in a way that feels right for you. Dance, jiggle, wiggle, jump up and down, give yourself a hug, scream into a pillow, flex your muscles, writhe and contort your body in whatever way you want, do interpretive dance or an Irish jig. Cry, smile, laugh, and hug a tree, loved one, or pet. Take your shoes off, and feel the earth under your soles. Listen to your body and ask it what it needs.
Practice & Patience
Feeling takes practice and patience, especially if you've been disconnected from yourself. So give yourself grace, meet your inner critic with compassion, and make time to be still and connect with your internal state.
Allow yourself to feel weird, awkward or embarrassed. Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life. It's how we learn, grow and actualize our potential.
You are thinking, FEELING, and EMOTIONAL being, so don't forget to pay attention to your emotions.
In summary of this episode, I was going to say I feel this is a lot of information I included. But that's a thought, not an emotion. So I will say instead, I think it's a lot of information. So if you didn't retain everything, that's ok. I'll be elaborating on these topics in new episodes. Please let me know your feedback, too, as it will help me structure this podcast the most effectively for you.
So, in summary, we learned:
That's it for this episode. If you enjoyed this, I would be grateful if you left a review wherever you're listening. Also, feel free to send this to someone you care about who could use a gentle reminder to tune into the feelings and emotions alive within them.
Check out the Sprowt: Emotion Meditation app if you'd like to be guided through feeling, understanding and processing emotions. New content is uploaded weekly, and this week's practice is Trust.
And lastly, breathe air with flair, be self-aware and take care.
Remember to grow through what you go through.
Emotional regards 'til next time
- Marina
Hello, welcome to the first episode of the feel, heal, grow show. This episode we discuss Feel, the importance of feeling emotions. I'm excited and a little bit nervous to bring this to you as it's the first episode. But I'm sure throughout the creation of this podcast we can feel, heal and grow together.
Here's a brief introduction to who I am. My name is Marina Vander Heyden, and I am the founder of Sprowt. An app to help you feel your emotions, heal painful perceptions and grow into your best self. I am an emotional intelligence practitioner, meditation teacher, cognitive behavioural therapy practitioner, hypnotherapist, breathwork facilitator and life-long learner, to name a few things.
Having struggled with mental and emotional health for most of my life, I've experienced how the state of my inner world affects every aspect of my outer reality. I believe understanding and nurturing the layers of ourselves is how we can make the most of this human experience and inspire others to do the same.
In this podcast, my goal is to help you embody wisdom with the application of knowledge to feel adaptable, peaceful and resilient in daily life.
So, welcome. Take a deep breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Relax your jaw and shoulders, and settle in for a journey within.
Let's get right into it. Feelings and emotions can seem burdensome when you have been conditioned to think of them as weakness.
But they do not exist to be avoided or condemned. They have a purpose. Emotions are messengers from the intelligence of our whole being. They provide essential information we need to understand ourselves, meet our needs, and develop meaningful relationships with others.
By tuning into our emotions, acknowledging them, allowing them to arise, and inquiring into their source, we develop a deeper sense of self-awareness. And to know thyself is the foundation to leading a fulfilling life.
If I've learned anything in life, it's that everyone has a story and has experienced pain and suffering in some sense. It's unavoidable in the human experience. Sometimes pain alters our perception and can causes us to live from a place of fear, rather than love. But the beauty of being human is the plasticity of our brains. We have a miraculous ability to change. And that's why...
Healing is the next podcast topic, so stay tuned for this 🙂
In connecting with the emotions alive within us and communicating with them to understand our needs and desires and being mindful of the context we're experiencing them in, we can learn to make peace with them. And perhaps heal painful responses. Transforming pain into compassion.
While it's important to feel emotions, it's important to balance mind and heart to use emotion intelligently. We must use emotions as data, not directives.
When you’re able to recognize emotion as a piece of information or data at a a given moment — then you can use this information to move forward. Bottling up or repressing emotions also negatively affect wellbeing, relationships, work, stress and much more. As humans we are wired for connection. Repressing our expression goes against our biology. In my personal experience, repressing emotions has led to them getting stronger and stronger until they boil over in overwhelming and uncontrollable way, like panic attacks, major depressive episodes or fits of rage. That's why I've found it absolutely transformative to tune into my emotions and process them as they occur, to keep them balanced and manageable.
Giving yourself permission to feel — to truly feel — is a superpower. And it can help you get better at regulating and accepting your emotions. Because once we understand our emotions and where they come from, we can manage our responses to them to serve our greatest good.
Emotions affect almost every aspect of out life and how we live. Including motivation, learning, growth, development, survival, attention, memory, decision-making, problem-solving, connection and attachment to others, career, passions, fulfillment, creativity and overall well-being.
And when we're enduring hardships and challenges, emotion can seem like more of a burden than a blessing. But with practice, you can learn how to transform even painful emotions into beautiful reminders of your aliveness.
I can't forget to mention intuition, the fleeting first sign of emotion, often called a
"gut feeling" can keep you safe from harm in ways the mind can't always comprehend. And I have to admit, if I had listened to my intuition more, I wouldn't have had to endure half the hardship I've experienced. Or at least would have navigated it more effectively.
Let's touch in the importance of emotions in relationships. As babies, emotions are how we communicate before we can speak. Crying, screaming, smiling, squealing are all signs of our internal state, an expression of our needs and a way to communicate with those around us.
Being aware of our emotions and their needs is at the core of effective interpersonal communication as well. This is a core tenant of Marshall Rosenberg's book, "Non-Violent Communication."
Understanding our own emotions and feelings lays the foundation to expressing them them openly and authentically to others. And also enables us to understand what another person may be experiencing. This allows us to feel seen, heard and understood and also to see, hear and understand another.
I will say, when it comes to developing meaningful relationships with others, whether your partner, spouse, children, friends, family or professional relationships, vulnerability is strength when used with discretion. Showing and expressing our emotions in the right context deepens interpersonal connection and understanding.
And when we know our own emotions and where they come from, it becomes less scary to share them with others. Because we all experience emotions, albeit in different ways. If we don't understand them, there can be fear around showing or expressing emotion, because it may seem like they're out of control. But when you're aware of and have the tools to regulate emotions, you can interact from a place of love, openness and curiosity instead of fear, reactivity and defensiveness.
Let's discuss the difference between thoughts, feelings and emotions.
Distinguishing the difference between thoughts, feelings, and emotions is important because western society tends to be caught up in the heads to think of emotion as a weakness and not see its value. But we are not just thinking heads; we are thinking, feeling, full-body beings. And to feel whole and well, we must treat ourselves as such.
Now there's debate among experts on how to define emotions. So rather than get caught up with this, here we aim to understand the relationship between thoughts, feelings and emotions.
Thoughts are contents of the mind. These mental occurrences can influence how we feel. Particularly when we allow our attention to get carried away by a thought and pulled into a spiral of other thoughts.
Feeling is a word we use to describe the emotions our body is experiencing. Emotions originate as sensations in the body. Feeling is the bridge of awareness connecting thought and emotion. It is our mind's perception of emotion.
But we run into trouble when we use the words "like" or "as though" after expressing how we feel. Because "like" or "as though" used after "I feel" represent intellectualizing emotions. Or confusing thoughts with emotions. So consider these phrases: "I feel like you don't care" or "I feel as though I'm on top of the world." You cannot actually feel these experiences in your body. These are the contents of the mind. Instead, you could say, I feel misunderstood, or I feel empowered.
It can be lexically confusing. Because we can feel emotions while feeling and emotion are different things. Let us be bound by the idea instead of the limits of words.
So we've discussed thoughts and feelings. We've learned emotions originate as sensations in the body. Whereas feelings are influenced by emotions but are generated from thoughts. Now let's discuss emotions. Now as I mentioned there is a debate among experts on a definitive definition of emotion. So to understand what emotions are, let's get into how they're created. Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett is a respected neuroscientist among the top 1% most cited scientists worldwide for her ground breaking research in psychology and neuroscience. And she developed the theory of constructed emotion.
This is a vast topic, eloquently described in her book "How Emotions Are Made" (which I will put in the show notes). So I'm going to try to put it simply. The theory of constructed emotion states that for our brain to operate most efficiently, it uses past experiences and a wide variety of other factors as a guide to making predictions on how we should respond to certain stimuli. This includes but is not limited to: the state of your nervous system, hormone levels, satiety, energy levels, the vocabulary of emotions and perceptions of past experiences. This all adds to your brain's and body's generalizations of emotions you experience as pleasant or unpleasant, high or low.
These experiences occur because it's our mind's way of balancing our body budget. Our body budget is how your brain budgets energy in the body to keep you well and alive. To ensure our body budget is balanced, the brain anticipates and attempts to satisfy the body's needs even before the need arises.
For composing 2% of our total mass, the brain uses about 20% of our energy, so to operate most efficiently, it has become a prediction and meaning-making machine inside our skull.
It's also interesting to note that there are no biological fingerprints of emotion in the brain or facial expressions. This means feelings and emotions are unique to each and every individual. Emotion does not have unique and consistent visible expression across individuals or even within the same individual across instances.
Although it is also interesting to note that a team of scientists in Finland asked people to map out where they felt different emotions in their bodies, they found that the results were surprisingly consistent, even across cultures. This exciting graphic may help you connect with how emotions are experienced in your body, so I will include this image in the episode transcript on our website. Or you can just Google heat map of emotions.
Some time ago, I asked Dr. Feldman Barrett on Twitter how she could describe the theory of constructed emotion to a 5-year-old, and this is how she replied...
"Interesting question. I probably wouldn't describe the theory itself but would (1) point out the huge variety of what a single facial movement means, like a smile, and (2) talk about the emotional experiences of storybook characters and how the characters could help themselves."
Then she included an excerpt from her book on the importance of developing emotional awareness in children. Now I think this is important because, as adults and our beautiful capacity of neuroplasticity, we train ourselves to change how we feel about and experience emotions. So here is the excerpt.
"Speak to a child about emotions and other mental states as early as possible, even if you think they are too young to understand. Remember that infants develop concepts well before you realize it is happening. So look children straight in the eye, widen your eyes to grab their attention, and speak about bodily sensations and movements in terms of emotions and other mental states. "See that little boy? He is crying. He is feeling pain from falling down and scraping his knee. He is sad and probably wants a hug from his parents." Elaborate on the feelings of storybook characters, your children's emotions, and your emotions. Use a wide variety of emotion words. Talk about what causes emotions and what their consequences are to others. Think of yourself as your children's tour guide through the mysterious world of humans and their movements and sounds. Your detailed explanations help your children build a well-developed conceptual system for emotion.20
When you teach emotion concepts to children, you are doing more than communicating. You are creating a reality for these kids— a social reality. You're handing them tools to regulate their body budget, to make meaning of their sensations and act on them, to communicate how they feel, and to influence others."
Excerpt From How Emotions Are Made by Lisa Feldman Barrett
Ok, so we've talked about thoughts, feelings, emotions, how emotions are made, our body budget and how our brain is a prediction-making machine. I hope this expanded awareness and provided an understanding of feelings and emotions. Although when I first learned about the theory of constructed emotions, it opened a can of worms as to why I am the way I am and prompted a brief existential crisis of sorts. That's not my intention, of course. Sometimes learning new perspectives or ways to understand the human experience can be uncomfortable because it pushes the limits of our knowledge. But pushing the limits of what we know is how we grow.
Now let's discuss language. An integral aspect of feeling, understanding and differentiating emotion. To quote Brené Brown, a prominent psychologist, researcher, author and lecturer researching shame, vulnerability, and leadership,
"Language is the greatest tool for meaningful connection, and having access to the right words changes everything."
"Language is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning, and self-awareness."
From her book Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brené Brown.
In fact, our vocabulary of emotions directly relates to the depth at which we can experience them.
In Brené Brown'sBrown's research on shame resilience, they asked participants in the training workshops to list all the emotions they could recognize and name as they were experiencing them. Then, over five years, they collected surveys from more than seven thousand people. The average number of emotions called across the surveys was three. The emotions were happy, sad, and angry.
We know our brains are meaning-making machines and strive to categorize experiences to make sense of the world. To do this internally and within our communication with others, having the correct language to describe emotions is integral.
Here's a quote from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, from Atlas of the Heart:
"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." What does it mean if the vastness of human emotion and experience can only be expressed as mad, sad, or happy? What about shame, disappointment, wonder, awe, disgust, embarrassment, despair, contentment, boredom, anxiety, stress, love, overwhelm, surprise, and all of the other emotions and experiences that define what it means to be human?"
I feel this quote deeply as I've been learning to expand my emotional vocabulary for some time now and have noticed the profound impact on my well-being.
To expand your emotions vocabulary, you can check out an emotion wheel and maybe make it the background of your phone. I highly recommend the book Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown. And if you're a bitter-sweet kind of soul like me, the book the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is phenomenal for new, more profound, emotional words.
Alexithymia: an inability to identify and express or describe one's feelings
The german word Freudenfreude means to derive joy from another's joy. This is the opposite of the word schadenfreude which means to derive joy from someone's misfortune. Gotta admit we've all done this at some point.
Sonder: The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it
Liberos: the desire to care less about things.
The german word backpfeifengesicht means "a face in need of a fist." I don't condone violence, but I think this word is funny and relatable. (pronunciation)
The dutch word gezellig - is difficult to translate but basically means having an inviting and friendly ambiance; cozy, nice, pleasant, sociable. This could be related to conviviality or fun. My family is dutch, and I grew up hearing it, although I'm Canadian, so I feel this deeply.
The Brazillian Portuguese word cafuné - means to tenderly or affectionately run your fingers through one's hair, whether a loved human or pet.
The Chinese word xin (pronunciation) which doesn't differentiate between the heart and the mind but refers to both together, as our core.
Please give me some grace if I accidentally mispronounce any of these words in your language. My Canadian accent will faithfully shine through.
And lastly, ineffable, although there are many more words I adore.
Ineffability is the quality of something that surpasses the capacity of language to express it. These are usually experiences that inspire wonder beyond what words can express. I suppose the emotions we don't yet have words for are ineffable.
I would love to know what emotion words you have in your language that don't exist in English and what they mean. So send me a tweet with your words @marinavanderh!
Now let's get to the good part. How to feel emotions.
You can feel emotions by connecting to how you're experiencing them in the body. Notice sensations. Breathe deeply. Breathe into them. Feel your breath stoking the fire of your liveliness.
Interoception
Interoception is the perception of sensations from inside the body. It includes the perception of physical sensations related to internal organ functions such as heartbeat, respiration, and satiety, as well as the autonomic nervous system activity related to emotions.
Strengthen interoceptive abilities by tuning into your breath. How deeply are you breathing? How fast are you breathing? Can you notice the space between inhale and exhale?
Notice your heart rate. Put two fingers on your neck just below your jawbone. Count how many times your heart beats in 15 seconds and multiply by 4 to get your heart rate.
Observe satiety and digestion. The last time you ate, what you ate, how it made you feel and how hydrated you are.
Assess your energy level. High or low, pleasant or unpleasant. Remember how you slept and if food, supplements or medication could influence this.
Stillness
Be still for a moment as often as you can. At least every day. Notice how the sensations in your body shift from moment to moment. If you don't even know where to start with being still and allowing emotions, Sprowt meditations can offer some guidance.
Give Yourself Permission
Give yourself permission to feel and experience the energy alive within you. Emotion is energy in motion.
Write out Emotions
Take a moment to write down the emotion — negative, positive, or somewhere in between — and why it affected you. This way, you can learn more about yourself and express yourself to others with ease. Sometimes seeing it on paper or in front of us can help us better understand them too.
Accept Emotions
If you’re feeling sad, allow yourself to cry instead of holding back tears. If you’re feeling happy, smile and let others know. The sooner you acknowledge the feeling, the sooner you can move through it.
Investigate: Making the Unconscious, Conscious
Tune into where emotions are coming from, what they mean and the needs your emotion is trying to express.
As Carl Jung says, "until we make the unconscious, conscious, it directs our life and we call it fate." So see emotions as a plant in the garden of your consciousness. Trace it's roots back down to it's source. Perhaps in childhood or a previous experience. When you understand the root of what you're dealing with, it becomes easier to manage and eventually transcend. For me, working with a therapist has been integral to understanding the needs my emotions express.
Move Intuitively
Remember we are physical beings and a big part of processing emotion is to move. Emotion is energy in motion, and it helps a great deal neurologically and biologically to move our bodies when it comes to balancing our body budget and managing emotions.
Move in a way that feels good right now if you're able. For example, roll your wrists, ankles, or head from side to side. Notice how it changes the sensations in your body, even in the slightest.
Move, shake, groove, baby. And if you're so inclined, get up and move in a way that feels right for you. Dance, jiggle, wiggle, jump up and down, give yourself a hug, scream into a pillow, flex your muscles, writhe and contort your body in whatever way you want, do interpretive dance or an Irish jig. Cry, smile, laugh, and hug a tree, loved one, or pet. Take your shoes off, and feel the earth under your soles. Listen to your body and ask it what it needs.
Practice & Patience
Feeling takes practice and patience, especially if you've been disconnected from yourself. So give yourself grace, meet your inner critic with compassion, and make time to be still and connect with your internal state.
Allow yourself to feel weird, awkward or embarrassed. Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life. It's how we learn, grow and actualize our potential.
You are thinking, FEELING, and EMOTIONAL being, so don't forget to pay attention to your emotions.
In summary of this episode, I was going to say I feel this is a lot of information I included. But that's a thought, not an emotion. So I will say instead, I think it's a lot of information. So if you didn't retain everything, that's ok. I'll be elaborating on these topics in new episodes. Please let me know your feedback, too, as it will help me structure this podcast the most effectively for you.
So, in summary, we learned:
That's it for this episode. If you enjoyed this, I would be grateful if you left a review wherever you're listening. Also, feel free to send this to someone you care about who could use a gentle reminder to tune into the feelings and emotions alive within them.
Check out the Sprowt: Emotion Meditation app if you'd like to be guided through feeling, understanding and processing emotions. New content is uploaded weekly, and this week's practice is Trust.
And lastly, breathe air with flair, be self-aware and take care.
Remember to grow through what you go through.
Emotional regards 'til next time
- Marina
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