Understanding and managing your emotions is not something we are generally taught while growing up.
If you were like me, you might have had a family that openly dismissed emotions – carting negative emotions into the “No good” box and only ever reinforcing “positive” emotions with rewards.
Even if you didn’t, emotions can be a tricky thing to navigate.
Society has created a dichotomy between “positive” and “negative” emotions.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy poses that we take a different, less judgmental look at our emotions.
Emotions are neither good nor bad – They are something that we experience that informs us of our state of mind and being. Every emotion provides us with a plethora of information about our boundaries, values, and focus. They also help show us how and why our behaviors are organized in specific ways around specific emotions.
For example: Anger organizes our responses to threats to our lives, health or well-being as well as those that are important and close to us. It is rooted in the belief that you might be harmed, rejected, criticized or disliked. It focuses our reactions and behavior on escape from danger and harm.
When we learn to understand our anger, it actually informs us of many things.
It teaches us why we are responding the way we are to something. It illuminates internal beliefs and schemas that we have created; which helps bring our behaviors and reactions from automatic to under our control.
Another important thing to remember is the emotion that we experience from an event is not due to the event itself, but due to our interpretation of that event.
The act of someone not answering my text message does not make me feel afraid. My interpretation of them not answering (they must be mad, maybe they hate me, maybe I did something wrong, etc.) is what creates the fear.
So what are the ins and outs of understanding and managing your emotions better?
- Understand your personal myths around emotions and challenge them.
- Learning about the core emotions we experience.
- Identify, Describe and Understand the emotion in question: We do this by riding the wave of the emotion – Following the triggering or prompting event, we have an interpretation of that event, which leads to an emotion, which leads to an expression of the emotion, which leads to aftereffects. These aftereffects make us more vulnerable to experiencing another event that triggers this emotional cycle.
- Identify which emotions are primary and which are secondary.
- Master the Model for Describing Emotions.
Take our 5-day Emotional Wave Challenge!
In these 5 days you will learn the ins and outs of how to concretely understand your emotions better, practice describing your emotions through use of the DBT model, learn how to identify your emotions and figure out which emotion is primary or secondary.
Riding the Wave alone can be difficult, so let us help get you started!
According to research, having accountability is incredibly important in completing difficult tasks. With free worksheets and detailed guidance – We will set you up for success in making emotions your new best friend!
I feel this poem by Rumi describes the experience of emotions deeply and how we can cultivate a better relationship and understanding with them.
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
— Jalaluddin Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks (The Essential Rumi)
