Feeling Overwhelmed? You Are Not Your Emotions
Feeling overwhelmed is one of the most common emotional and psychological states experienced.
We are faced with a huge number of evolving emotions in our daily lives and so it’s no wonder that they can sometimes club together and make us feel like we can’t see the wood for the trees.
A mistake often made, is in assuming that we are those emotions and so to protect ourselves, avoidance is the only solution. However emotions are not to be feared, we need to learn to be present, and experience them in order to move through them.
What actually are emotions and what are they for?
Emotions are feedback, feelings, sensations. They are a complex range of reactions to significant situations. They are the expressive language of our body.
Emotions allow us to behave appropriately to our surroundings. However sometimes we can get swept up in the emotion itself and let it consume us. We are then in danger of ‘becoming the emotion’.
What should we be doing?
The danger with allowing our emotions to take over is that we lose perspective. If we react and attempt to fix the problem, or even to actively hide from it or wash it away immediately, then we risk having a poorly thought through, knee-jerk response.
Instead practice stillness and acknowledge this sensation. Allow yourself to be present in the emotion and explore why it is there and how it makes you feel.
It’s ok not to feel ok.
This works with others too. Our natural reaction when somebody tells us they don’t feel ok, is to try and fix it for them. We offer platitudes, helpful hints and what they should do next. We actively go in with the advice.
But it’s actually more useful to let that emotion sit for a while. Acknowledge what has been entrusted to you and give the information the respect it deserves.
Becoming your emotion
Getting stuck in one emotional state is easy and common. It’s like falling into a trench and walking along the length of it forever more, instead of standing still and looking up at the walls around you for a way back up and out onto the top.
We allow ourselves to be guided by that emotion, and hence don’t choose the path we actually want to take. The emotion is in control of our decisions. By taking time to slow down and face up to it, you gain that control back.
Thoughts are not facts
Our brains process thoughts all day long. They have the ability to create thought-states and possibilities as a safety mechanism, so that we can be ready to react at any moment.
Thoughts can elicit emotions. So it’s important to remember that thoughts are imagined outcomes and should not be confused with tangible facts. Events that have happened can be processed logically, you know the outcome and therefore can apply an appropriate emotion to it.
4 powerful ways to escape the emotional eddy:
Notice your thoughts. Do not judge them, but allow them to be there while you observe them. They are real and valid, but they are not facts.
Give your emotions the ability to physically shift. This means you can literally “shake it off” by moving, either going for a walk or run, having a dance or even cleaning the windows if it makes you happy. The energy generated in moving is extremely powerful.
Break the cycle of repetitively verbalising your emotion until you have dealt with it. You will only concretise the sensations and make it harder to change your thinking. You will start to believe that you are that emotion.
Reframe the narrative. Try saying “I feel sad” instead of “I am sad”. “I feel mad” not “I am mad”. A simple tool that allows you to be you.
Remember, you are not that emotion that you feel, it is merely within you, most probably for a valid reason.
Live it, explore it, embrace it, be ok with why you are feeling it. You don’t need to always be a solid tree trunk, sometimes you can be the leaves and float with the branches.
I wish you all the best,
Beata