Get to know yourself by labelling emotions
How has labelling my emotions helped me get to know my truest self? Because when we get specific about emotions, when we truly understand what it is we’re feeling in different situations, we hear our true self speaking.
Emotions are your soul whispering, your body sending you messages about what you want in the world. Communicating with you about whether your needs are being met or not.
What do emotions do?
Emotions show you what your values are. They highlight what brings you joy. They show you what you’re willing to stand for and what you’re not. They tell you who you’re here to love. They highlight what beliefs you have been conditioned to hold like scars across your chest. They show you what you’re hiding from. They communicate your needs.
“Emotions are nature’s way of telling you to stand up and listen to what’s going on around you, that something important is happening and you need to pay attention. ”
Emotions might be messy, uncomfortable, confusing, multi-layered. But within them, they hold so much information. They are messages to be listened to, to be heard. Messages that are guiding us to act.
But we don’t get taught this. We are told being ‘emotional’ is a negative thing, especially for women. We are taught to disregard our emotions, not to go with our gut, to choose the head over the heart. But the head is infused with the expectations of others, the demands of society, the small boxes we have learnt to put ourselves in. The head can never hold the true information of the heart.
What does the brain do when we label emotions?
Research shows that naming emotions literally decreases the activity in the brain that’s involved in determining danger (Creswell et al 2007). Maybe you’ve heard the phrase coined by neuropsychiatrist, Dan Siegel,
“Name it to tame it.”
When you feel strong emotions, your limbic brain, or your fight-or-flight stress response, takes over. You know when you’re feeling so emotional you literally can’t think straight, that’s because your brain can’t. By naming the emotion and acknowledging it, the more rational side of your brain kicks in so you don’t get so hijacked by the emotional limbic brain. If you can name it, you can tame it.
Getting to know how you feel
So how do you feel? And not just good, ok, bad. Specifically. You feel happy but is that because you feel inspired, hopeful, free, curious? You feel bad but is that because you feel pressured, unfocused, inadequate, exposed? What is it? What’s the yearning that’s coming from your soul, the message that’s guiding you to act?
By knowing how you truly feel, and specifically what part of that emotion is calling, you start to unpick the specific elements of a situation that highlight limiting beliefs you hold or highlight what’s holding you back. They highlight what joy is for you or they highlight what you want more of in your life.
It can be tricky when the extent of our language around emotion is limited. If we aren’t used to getting into the specifics of the message coming from our body, trying to listen to what it’s saying can be like tuning into a radio station that doesn’t want to be found. If you want to learn how to get more specific, the feelings wheel might help you identify what it is you’re feeling.
How to hear your emotions
So how have I learnt to hear what my emotions have to say? I have learnt to get quiet and listen. I have learnt to sit with my body and feel where that emotion is coming up. Is it in my chest, a constriction in my throat that makes it hard to swallow? Or an expansive opening in my chest that makes me feel one and part of the sky? Emotions arise in the body, they are somatic, they exist outside of the rational mind, before our thoughts begin to muddy the waters and twist true emotions with our own or the expectations of others.
When you feel excited, how do you know? Maybe you think it; it feels like your thoughts show it first. But the subconscious mind moves faster, it shows up in our body before it reaches rational thought. The faster heart beat, the smile on your face, the quickness of your pace, of movement or speech.
We need to feel into our body to understand our true emotions, the ones that have come from our soul within. The ones that express our needs. The ones that are real and pure, free of firm judgement, of being good or bad. The ones untainted by the mind’s fear thoughts and limiting beliefs. That is where our true self lies, where we can begin to understand our subconscious mind communicating to us through our body, where we can begin to act in alignment with the deepest yearnings of our soul.
Can you get quiet and listen?
Next time you feel a strong emotion arising inside you, can you get quiet and stop? Can you notice where you feel it in your body and allow it to be there without judgement? Show it kindness and ask inwardly, what are you trying to tell me? That is where your true self lies and, as you get quieter to listen, your true self will find a voice to be heard.
If you’d like to connect to your emotions more, learn how to use the Feelings Wheel to label emotions specifically.
With love,
Suzi x
Sources: Creswell, J. D., Baldwin, M., Way, N., Eisenburger, I. & Liberman, M.D. (2007) Neural Correlates of Dispositional Mindfulness During Affect Labeling. Psychosomatic Medicine, 69(6):560-565.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070622090727.htm
