Emotions Are Talking, We Aren’t Listening
Last week I discussed figuring out your values and what can be important to you in order to work through your own journey of personal growth. So many clients I work with come in with anxiety or anger in their marriage, only to realize they don’t know who they are. Through all the changes of marriage, children, jobs, loss of parents, empty nest; we leave ourselves behind and get caught up in the hustle of life. That anxiety or anger is our bodies trying to tell us something, but we don’t know how to translate it.
Listening to your body is important. We talk about it in regards to working out, knowing when to take a rest day or a stretch day and not always pushing ourselves so damn hard. What about listening to your body for other things? Our body tries to tell us things all the time. There is even a whole book about how “The Body Keeps Score”. The problem is, we don’t often realize our body is talking.
As humans we are only good at recognizing happy, sad and mad. Honestly, we are only good at recognizing them on a surface level. Most people don’t really know what makes them happy or what happy feels like. There is a whole wheel of emotions. Pausing to notice when an emotion comes up is the first step in translating what our body is trying to tell us. When I look back at my first marriage, I can clearly see that my body was trying to tell me something. I remember having mood swings, not sleeping well and not making great decisions overall. Most importantly, I remember when I would think about my future, I knew where I was wasn’t right. There was a lot of anxiety and a sinking feeling of disappointment. I stayed in that relationship for about 6 years.
As a parent our emotions can really throw us for a loop. I tend to yell a lot when I have big emotions. My daughter will ask me to play outside the moment I pick her up from after school. I just got off work, I’m tired, its hot out and I haven't even gotten home to pee. I yell, why can’t she just wait until we get home, she just got done playing with friends all day. One day, I got really curious about this big yelling. When I dug deep, it wasn’t just about feeling guilty for yelling at her, it was guilt because I didn’t want to take her outside to play. Any parent would love for their kid to want to play outside and I should be grateful that we have a wonderful neighborhood. I felt like a crappy parent because all I wanted to do was sit in the recliner and stare into Tik Tok and not have to think. This helped me to see where I can be better. This doesn’t mean that I jump at the idea of going outside with my daughter right after work, but recognizing that I am doing the best I can and I can ask for what I need.
Our emotions are not just to help us interpret our relationships and reactions to others. And if you’re having trouble sleeping it doesn’t mean you should file for divorce. But our emotions can tell us when we are not living our best lives. That can be in friendships, jobs or making big decisions. Listening to your gut is sound advice, if you know what its saying.
So how do we start listening to our bodies? Get curious. Really dig into the difference between excitement and nervousness; they often feel similar. When you are angry, dig a little deeper. Anger is a “secondary” emotion and there are often more rooted emotions in there like shame, disappointment, loneliness. Many times in session when a client says they feel a certain way I will ask them to “check their body head to toe, where do you FEEL that?”. This is really hard for people at first, the idea of connecting head with heart. Once we are able to label our emotions, we can dig into what they mean and where they come from.
If you feel like you need help slowing down to recognize your emotions and are ready to step into a better version of yourself, give us call at 813-434-3639.
