Perhaps the best way to begin understanding the nature of emotional processing is to look at what it is not:
We are not processing our emotions when we suppress or repress our feelings, disassociate from them, deny them, disown them, or otherwise pull away from experiencing them directly. There are many reasons we turn away from our feelings. We may have learned or been shown at a young age that certain feelings are bad and we could get in trouble if we express them. We may think that we don’t know how to contain or hold certain confusing feelings, so we distract ourselves or deny strong feelings to keep a sense of order or acceptability.
If turning away from our feelings is the opposite of emotional processing, then turning towards our feelings in a deliberate, patient, open and curious way could be a way of describing what it is to process our emotions.
This open, curious turning toward our feelings is the key. Exactly how we achieve it is incidental - there are probably thousands of techniques and ways of achieving this. Today, I want to share three underlying, simple principles. These are fundamental principles that we can take with us into our lives, our meditations, our moments of conflict, and our moments of solitary, silent introspection. Emotional processing can occur across all of these landscapes of our lives.
But first, let me tell you a brief story.
Unresolved Feelings - The Child I Forgot
Several years ago, I was in a period of intense emotional work which involved daily meditation sessions. During these meditations, a scene from my childhood began to resurface repeatedly. It was a half-forgotten memory from when I was about five years old - a scene from when my family went on a weekend vacation to the big city.
I was very excited about this trip to the city and brought all of the money I’d saved up during my short life up until that time in a little wallet. I don’t remember exactly how much money that little wallet of mine contained, but I think it was about fifty dollars. This was money I had saved from small gifts of five dollars from a family member here or there, doing chores for my parents, etc. Altogether it was quite a significant fortune for my five-year-old self, and I was excited to spend it on cool things at the malls and shops of the city.
Before that dream shopping spree could happen, however, tragedy struck. On the second day of our brief visit to the city, my wallet went missing. I could not find it in my little suitcase. I could not find it in the room I was sharing with my siblings. After hours of restless searching and asking everyone around if they had seen it, a sinking feeling in my heart collapsed - it appeared as though my wallet, and my savings, were gone. For my five-year-old heart, this was a massive blow.
My parents were likely too consumed by the stress of travelling with a young family to be very present or supportive in my state of overwhelm and devastation. They told me to be more careful with things next time, and that was that.
When this memory spontaneously resurfaced during my meditations, it felt as though a part of me that I’d forgotten - this five-year-old, innocent part of me - was still crushed by the loss, unfairness, and futility of that experience. He was still sad and deflated by such a raw defeat.
This was a very interesting memory to have surfacing repeatedly and gave me food for thought. One day, when it resurfaced during a meditation session yet again, I realized how insufficient my contemplation alone was as a response to these feelings.
Suddenly it became clear that I had to do something to help out this hurting child inside of me. Feeling his sadness was one thing, but taking care of it was the next step.
In an instant, I hopped up from my meditation, threw on a sweater and headed toward the nearest mall. When I got to the mall, I went to a department store and found their wallet selection. Keeping that five-year-old's feelings in my awareness, I asked him what wallet he wanted. Which wallet made him light up?
He chose a small, sleek wallet that he felt was the coolest there, and I bought it. I proceeded to the nearest atm, where I got fifty dollars, which I then put into the slick new wallet - the lost fortune and lost wallet were now replaced. And my sad, dejected feelings had completely transformed. Now we were having fun! What had been feelings of sadness and deflation transformed into an impromptu ceremony of self-love and self-acceptance. All I needed to do was listen to my feelings with openness and curiosity and then see if something was needed.
The Art Of Processing
I share the above story because it illustrates, in a clear way, some of the principles we can carry with us as we turn toward our feelings throughout life. When we’ve learned to avoid certain feelings, accepting them back into our awareness can be a very confusing and sometimes painful journey. We must approach it with patience and compassion for ourselves, as though our feelings are children that require time, nurturance, and grace in their development. Sometimes finding professional help (with a trusted counsellor/therapist) or exploring these parts of ourselves with trusted, compassionate friends is best. For those with a history of mental health challenges, I encourage you to find a skilled counsellor or therapist, to have the safety and guidance of someone trustworthy walking alongside you.
With that all said, here are some essential principles we can carry into our emotional processing:
Listen / Accept
This is the very essence. Turning toward our feelings means listening, noticing, and feeling what is happening inside of us emotionally and energetically. Listening requires our focus and attention. That doesn’t mean we need to be in silent meditation to feel our feelings. But it means that if we are listening to music and scrolling Instagram and texting a friend and making a snack simultaneously, the quality of our presence is relatively low. You can still notice your feelings while doing all of that stuff, but when you unplug from distractions and create some actual space and tranquillity, feeling what’s happening emotionally and energetically becomes much easier.
Often the first step in emotional processing is noticing what we are feeling, listening, and creating the space where this kind of listening can occur.
Maybe as important as creating some space without distraction is creating a space of acceptance for what we feel. Sometimes our feelings contradict who we think we are, who we think we should be, and what we'd like to feel. Learning to loosen this kind of rigidity, to accept the many varied feelings we may contain without wanting to change them or pass judgment about them, makes this open, curious listening/feeling much more fluid.
In the story I shared above about my wallet memory, I happened to be meditating in a very relaxed way, intending to listen to my feelings. So when that memory resurfaced, I wasn’t rushing to push it out of my awareness - I was curious and open to it.
Express / Give It A Voice
This next step is optional but can sometimes be very helpful. Once we have noticed a big feeling coming up, it can help to express it - to give it a voice. This can be as simple as speaking whatever words come through us as we tap into the feeling we wish to understand. Sometimes I throw words out of my mouth in a spontaneous free association to explore a complex or confusing feeling. It’s as though I am throwing paint on a wall and seeing if anything begins to make sense from the splatters - watching to see if a picture emerges. Sometimes this verbal paint-flinging alone is enough to shift my emotions.
For example, say I feel very triggered by something and subsumed by big feelings of anger or sadness, but I don’t know why any of this has happened or what I’m even feeling.
I might take some space to give it a voice and start spitballing. This is not an attempt to intellectualize what I am feeling or to agree with it or evaluate it. It is an attempt to honestly, directly express it.
In my moment of triggered confusion, this might sound like: “I’m triggered, I’m angry, I feel defensive. I feel like I’m being judged - I feel like I was being judged when I got that text from my friend earlier. It felt bad - I feel like I did when I was five years old - I want to be accepted for who I am…”
In my experience, talking out these feelings can both give them the chance to breathe and move and allow me to understand them better, taking away some of the disorienting intensity of their unprocessed energy.
Journaling is another way of achieving this kind of spontaneous, unfiltered expression. Some people find it much easier and more effective than verbal processing.
Hold Truth / Take Care
The next step is also optional. But it may also be the most important.
To tap into a hurt part of ourselves and look at it or feel its pain without offering any help can sometimes do more harm than good. There are examples of individuals with complex trauma being retraumatized by undergoing certain types of therapy because rather than feeling protected and safe, they go into their deepest pain and have it tear through them yet again.
The goal of this step - Hold truth / take care - is to bring nurturance, education, protection, validation, and a corrective experience to the hurt and confused parts of ourselves. When we turn towards the big, painful feelings we contain, we do so intending to take care of them, intending to show them love and support and share a bigger perspective.
The story I shared above about my lost wallet is a clear example of this. I had welcomed the feelings of my five-year-old self into my awareness and had probably expressed them both verbally and in my journal, but it wasn’t until I stepped up and gave that part a corrective experience that things changed.
When I realized that I could do something for this part of myself that was tangible and direct, then stepped into the world and took action, he felt loved, protected, validated, and understood profoundly. He had a corrective experience, so the end of the story wasn’t a confusing loss. The end of the story was now beautiful because I picked up the pen and rewrote it.
This step is named holding truth because sometimes, it requires that we re-educate the incorrect perceptions that hurt, emotionally charged parts of us hold. On the journey of emotional processing, it’s important to acknowledge and accept our feelings just as they are, while also remembering that even though a feeling is real, the perceptions, beliefs, and stories attached to it may not be based on truth at all.
For example, it can be very healthy to acknowledge, accept, and turn towards feelings of shame and self-loathing sometimes. However, to effectively navigate these feelings, we must maintain a certain level of detachment from them. If I were to become completely subsumed by my self-loathing, I wouldn’t see things clearly. I would become lost in the feeling. If I were to believe everything my shame believes about me, I’d be in a rough spot. But when I can feel those feelings, study them, ask them questions, and hold a bigger, more loving perspective of myself and life for them, things can become quite beautiful.
The five-year-old Miles who lost his wallet needed me to listen and hear his sadness, but he didn’t need me to commiserate with him about how unfair life is. He needed me to show him a bigger picture. One where feelings can be hurt, and they can heal. One where things can be lost, and new things can arrive. One where life is beautiful, sacred, and fair. A perspective where small gestures of kindness or generosity can make the world a brighter place.
Sometimes, before we can hold this support and nurturance for ourselves, we need to have it held for us and awakened within us by good people. It could be a great counsellor or therapist, even a good friend. If you find this step difficult to enact on your own, please don’t feel distressed: That’s normal. Most of us need to learn how to do this, and it’s a long road. Believe me, if I didn’t have many people showing me how to love myself, I wouldn’t be writing these words.
In Conclusion
To accept/listen to our feelings, express them/give them a voice (without believing all they say), and then hold truth/take care of them. These are three very simple principles to carry into our relationship with our emotions, and perhaps even our relationships with others. Each of them has been extremely helpful to me in my life, and perhaps they might help you, too.
I hope you enjoyed this post - and if you’re interested in reading more, I will take this opportunity to recommend my new book, How To Open The Heart: An Incredible Journey Into Vulnerability, Empathy, And The Transformation Of Consciousness, available as a paperback, audiobook, and ebook.
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