how emotional reactivity is impacting your life
Some of us were taught how to recognize and regulate our own emotional states. Some of us have never even heard of such a thing. This blog post serves as an introduction to emotions and how they impact our lives. For those of you that would like to learn how they can practice emotional awareness, I've added an exercise that still is crucial to my healing journey.Feeding into emotions and being identified with them causes so much pain. It impacts our thoughts and is mirrored in how we perceive our environment. We see things from a completely different point of view than even moments before our emotional reactivity or than the day before, when we were feeling better.
When an emotional wound becomes active, our thoughts tend to become somewhat negative and start moving very quickly. We feed into these emotions by believing these thoughts that accompany them.
In fact, our mind has mastered the art of constructing stories that explain exactly why we are feeling a certain way and justifying that emotion.
Amazingly, each situation that “leads” to a certain emotional state feels completely new to us. It’s not easy to see the track of drama a particular emotion has left behind in the past. If kept uncheck, these stories impact our behavior in a certain way that really is just an old pattern.
We react to our feelings by venting, crying or distracting ourselves until the emotion starts to weaken. Then, we have enough headspace to let go of the thoughts and our perspective. I bet, you’ve looked back at some of your more dramatic reactions and thought to yourself: “That was truly an overreaction” or “I think totally different about that situation now”.
Still, why do we act and think the same way every single time we are experiencing a certain emotion?
This way, we do not have to take any responsibility. It feels good to believe the thoughts that prove your emotions are right.
Our ego has a certain kind of love for emotional drama. Some call it a sneaky pleasure.
It allows us to keep believing what we experienced in the past, thus giving us a false sense of safety. Safety, that helps us understand the world inside of and around us. We get to play victim and blame our outer circumstances.
We have to pay a high price for that safety though: Staying stuck in these beliefs about ourselves, repeating the same behaviors and experiences, and getting the same results as before.
Letting go of that illusional safety creates space for you to understand yourself, your wounds and beliefs. Telling yourself: "I am much more than the story my mind is telling me right now" is a very humbling experience. You are no longer attached to the thoughts that amplify the emotion.
You won’t succeed at that all the time and that’s fine. Sometimes, I become aware of the satisfaction and security as a result of giving into the drama of the story and it’s hard to get a grip on my reaction. I used to feel very guilty because of that and believed the thoughts that told me I wasn’t good enough.
My point is: This belief is just another story that accompanies my emotion “guilt”. So, on top of feeling emotionally activated, I would judge myself for that fact. You can see how destructive the spiral can get.
Some emotions like anger, jealousy or sadness are easy to recognize. More often, they linger in the back of our mind and go unnoticed. Emotions like confusion, indecisiveness, apathy or depression seem to be so true to our mind that it’s hard to get a grip on them.
If you do get a grip on them and desire to be able to choose to get out of the negative emotional merry-go-round, try out the following exercise:
Notice how you become emotionally reactive. How your thoughts race and construct a situation that gives your emotion a reason for existing
Experience how you benefit from indulging in stories
Let go of and smile at the satisfaction you get from believing your emotion and it’s story
Grasp the emotion that lies underneath all the drama
Learn from it about yourself and experience the feeling
You are now free to choose self-compassion and emotionally regulate
Feel how it’s intensity lessens
Most importantly, there is no need to be harsh on yourself if you don’t succeed at this. We are all still learning about ourselves and dismantling what our mind deems “true”.
Remember: Your emotions don't define you or your worth.
If you’ve done the exercise, I’d be thrilled to know how your experience was!
Much love,
