Be Okay When Everything Is Not Okay: Mindfulness Of Emotions

Think about the last time you got really angry.

You might remember how maybe your face felt flush or your heart was beating fast,

How your throat was tight or closed up,

And how small you felt.

How your whole beautiful,

Wonderful self,

Your personality,

Your goodness,

Your smartness,

Was all reduced to this one singular emotion,

Probably anger.

So this is an example of what it's like to be lost in your emotions,

Controlled by your emotions,

Instead of mindful and aware of them.

A lot of people use the description of when you're caught up,

Lost,

Trapped,

Controlled by your emotions.

It's like you're being tossed around by the waves in the ocean versus mindful of the emotion.

It's more like you have a bigger perspective.

You can surf the waves,

So to speak.

In the rest of this talk on mindfulness of emotions,

I'll talk about what you get out of mindfulness of emotions.

I'll share what neuroscience has to say about it,

How your upbringing or culture,

Society,

Play a role in your feeling of emotions.

There'll be a short reflection on that,

And also how to actually practice this,

And then what to do if you lack feeling emotions,

Or if you have a history of trauma,

How you should deal with or approach your emotions.

And at the very end,

I'll describe a practice for dealing with difficult emotions.

There's a quote by the late Thich Nhat Hanh,

Enlightenment for a wave in the ocean is the moment the wave realizes it is water.

So it really is such a benefit to us to practice mindfulness of emotions,

To be aware of what we're feeling,

To not be controlled by it,

Not be reduced to one single thing,

But feel the wholeness of who we are.

Take your heart with you,

Take your wise mind with you into these often difficult situations.

I've heard the phrase,

You gotta feel it to heal it.

And the other great one is the only way out is through.

And where this really is true for emotions,

Especially the big ones,

Or the ones you might label as negative.

Our language even is against us.

Our language is not on our side.

When we talk about emotions,

We say,

I am angry.

I am tired.

I am stressed.

We're saying we are that emotion,

Which is not true.

You're not just anger,

Or I'm a happy person.

You identify your personality as only being happy.

That's not true either.

It would be more accurate if we said I'm experiencing happiness,

Or I'm experiencing anger,

Or if it's clinical depression,

I think it would be wiser to say I've been experiencing a lot of depression or sadness.

Yeah,

You're probably not going to change the language and that's fine.

I'm just saying this is how the language even has it out for us with our emotions.

Emotions are completely normal.

And I'm talking about all of them.

I'm talking about the ones you like and the ones you don't like.

They happen.

They're just going to happen.

You're going to have all the emotions.

I just love this quote from author and spiritual leader Pema Chodron.

It's very helpful to realize that the emotions we have,

The negativity and the positivity are exactly what we need to be fully human,

Fully awake,

And fully alive.

So it's not really human if you cut yourself off from certain emotions or label them as bad or wrong or not able to be expressed.

Our upbringing or our culture or workplace or whatever can influence what we think we're allowed to feel or not allowed to feel.

So just for a moment,

Take a moment here,

Reflect,

Maybe close your eyes,

Turn inward,

And ask yourself what emotion isn't allowed to be felt or expressed?

Or what emotions are out of your comfort zone?

What emotions are you unwilling to feel?

And then coming out of that,

You might reflect on the emotions that you named and see that those are maybe the ones you need to feel more of.

I once dated a guy who said he didn't really have emotions.

So what if that's you?

What if you feel like you have a lack of feeling?

Or maybe it's just some emotions you feel like you Or maybe it's just some emotions you feel like you don't ever feel.

Just know that that's okay too and that our life,

Our world has taught us to be so much in our thoughts that we've cut ourselves out of our bodies,

Out of our emotions.

So don't get down on yourself if there's an emotion you don't feel,

But it might be worth exploring.

So how do we practice with mindfulness of emotions?

My favorite way is labeling.

So when I feel like I might be experiencing an emotion,

Maybe getting caught up in it,

I simply label.

So anger,

I just say anger,

Anger,

Anger,

Anger,

And just follow the emotion along its path.

The awesome thing is that neuroscience has shown that an emotion only really lasts 90 seconds if it's not re-triggered by another thought or other experiences.

They're not permanent.

And when we have a healthy relationship to them,

We can ride the wave sort of,

Ride the wave of that 90 second experience.

So the labeling practice is really helpful to help you to ride that wave.

So happiness,

Joy,

Joy,

Joy.

And it doesn't have to just be negative emotions.

You can do that with positive emotions too.

What the labeling does is it allows you to step back and witness.

It allows you to be the witness of the experience instead of getting caught up in it.

If you wanted to boil it down to two questions that the questions would be,

What is here?

Can I be with it or can I allow it?

It's awareness and compassion of your emotions.

Now,

Maybe you've experienced some really difficult trauma in your life and some emotions are so big,

They overwhelm you beyond just what maybe the rest of us feel.

Maybe emotion is so big that it re-triggers your trauma.

So with those,

If you have built up this practice of mindfulness of emotions and you know your spaciousness,

You know your heart,

Your big heart,

Your big mind,

You know the spaciousness that awareness creates,

Maybe you start to play with,

Can I hold all of this?

Be courageous in your trusting your capacity to hold it all.

But if you're new to this or if you're deeply traumatized,

Obviously go see a therapist.

And then when it does come up in mindfulness,

In your meditation practice,

Turn to something else instead.

Bring your awareness to the ground or your breath or anything else that feels safe.

Really,

The goal is to be compassionate with yourself and always do whatever you need to do to take care of yourself.

There's a formal practice called RAIN that is really amazingly helpful for emotions,

Dealing with difficult or challenging emotions.

And I have a meditation that's just a RAIN meditation.

You can search for that.

I think it's called Dealing with Difficult Emotions.

And it really is a really great systematic process that leads you through the experience of the emotion.

It's recognize,

Allow,

Investigate,

And nurture so that you can you can label,

Let's recognize,

You can allow,

You can let yourself feel the emotion,

You investigate it,

You embody it,

You feel it,

Feel where the emotion is in the body.

Investigating is not an intellectual exercise.

And then nurture is what do you want?

Or what is this part of you that's reacting?

What does this really want from you?

And can you give yourself some sense of that?

So RAIN is a great practice to have in your back pocket for those really troubling times.

And of course,

We know anything we have in our back pocket means we've practiced it enough that we're familiar with it.

So you got to practice it first before you can just whip it out next time you're really angry or sad.

So there's a whole rainbow of emotions that we experience.

And really being alive as a human is being able and being okay with feeling all of them,

Despite whether you like them or not.

All right,

Thanks for listening.