5 big learnings in a journey of feeling

This might sound weird but please stick me on as I process my thoughts.

I have someone close to me who has a collection of mental health and neurodiverse diagnoses, with more being added to the list at the moment. It has had me spending a lot of time thinking about mental health and neurodiversity this week but also about genetics and biology, nature vs nurture. About my desire to help and support people, of parenting children and being there for them in the way I want to be, in having a marriage we both enjoy and bring out the best in each other, and doing meaningful and impactful work. The list feels long, heavy and daunting, but also important, inspiring and necessary.

It’s been a heavy feeling of processing all of this, connecting with history, present day and the future. But nothing nearly as heavy as the 8 conditions this person carries everyday. ?I have been thinking about my upbringing, the conversations we did and didn’t have. How we treated emotions. And how far I’ve come.

As someone who has had my own mental health struggles, and a family scattered with various experiences, the more I learn, the more I connect dots, create stories and perspectives that aid my understanding of the world but also lead me to more questions.

Today it hit a peak. A peak of emotions. Big feelings. Hard feelings. And that’s OK.

I took myself to sit by the side of a lake, in the sun (knowing these two things help me greatly), I knew writing my thoughts down was what would help me to process and move through a moment full of big feelings.

These are not strategies I knew of earlier in my life, now knowing the power of connecting and sharing my thoughts and letting others help, knowing the environment that helps me most, the activities that allow me to move through. And for that I am so grateful.

I sat thinking about how I felt to help me unravel the turmoil I was feeling, and I connected with feeling uncertain, disheartened, afraid, ashamed, stuck, disconnected, doubt, confused, angry, guilty, troubled and overwhelmed (Wow that’s a heavy list to write down.). These are all “undesired emotions”/white cards in the deck. And not cards I pick often. I feel lucky for that.

The good thing I felt was how rounding out the course diving deeper into the Emotional Culture Deck use has helped me in various ways as using it has been as much about learning more about my own emotions as it is about using it in my work. I’d summarise some of my key takeaways as:

1. I know that these feelings are useful signals for me. Signals of things I need to find solutions to, talk about, get support for and take action on. These are emotions I am OK to feel. I am human. They will come and go now and again, when I need to take notice. Do I enjoy them? No. But from time to time, I am OK with their information and I love that I can have that perspective. Do the mahi needed to process them.

2. I am so thankful to Jeremy and the R&E team for creating this tool. I am proud of myself for pursuing learning more in this space and being willing to bring these conversations to light with others.

I know from my own experience the influence of how I feel on how I turn up, how I treat others, how connected, decisive and understanding I can be. I have a clear intention of how I want to be with people. Emotions give me data of when I need to do something different. Bringing this perspective to others in one on one work has been life changing (I know it sounds dramatic, but it’s true).

Our emotions come with us everywhere we go, they don't stay at home when we go to work and they certainly don't stay at work when we head home at the end of the day.

3. It is OK to find things hard, uncomfortable, challenging and daunting. That’s all part of being human. But we’re all a work in progress and can move onwards with new tools, new ideas, new conversations and everytime I bring these cards into my work, light bulbs ping for people in the room.

4. We don’t generally have a great catalogue of words we can use to describe our emotions. When we think about how we feel, we often go to the core few (happy, sad, angry, scared). It is disarming to have cards with the words on them to help us broaden the words we use and dig deeper to think about how we really feel. Anger can be fear, vulnerability, hurt or embarrassment (and many more). Digging deeper gets us further in understanding what we’re reacting to, what we need and what action is required.

5. Bringing the human centric approach of talking about how we feel is good for business, it’s aligns so much with the way I want to work and the purpose of what I want to do. Because when we do well as people first, we do work we’re more connected to, engaged with and motivated to do well. It actually makes business cents (excuse the pun).

And so, while I hope this might be useful for someone else to read, this is for me. A processing of thoughts. A therapy of sorts. No judgement please. I’m as human as the next person, we all need to continue to feel, to grow and to take stock. Is what you’re doing serving you? If so, awesome! I love that. If not, what’s the first step to do something different? How do you want to feel? What do you need to do to get there?